Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs

[ionelv]

The Globe and Mail published a Wet'suwet'en's subchief's allegations that 3 of the 5 hereditary chiefs opposing the pipeline are illegitimate. That is quite damning if true but also a good cautionary tale on the vagaries of oral traditions vs written ones. Everybody knows that even the best written legal corpus is full of holes, arbitrarily and unevenly enforced and in need of an expansive court system to parse its true meaning and application. An oral tradition is effectively hopeless and doomed especially when in conflict with a written tradition.

Related to the pipeline opposition, there was a CBC live press conference (I watched from FB notification on Saturday) with the Wet'suwet'en and Mohawk chiefs about the blockade and their demand to withdraw all RCMP presence from the former's territory before the latter lift the blockades (press conference video or transcript that I can't find anywhere on CBC website now). There also seems to be a lack of communication as the RCMP was simultaneously claiming that they will not leave until they get assurances from the chiefs about allowing unimpeded pipeline worker access through their territory. There were some other emotional points made at the conference about inconvenience vs injustice and one-sided conversations withe the Crown since Confederation. Worth watching.

All the Ontario rail blockades negotiations will be void once OPP moves in and forcibly lift them this week, if not today.