21 people attended the premier of the feature documentary Yintah at the Campbell River Community Center on February 20th, 2025. This screening is sponsored by the North Island Powell River (NIPR) Federal Green Party Riding Association and follows the Wet’suwet’en land defender’s 10 year struggle to keep gas companies  from building a pipeline through their territory. Cortes Currents interviewed two of the event organizers about the film and some of the deeper issues within the local community. 

Annie Smith, a member of the local Green Party executive, explained, “I chose that movie because  I’ve been in that territory a few times and,  been very graciously received by the First Nations communities  in the Gitxsan Wet’suwet’en territories. I’d been on the TMX pipeline protests and thought this is really, really important. Then also Rainbow Eyes and other people from here had participated in the Fairy Creek protests and  Rainbow Eyes is still dealing with her appeal.” 

Cortes Currents:  I’m going to read a passage out of the email you sent just prior to this interview: 

“The special guest for this event, Rainbow Eyes (Angela) Davidson, the Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Canada, from the Da’naxda’xw/Awaetlala First Nation in Knights Inlet, was introduced by Jessica Wegg, the Federal Green candidate for our riding.  At the conclusion of the movie Rainbow Eyes led the gathering in the Women’s Warrior Song, which is featured in the film and has become an anthem for Indigenous and environmental protests across North America.  Rainbow Eyes spoke about her experience protesting at Fairy Creek and her appeal of criminal contempt charges for her protests. Jessica Wegg, a lawyer living and practicing in Comox, contributed to the legal team for Rainbow Eye’s appeal and spoke to her hope that court cases like Rainbow Eye’s will bring recognition to the historic and ongoing violation of Indigenous people’s charter rights.”

Annie Smith: “This is relevant in a lot of ways, even though we have our seagoing  cultures here and not land based.  A difference in that, but all the controversy that there is with  the fish farms in the Discovery Islands and Broughton Archipelago, and the tensions between hereditary and elected Chiefs,  all of that stuff. I thought, okay, this is a timely film,  it’s provocative and it’s political, and I thought this is a good thing to be doing right now to kind of stir up the hornets nest a little bit.”

 Don Goodeve, a member of the Green Party with an activist background, added, “I was involved in a lot of the Wet’suwet’en associated protests when that was happening in Victoria, pre COVID. It drew together people across Canada that recognized that this was not just a local issue, this was a systemic issue. Even though it ended up with relatively few people at the tip of the spear, who took all of the attention of the RCMP, the  thing that really inspired me was how much that  event which was happening out in the middle of nowhere, where it could be hidden, where press could be suppressed, et cetera,  nonetheless, the word got out, the communication got out, and the importance of the issue just became amplified. Then COVID happened.”

“We haven’t regained that ground again as yet, specifically  in the Campbell River area. I think there are a lot of people who are very concerned about where things are going,  that want to get their voices heard and want to find a way of getting those voices expressed.  Right now, certainly in Campbell River, my perception is there’s not a lot of a forum for that.”

“Campbell River has a tradition of being a resource based town. Rightly or wrongly, my perception is  there is a lot more progressive sentiment here. However I think people perceive there’s a risk of how they’re going to be perceived within this community and it has a chilling effect.” 

“Soon after I came to Campbell River,  I  ended up doing a few little actions.  One was five of us doing a climate awareness thing down in central Campbell River.   In Victoria, cars would come past, and the occasional person would beep, you’d get an acknowledgement.

“When I came here, you got the spectacular number of swear words coming out of certain people driving very large trucks and accelerating hard past you to try and cover you in clouds of smoke.  Then, you’d have people behind the windscreens of their cars, quietly just giving you a thumbs up and making eye contact, but they wouldn’t make a sound.” 

“I think that’s  a microcosm of what I experience and it’s my hope that we can  make the conversation more open. I don’t think it’s that people don’t have things to say. It’s that people are unwilling to talk in the face of what they perceive this town to be like.” 

Cortes Currents:  We have a similar situation on Cortes,  except here it tends to be more conservative people who are hesitant to speak.  

 Don Goodeve: “So culture plays a big part,  what can be done to provide a space in which what is there can emerge.”

