By Jeff Shantz, January 17, 2020
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are the historic colonial force of dispossession, displacement, and domination of Indigenous people and the occupation of their lands for the state and capital. This is why the RCMP (and their predecessors the North West Mounted Police) were formed. They are an explicitly military force. And they continue to carry out these colonial functions in the present day. Currently the RCMP are threatening the Wet’suwet’en people defending themselves and their land against the intrusions of Coastal GasLink and their planned liquefied natural gas pipeline across Wet’suwet’en territory, against the wishes of Wet’suwet’en people and in violation of Wet’suwet’en law and sovereignty.
As RCMP threats escalate, including the establishment of a police checkpoint refusing entry to media and supporters of Wet’suwet’en land defenders, solidarity actions have been carried out in locations across so-called Canada and beyond.
On January 16, 2020, allies and supporters of Wet’suwet’en rallied and set up an anti-RCMP checkpoint at the entrance to RCMP E Division, the provincial RCMP headquarters, in Surrey. The checkpoint blocked off traffic on both sides of 140 Street in Surrey for more than an hour, causing dozens of vehicles to turn around. If the RCMP, an illegitimate entity on unceded Indigenous territories, want to blockade people living on their own lands they will similarly be blockaded. More than that, participants called on the RCMP to stand down and end the siege of Wet’suwet’en and cease acting as the mercenary force for extractives companies like Coastal Gaslink.
Speakers made connections between the RCMP role in the dispossession and displacement of Indigenous people from their lands on behalf of resource capital and the criminalization of homeless people in Surrey, and the social cleansing of working class neighborhoods like Whalley by RCMP on behalf of gentrifying businesses and land developers.
A pledge was made, in response to a call by Wet’suwet’en land defenders, to increase actions against sites of economic and political power in the Lower Mainland if the assault on and siege of Wet’suwet’en are not ended. #WetsuwetenStrong
