June 24: St'at'imc Nation [Surviving Canada]

June 24: St'at'imc Nation

June 24: St’at’imc Nation

While growing up, Cyril Gabriel was “lucky”. Instead of being taken to residential school, unbeknownst to him or his brother, his father went to jail for six months a year to allow them to go to a “good white school”. This did spare them beatings, rapes and other residential school tortures, but it did not spare them either religious indoctrination or white supremacy. He explained growing up in the school:
“I wondered later ‘What kind of God it is that makes people like this, people who hate you because of how you look?’ I was given a lot of Catholic schooling, where people taught us that white people were better, that it was evil for me to live like an Indian. I got to hate myself, hate what I was, where I am from,” Cyril explained. “I remember when my brother was playing his drum loudly and I threw my hands over my ears, yelling at him ‘Would you stop that God-damned noise!’, and I really hated the sound of it.”
When Cyril was 16, his brother went into the mountains to gain traditional knowledge, but died of exposure to the cold. It was then that Cyril started to realize how much self-hate and hate for his own people had been put in his mind. That was over 20 years ago, and today Cyril is one of the people from the St’at’imc Nation who are defending their lands as a means of self-defense of who they are, for their right to exist. He now picks and gathers wild berries, vegetables such as celery and other plants from the land.
The same threat to his and the St’at’imc Nation’s connection to the land and way of life that was posed by assimilation, Catholicism and white supremacy in his youth are now posed by the Provincial Government, industrial and capitalist development. When the Nation gets food, clean water, shelter and all life itself by keeping the environment healthy, the settler state says ‘The Indians aren’t using the land’. Invoking the logic of industrial capitalism, gouging the land, flooding it, pouring concrete over it and pulling minerals out of it are the only ways one can “use the land”. Food, water and life itself are not considered “use”.

Millions of people a year travel a couple of hours north of Vancouver to visit Whistler. Using an image of being nestled in pristine wilderness, ski slopes have shaved off the sides of the mountains, housing has sprawled throughout the forest and concrete has been poured throughout the area. While most animals have fled to safer grounds, when the village town for disposable incomes does contact wildlife, the outcome for the animals is often deadly, with many bears being “destroyed” annually after addiction to human waste sets in.
Further north on Highway 99, there is a valley visited by perhaps thousands of people a year; animals from grizzlies to wolverines continue to roam, wild berries and vegetables grow abundantly, life itself maintains dominance in the area. The St’at’imc Nation has lived with, off and as a part of this land and in an area from just north of what is now Vancouver to Lillooet, and east over the mountains to Harrison Hot Springs “from time out of mind”.
There are 11 “First Nations” governments, for each of the bands throughout the territory. One of those is Lil’wa7úl, usually written as either Lil’wat, or Mount Currie. This reserve was established by the Federal Government on a flood plain. Environmental racism would be a fair description, were this simply the area where mostly people of a non-white race had been settled: In such a case the operation of a white supremacy in policy would be necessary for the location and decision. However, in the case of the St’at’imc Nation, the options for people on the Mount Currie reserve are either

1) Live on a flood plain and never get insurance on your homes, protection for your belongings or any replacement policy, or:
2) Leave the territory and your Nation behind for settlements where the pressure to assimilate is far greater, and leave much of your time with the land behind.

In other words, to live as close as possible to your traditional national territory, you must elect poverty, enforced by the settler state’s choice of location. This goes beyond environmental racism, but is also simple environmental genocide, as well as cultural.
To this argument, consider the community of Tsal’alh, commonly known as the Seton Lake First Nation. Their traditional life on the Seton Lake has been basically crippled; the largest power producing dam in the province of British Columbia has been created here, flooding the areas around the Seton Reserve. After losing their territory to BC Hydro (the provincial energy corporation), compensation has been nil; not even power was provided for years after the construction of the dam, instead the community simply had their land annexed and destroyed by the settler state, while a lack of electricity put the vice around the whole people— no “modernity” yet the land scarred and seriously damaged through artificial flooding. Today, no compensation is on offer, and the community still has to pay for power from BC Hydro— meaning essentially that Hydro takes a percentage of Indian Affairs (DIAND) money directly, as well as the continued theft of power and revenue from the land itself.
There are other communities, such as the southern First Nation, Xáxtsa7 (Port Douglas), who remain powerless today, yet BC Hydro’s huge lines of stolen power cut right through the middle of their reserve. Environmental racism and genocide of a people have many examples, but one being resisted by the Nation as a whole—not as 11 bands or First Nations but as one Nation—has been blocked for more than five years by the St’at’imc people, since May 2, 2000.