“There are idiots everywhere, but the vast majority of people are reasonable, and will get into a conversation about it.  That’s the kind of democracy that I want to live in. I want to use this as a catalyst for creating a bigger conversation and getting outside of this polarity.”  

“As Canadians, we’re as subject to that polarity as anybody else. But I think we can see very clearly, with the vast experiment that’s going on to the south of us right now, what extreme partisan inability to talk across  different points of view ends up looking like.  I want to do everything I can to make sure that we  actually do keep engaging in  debate, open conversation, and learn how to get on with each other in a way that perhaps we’ve forgotten to a degree, and we really do need to get good at it again.”

Annie Smith: “I agree with Don in a lot of ways. I’ve lived in a few places, including the oil patch in Northern Alberta and the fear that is in this city to me is palpable. I was living in Surrey before I moved here in 2020. Surrey has loads of problems, but there wasn’t the same fear. Even Grand Prairie, which was an exceedingly fearful city, wasn’t as fearful as it is here in Campbell River.”

“I don’t know  what to do with that, except like Don says, there are people that want to talk, that want to have a place to voice their concerns and find other people for support. Our vision for the movie nights is that this is only the first one and we didn’t have a lot of time to advertise it, but it provides a place for people to come together and a focal point  that can allow conversation to develop.” 

“So after the film, Don invited everybody into a circle and it was a small enough group that we could actually sit in a circle.  That’s a very powerful thing to do.  If it had been a larger group, we wouldn’t have been able to sit in a circle.”  

“This is a start.  People were really appreciative and galvanized. We’ll see where it goes. There are a lot of older people who have  concerns and have been activists all their life. This is the last hurrah, we can’t sit back. There are younger people who have families and who are in the midst of just trying to make ends meet. They have this huge fear.” 

“It’s very much about bringing people together. There are really amazing environmental organizations in Campbell River. I think people have become discouraged, but they also want to engage. It’s holding a space for people to come together and engage with each other that generates  energy, hope and a sense of possibility.”

 Cortes Currents: Going back to the movie,  wasn’t the Wet’suwet’en title to the Land recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada?  

Don Goodeve: “Yes, 1997, the Delgamuukw Decision. My understanding is the Supreme Court of Canada decision holds and it was the  Supreme Court of BC that provided the legal justification for the actions of Coastal GasLink and the injunctions that then provided the basis of all the RCMP action.”  

Annie Smith: “What was won was that the Supreme Court of Canada actually defined what Aboriginal title was,  how it operates within Canada,  and that Indigenous people and Aboriginal title came under the Charter of Human Rights in Canada. What the Land Defenders were going on was the definition of the Supreme Court,  which was that Aboriginal title meant that outsiders couldn’t come in and take their resources. Basically,  they couldn’t come into their territory  without permission.” 

Cortes Currents:  I just read, ‘however the decision also notes that aboriginal rights could justifiably be infringed for the development of agriculture, forestry, mining, and the general economic development of the interior of British Columbia.’

Don Goodeve: “Coastal GasLink used the court decision to place an injunction against the previous decisions of the court, which  provided the basis for enforcement action.” 

Annie Smith: “And the RCMP were given the mandate to enforce the injunction against the Wet’suwet’en.”  

Don Goodeve: “In the face of everything that’s kind of happening in the world right now, the fossil fuel industry is somehow getting a free pass.  The L. A. wildfires, for example, so much noise generated on the response and reservoirs and da da da da da and all of this noise. The fundamental thing is the conditions in California through the series of historic droughts and this happened in January.  This is not wildfire season guys! Something is clearly different. Where is any conversation about climate change and what’s going on?  The big picture is being completely and utterly sidelined.” 

“My sense of it, rightly or wrongly, is a large number of people out there have this thing in the back of their mind. I think a basic human psychological defence that’s going on  is it’s too big. ‘The forces arrayed against us are too large. There’s nothing I can do, so let’s go for hockey night in Canada.’”

“The systemic issue that we’re in right now is colossal. Trump is a symptom of this.  It’s not that he’s some isolated individual who’s come along. It’s only possible for Trump to get where where Trump has gotten because he’s managed to ride a tide of massive discontent.  He’s managed to point out, ‘here are the causes for your discontent, and I’m gonna take action on these.'”    

