Brandi Morin: Stranded on the dark roads of Wet’suwet’en territory with CGL security.
Dr. Karla Tait, a Wet’suwet’en matriarch and program director at the Centre. Tait looks out over Wedzin’ Kwa, the sacred river system parallel to the Unist’ot’en Healing Center and the community’s sole source of drinking water.
By Brandi Morin
I blew a tire on my Jeep driving the rough roads up to visit the Unis’tot’en Healing Centre in unceded Wet’suwet’en territory back in late March. With no cell service in the area, I was surrounded by forest and mountains a 45-minute drive away from any main roads.
I knew I wouldn’t be stranded there, thanks to the Coastal Gas Link security truck that had been following me ever since I left the main roads. Sure enough, a man wearing a balaclava and dressed in dark, navy-coloured clothing reading “security,” pulled up a few metres behind me. For a second I felt afraid — an Indigenous woman, alone, in a remote area parallel to the murderous Highway of Tears — anything could happen. This man had swerved dangerously towards me, almost running me off the road, about 15 minutes earlier when I attempted to pass his extremely slow-moving vehicle.