The provincial government opened the area in the valley north of Lil’wat traversing Highway 99 to proposals for resort development in 1991. They received one, from Nancy Greene-Raine Resort Consultants (NGR Inc.) to build another all-seasons resort modeled after Whistler. The area is labeled by the provincial government as “Melvin Creek”, but to local members of the Nation, it is known simply as Sutikalh:
• From time immemorial the St’at’imc people have honored the Winter Spirit, or Sutikalh, who dwells in this high mountain wilderness.
• Sutikalh renewed the powers of medicine men, who trekked to his inaccessible domain, fasted, prayed and were cleansed.
• Others, men and women, wishing for spiritual renewal still go to the mountain for these same ancient reasons.
• The realm of Sutikalh has been the destination of vision guests, and remains a spiritual sacred area to this day.
• A major commercial development would be out of character for an area of this significance. It would destroy the deeper, and –to the St’at’imc Nation—far more important values that presently exist here.
• Any destruction of the natural balance of the area would upset the balance of Sutikalh, the Winter Spirit.

The reasons for standing up against the continued acceleration of industrialism were established long before the blockade began in 2000. In their words:

“Prior to May 2, 2000 some of the women in Lil’wat were concerned about the building of a ski resort within our territory because of the happenings in Whistler with all of the false promises, broken agreements, and the unconcern of our territories. Finally, enough of all the talk we asked our men to set up camp in Melvin Creek to stop all of the proceedings for a massive ski resort, which would only serve the elite.”
[Banner visible from highway]
Unlike many similar situations in Canada’s Indian Country, the various band or First Nations chiefs and councils administered by the Indian Act have endorsed and backed the camp since its inception, including the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC). The strength of the position of the St’at’imc Nation in Sutikalh has everything to do with this unity. For fear that their geographical location would leave them a smaller deal, certain First Nations governments have engaged the provincial government in “land claim negotiations” separate from the larger Nation. This worries many people, not least of them Hubie—the day in, day out caretaker of Sutikalh camp for the entire five years it has been there.
“We need to be one Nation, not eleven bands,” he explained. Hubie should know. During his time as keeper of the camp, he has faced death threats, heard all of the racist epithets you can imagine, been harassed by loggers, hikers, ATV riders and many others who falsely believed the St’at’imc people had left their land. The unity of people in facing opposition to life in Sutikalh has protected them when the RCMP have attacked or done nothing to prevent harassment.
In the first days of the camp, an information booth was built on the edge of the highway to let tourists and others who drove by know why the camp was there. Police took the booth down, piled it up and burned it to the ground. There have been shots fired, and people from the camp have been convicted in the colonizers courts of trespass in their own land. In one end of the valley, NGR would drain a lake to build the hotels and resorts; at the other end many miles away, is where the proposed ski hill itself would go in. The upcoming months may well see another major escalation in provocations from the province, as NGR maintains their certificate for development until August 2005.

"The cost of this massive destruction, 500 million dollars: It would destroy 76 cut block of trees, the natural habitat of the grizzly bear, mountain goats, wolverine and many of our natural medicines and berries we use within this area, and they would sell and destroy water from our last untouched watershed from within our St’at’imc territory. They would build a highway, hotels, golf course, ski hills galore, and have an all season resort retirement home for the rich."

In order to renew the certificate after August 2005, the provincial government will charge NGR (or another “development” corporation) 2.5 million dollars, so an effort to go beyond the bridge that has been defended through St’at’imc unity may well come this summer. The unity of the St’at’imc people was re-affirmed in a call-out entitled simply From Sutikalh, St’at’imc Territory, including the passage:

"Our position challenges the assumed jurisdiction of the provincial government, who is in the process of stealing more of our land and resources. We are prepared to do whatever it takes to defend our position. We need people to be aware of what we are up against and aware of what exactly is being done against us daily.[….]
As we have tenure of this land we will remain here, forever, like our ancestors. We will hold our position as long as people support us being here. People can help by keeping informed at all times or by dropping by Sutikalh at any time. We welcome dialogue of all kinds with all people."

For years after the death of his brother, Cyril Gabriel was unable to pick up his drum and sing, even after he restored his love of himself and where he came from. No longer. Standing together at Sutikalh has helped bring about much pride for many from the Nation. For Cyril, Hubie, Rosalin Sam and many others, the question is of life versus death. Some say that defending life is “a throwback”, and in defiance of the future. Rosalin says the opposite.
“Sutikalh will at all cost stay as it is for our grandchildren’s grandchildren…. This is not tunnel vision from the past, it is survival of our everyday life as St’at’imc, as handed down to us. There will be no ski resort in Sutikalh.”
Speaking of the need for St’at’imc unity to defend life, simple life, Cyril told others who would listen one night:
“We need to think in terms of we, and us. There can be no “I” in this struggle, that’s what makes us weak. We, united, that’s what makes us strong.”
Later, after people ate venison stew and drank pure water from the creeks nearby and ate wild celery growing on the mountain side, they went to sleep with their bodies next to the earth that, apparently, “no one is using”— while the sacred fire lit over five years ago flickered out for one more night, to be re-lit the next day.