Coastal GasLink is a proposed pipeline that would run approximately 670 kilometres from the so-called Dawson Creek area to the west coast of so-called B.C, ending at a proposed LNG Canada facility near Kitimat. The project is headed by TransCanada [TC Energy] and will be built by LNG Canada, a consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
All territory in BC is unceded indigenous land, which means that all land-use decisions remain with Hereditary leadership. In Northern BC the Wet’suwet’en hereditary council is opposed to the project.
In early January 2019 the RCMP used violence to remove Wet’suwet’en land defenders from their own home and territory on behalf of TransCanada/CGL so that they could begin initial project work. Police forced the checkpoint gate at Unist’ot’en – a decade long reoccupation of traditional territories now home to a healing centre – open under threat of further violence.
As of this posting [February, 2019], contractors for CGL have destroyed traditional traplines, traps, bulldozed medicine and berry gathering areas, and have begun digging up and destroying the territory to build road access and living quarters for pipeline workers.
The project is still opposed by the Wet’suwet’en Nation, as well as others.