Cortes Currents:  Does being a climate activist impact your professional life?  

Don Goodeve: “It makes it interesting.  It hasn’t, as yet, been a disrupting factor.  I’ve got two sides to what I do professionally.  The major part of my  time is spent as an engineering consultant. I work with a company based in Alberta, another one based in Ottawa,  another one based in Singapore.  Another one based in Australia.  So I’m indirectly plugged into what’s going on in those places, but in terms of like ‘my day to day,’ I’m working from home. I get to set my own schedule and what goes on directly in my life.”

“The other side of ‘my stuff’ is coaching, that’s about my clients. It’s not about me, but I find I only really work with people at that level who I’ve got a good degree of alignment with. I would find it very, very difficult to coach a fossil fuel industry executive on how to increase  their profit margin by selling more oil, but working with people who are looking to make a difference and putting themselves out there, that’s easy. 

“As you know, I’m not from these shores and I was very aware that until I became a  full bona fide citizen I wasn’t going to stick my head too far above the parapet.  A man involved in protests in Vancouver,  Zain Haq  is not a citizen and has just been deported.  Even though,  as I understand, he’s never actually lived in Pakistan, he’s now been deported to Pakistan.  I’m looking at people that I hold as heroes in my life right now, one of the main ones being Roger Hallam who’s currently serving out a five year sentence for being on a Zoom call talking about peaceful, non-violent direct action in the UK.  He was on a Zoom call, that’s it, talking about the ethos of non violent civil disobedience and was charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. He and four other people have been jailed. His term is for five years.  So basically, we’re in an era of thought crime now.”  

Cortes Currents: Going back to Zane Hack, was he born in Canada? 

Don Goodeve: “I don’t think he was born in Canada, but I think his family have lived in Canada for a long time and he’s married to a Canadian.  I’ve met Zane on a few occasions.  He’s a very committed young man and  really trying to make a difference.  That disrupts the status quo and so the status quo responds.” 

“Coming back to the movie both of those women,  Sleydo (Molly Wickham) and Freda Huson, left their careers to go and stand on the line. Now after a long legal process and all of the implications that have come out of that, they’re facing some consequences of it. Last week as part of  the trial, we had the evidence of the outright abuse that they were presented with at the hands of the RCMP.  The court has deigned to take the circumstances of all of that into account in sentencing. It’s this bizarre situation that under other circumstances would be conditions for declaring  charges null and void and here it’s mitigating circumstances. We’ll use that to reduce their sentences.” 

Annie Smith: “If they were not Indigenous,  this wouldn’t have happened.” 

Don Goodeve: “Case in point, I’ve been arrested once. I’m a white guy.  Charges  were dropped.  I think a lot of other people who are  majority white culture here, they’re putting themselves on the line. Either we don’t get arrested and people in more target groups tend to get arrested and face harsher consequences.  Those of us in majority culture,  we’ve got a great deal of privilege. It gives us a position to get our voices heard in a way that many other groups don’t, which I think gives us a responsibility.”

Cortes Currents: Do you think the term ‘activist’ is often being used to dismiss people so you don’t have to listen to what they say? 

Don Goodeve: “Exactly. I think that term has become weaponized. It’s just like, ‘oh, you’re an activist.’ Activist has been collapsed into the idea of fanaticism.  So it’s just like, ‘oh, they’re out there.  They’re not grounded in the same reality that we are. Therefore, we can deal with you as crazy people.’” 

“That’s very useful for maintaining the status quo. It gives you a way of discounting, like, labeling scientists as activists, because not only are they voicing  the results of the science, but they’re also saying  what their opinion is of what the science means, and what that implies.”

“Albert Einstein was an activist when he said, ‘Oh, you know, we built this bomb thing.  We really ought to have a damn good look at how we’re going to deal with things going forwards.’  It’s never neutral. Science is done by human beings, and those human beings are in intimate contact with the implications of their findings and if they can’t voice it, who can?  Have you ever tried to read a scientific paper and form an opinion on it? Not easy.” 

