Where are our Wet’suwet’en leaders?

The following letter was sent to us from a Gidimt’en matriarch with a request to remove her name.
T.F.

I feel I am writing this letter as an act of desperation. Our people are being held hostage by a few of our own, had they been drug dealers we would have banned them from our villages and feast halls, but because they have given themselves names, we now cower in fear of offending them and becoming the targets of their hate.

As an elder I also am guilty, but feel alone and too afraid for my family to speak up. I have many family members who are finally getting off booze and drugs, because they have real jobs and a real future, now being threatened yet once again by crimes committed at the direction of a few un-elected bullies who think they speak for us all.

Where are our leaders, I mean our elected leaders? Can they not get together and put an end to all this nonsense? Its embarrassing to our nation, its hurting our people, and we keep hearing that this is a problem other nations should stay out of, yet here we are with other nations taking a leading role in protesting on our territory. Everyone knows, at least every Wet’suwet’en knows the Gidimt’en Clan is in deep mourning, we have suffered multiple losses of many of our elders, as well as others due to the plague called Covid.

Yet here we have the same bullies bragging about thier conquests, and claim they are Gidimt’en Clan at the same time, if they follow our laws and customs should they not be in mourning as well, yet they do not, they brag and they bring shame down on all of us.

We can block our roads to outside traffic to protect us from Covid, but we cannot stop those among us creating all this havoc over a pipeline that everyone knows will be built regardless of for or against? Must we all continue to suffer? Our elders have warned us over and over if we keep fighting among ourselves, death and disaster would come to our people and it has, and yet can you imagine people that claim to be telling the world that the Gidimt’en Clan is at war with Canada. I cannot fight this alone, and most of us elders may end up going to our graves alone, because the next generation did not have the guts to say enough is enough.

Either we stand up as a nation, or we bow down to the radical few, giving in to the bullies among us, is that were we want to go?

For those I offended by writing my letter here, remember this, where else can we talk without becoming a target, certainly not in our own feast hall, can you imagine we have allowed this by a few of our own people, who call themselves chiefs?

Its time to bring back ‘Wiggus Tset At’awt At’en’ to our feast hall.

Name withheld by request.