Not a Land Defender, a Xwémalhkwu youth
Anonda Canadien (she/her) (Dehcho Dene) // Arts & Culture Editor
Rachel Lu (she/her) // Crew Illustrator
What is a Land Defender? In the day and age of western media and colonial worldviews, land defenders are often mistaken for environmentalists, activists or radical persons of being. In reality, land defenders are people who have an inherent right to their territories and ancestral ties to the land. To have ancestral ties is to have responsibilities to the land and to defend the land of their ancestors. For many Indigenous groups across so-called ‘Canada,’ the importance of defending the land is not up to question.
Ace Harry is from Tla’amin Nation (just north of Powell River), and she has been on the front lines fighting in defence of Indigenous land for many years. She has been on the front lines of solidarity actions pertaining to the defence of land. Upon returning from university, Harry has worked to rebuild a connection with her community and has begun the lifelong journey of learning her ancestral language.
“[Media outlets] would always ask me, ‘What’s your name and what’s your title?’ And, I was always so annoyed by that question, because I would have to say something like, ‘land defender’ in the context that I was opposing resource extraction, etc. I’m not a land defender, I’m not an environmentalist, I’m not an activist. I’m a Xwémalhkwu youth.”
To be a Xwémalhkwu youth for Harry means to have ancestral rights, entitlements and responsibilities that are non-negotiable. Western media outlets often reshape and distort these ancestral rights and entitlements as a way of decoupling Indigenous peoples from their land. There is a difference between someone who defends the land because it is within their rights to do so, and someone who defends the land because they have no choice as they can never leave. Effectively, this process of alienation makes it easier for the settler project to generate profit off the land through resource extraction.
It should come as no surprise, then, that another aspect of western media Harry has experienced is the portrayal of land defence as an act of terrorism. When protecting the land opposes the profit imperatives of Canada, the state will ultimately take steps to quash such efforts.
“. . . That means that any Indigenous person who still exists, who still is committed to the identity of being, of their territory, like that makes them a terrorist. . . if you just say that you’re just an Indigenous person who will die before you abandon your territory, that’s basically equivalent to terrorism.” – Ace Harry
Though this may seem drastic through the typical colonial worldview, this is the kind of treatment faced when protecting one’s territory and homelands. So often are Indigenous peoples seen as the barriers to profit regarding resource extraction, whereas they’re protecting their ancestral grounds, which in turn protects the community. When the talk of land and people come about, it’s important to understand the history of colonial Canada and the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples. In many instances, when these resource extractions are put forth, they bring man camps that are dangerous for the communities of women, children and LGBTQ+ peoples that are deeply impacted by this. The extraction of the land goes hand in hand with the ongoing genocide of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People.
In this line of work, the RCMP tend to get involved and often create a hostile environment. Harry has experienced police violence while protecting land and helping her kin in solidarity. When encountered by the police, she has always wondered what it was to be the ‘perfect victim’ to experience abuse by the system put in place. The RCMP were created in order to perpetuate imperialism and are inherently led by a colonial system.
Indigeneity is not an inherently political identity, but—in the process of asserting their land claims—Indigenous peoples have become deeply politicized. Harry has experienced this firsthand, and over the years, participated in many solidarity actions including but not limited to: occupying the grounds of the parliament building in Victoria, Fairy Creek camp and Wet’su’weten camps among others.
Being on the front lines is vulnerable and rigorous work, and Harry has often had to contend with police surveillance, intimidation and other forms of harassment. It’s also work that is personally and emotionally alienating, and folks like Harry are ostracized from Canadian society when carrying out their work over long periods of time. It’s not just a place and action they attend, once attending for a period of time they create relationships and through this it restructures how an individual sees the world. For Harry, it reshaped the world in which she couldn’t complete her education within colonial institutions, and within the colonial society of a city.
“[After] any prolonged period of time, it’s very hard to integrate back into cities and towns and municipalities where people just completely ignore the fact that Canada is continuously choosing to point us in the direction of a mass extinction event for the sake of temporary and immediate gratification through shareholder satisfaction and resources.” – Ace Harry
One of the important issues surrounding this type of work is the land you occupy and the ties you have to it. For Harry, this means having a sense of agency to assert herself on her own territories whereas if she was away from home, she wouldn’t feel the same way in terms of having to assert herself and having a position. In a short period of time, she became close with many people. However, there’s hurt when relationships are based on trauma and navigating the relationships everyone has with the public, such as the social media liaison, the police liaison and the media liaison. These liaisons are important when doing this work in order to provide clarity to the public and media, as well as the safety of others. It becomes difficult to distribute the work and care, which in turn makes it challenging to build the work sustainability in order to keep it going.
Harry has not been on the frontlines for a while now, yet when she looks back and recalls these moments, she looks to the future with optimism. Of the various things she does for her community, she has prioritized learning her language. Through learning the language, it has helped her further understand her identity as a Xwémalhkwu youth and the teachings through her community’s stories. Indigenous knowledge systems contain viable alternatives to colonial hegemony, but one must learn the language of their people in order to fully understand the teachings. Indigenous languages are so vast and diverse; they hold meanings that English and colonial languages cannot comprehend.
Another role Harry finds herself in is the role of the Witness. What is the Witness? For Harry, it’s being held accountable for witnessing events: a type of knowledge keeper. She attends events within her community to bear witness—a vital role when it comes to making decisions and laws for future generations—as it has been done historically within Indigenous communities. Harry does the work especially with the treaty signed, to bear witness to the impact of signing a modern treaty within B.C. and how other nations can learn from this.
As important as this work is, it also has its downsides. Harry has faced hardships especially within her community and in accepting the stories of impossible narrative surrounding community care and sustainability in the face of climate change. She continues to advocate for her community on informed consent regarding the land, their right to be informed about the practices and policies surrounding the environment and land, as well as upholding their inherent ancestral rights and responsibilities.
Being on the frontlines of active work of protecting the land is often glamorized. To be an active protector, you must put aside the likes of an individual and work as a community. For Harry, being able to learn her language has brought a deeper understanding of how her lineage systems worked and how she can continue to integrate this knowledge within her work and community. In her language, when describing where one walks in a household, it revolves around the water.
“You cannot take care of this territory unless you speak the language because if you don’t speak the language, you don’t have an understanding of the way that the territory works. All of this ecological knowledge is inherent in the language. . .”
To protect the land and understand the inherent ways of being, Harry has felt more encouraged than ever to undergo the journey of learning her language. Further connecting to her community, culture, traditions, practices, cosmology and overall sense of being as a Xwémalhkwu youth.