 “There’s a few things that it would make sense for us to start redefining.   I see it as either you’re voicing an opinion and are willing to act in accord with that opinion, or you’re keeping quiet and just allowing the status quo to continue.  Maybe you get to complain a bit, but that changes nothing.”  

“Let’s say, for example, the Wet’suwet’en had gone, ‘Oh, fair enough court decision.  What can we do?’ So they got out of the way and the pipeline gets built. There was no issue or public debate and the public conversation never happened.  In that world, we end up in a place criss crossed with pipelines and whatever. It all just happens and further down the road we end up without even people really considering it.  It’s only because people are willing to put themselves on the line that the public debate happens.” 

“I think that’s the key issue here. Activism can be getting in the way of stuff and getting arrested.  Petitions don’t shift anything.  A lot of the protests and standing in the way of things,  as has been traditionally done, hasn’t shifted a lot of things. It’s when people are really  willing to  disrupt that the debate is forced. It polarizes, it’s bound to. There will be people who’s just like, ‘they’re crazy. They’re getting in the way of stuff. This is blatantly illegal. It’s criminal. These people should go get a job.’ Nonetheless, the debate happens, and if people weren’t willing to stand up, there would be no debate.” 

Annie Smith: “The other thing, stemming from the film and also just because I’m involved right now in a 12 week course with Indigenous elders from across North America, if you look at activism as only being against things, we give power to what it is that we’re struggling against.” 

“As activists and as Green Party members, we look at what we want. There’s this new movement starting up called ‘Shaping the Canada We Want.’ If we put our energy and our discussion towards what it is we want,  then we’re not giving energy  to what it is that is hindering us.” 

“That was something I thought was very beautiful in the film.  It is also about the Wet’suwet’en people: what their dreams are,  what they want for themselves. There are so many shots  of them with their children playing and being in the water at the river. One of the people in the discussion, a young dad, said  that was the part of the film that meant the most to him because he has young children and he wants them to have a good future and he wants to raise them to be caring and responsible  citizens.” 

I think maybe the greater power of the film is that despite the fact that yes, we have to stand our ground against things, but if we don’t know what it is  that we want and what we hope for, then  we’re just giving more energy to the forces that are destructive.

Cortes Currents: Is the Green Party planning to bring any other movies to Campbell River?

Don Goodeve: “I would love to see us carry on the momentum of bringing these kinds of films to Campbell River.  By these kinds of films, I mean ones that we’re actually digging into some more of these controversial issues. With Yintah: there’s a lot of energy in it and it’s very much a clear  ‘resource extraction is a good thing for British Columbia,’  versus Aboriginal  rights and title.  There’s good movies about the fish farms issue that would be great to bring and have conversations about. There are great movies about old growth forestry  that would be great to bring.” 

Annie Smith: “On the 27th of March, because it’s Spring break we’re going to have  a family focused movie night, and the feature  is a film produced by Pacific Wild last year,  ‘Return of the Great Bear.‘   People were really excited to learn of the grizzly bear cubs that are on the Northern Island and that we actually may have a grizzly bear population here again after many, many years. There are First Nation stories about grizzly bears on Vancouver Island. We’re also going to have pizza and some  environmental cartoons. I haven’t got those figured out yet, but  it’ll be a fun family night.” 

Don Goodeve: “We do have something in the pipeline, but at the end of March, we may well be in election campaign mode.  So,  we don’t really want to plan too far out right now until we know what that landscape looks like, which should become clear in the next two to three weeks.” 

Links of Interest: 

• YINTAH – on Netflix
• ‘Racist and dehumanizing’: Judge slams RCMP, reduces sentences for CGL pipeline opponents – InidgiNEWS
• Amnesty International condemns court decision regarding Wet’suwet’en, other Indigenous land defenders – Amnesty International
• Articles about, or mentioning, the Wet-suwet’en Nation
• Greens of North Island-Powell River website

Top image credit: Jessica Wegg, Green Party candidate for North Island-Powell River speaking at the Campbell River showing of Yintah – submitted photo

Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:

To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency:

• Daily, (articles posted during the last 24 hours) – cortescurrents-daily+subscribe@cortes.groups.io
• Weekly Digest cortescurrents – cortescurrents-weekly+subscribe@cortes.groups.io