Yintah is a documentary about environmental racism, injustice, and the power of Indigenous resistance.
Filmmaker Jennifer Wickham belongs to Cas Yikh (Grizzly Bear House) in the Gidimt’en (Bear/Wolf) Clan of the Wet’suwet’en. Twelve years ago, she moved to the Yintah (land) to defend her home territories against proposed pipelines.
As media coordinator for Gidimt’en Checkpoint, a website devoted to the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs’ struggle against pipelines and police incursion on the territory, she shares messages from the intersection of social justice and sovereignty.
“Our film-making process was ultimately designed to encourage collaboration and to support the collective authority of Wet’suwet’en people,” explains journalist and award-winning filmmaker Michael Toledano, the film’s co-director and co-producer.
A decade’s worth of footage chronicling Indigenous resistance and resilience sparked the project. The film was shot by Toledano and a number of camera operators “who spent long stints of time living on Wet’suwet’en territory,” says Toledano.
Yintah is screening in Courtenay, BC on July 18, 2024 at 7 pm. (See all upcoming screenings here.)
Yintah follows the activism of Tsakë ze’ Howilhkat (Freda Huson, wing chief of the Unist’ot’en people, Wet’suwet’en C’ilhts’ëkhyu clan) and Tsakë ze’ Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham, wing chief of the Cas Yikh people, Gidimt’en clan), It shares an intimate view of Indigenous resurgence in the battle against pipelines.
“Canadian police went to great lengths to silence this story.”
In 2011, Howilhkat went to live directly in the path of a proposed pipeline corridor through Wet’suwet’en Yintah. There she and her supporters built a healing centre for Wet’suwet’en people. Howilhkat has become an international leader in the fight for Indigenous sovereignty and reclamation of their lands around the globe. She won a Right Livelihood Award in 2021, and has brought her advocacy to the United Nations, presenting at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples in 2019.
For the past ten years, Sleydo’ has lived on her clan’s unceded territory with her family, building a strategically placed cabin to protect a beautiful lake from mining.
As the Cas Yikh clan reoccupied their Yintah, Sleydo’ led a 55-day blockade of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, becoming the target of state harassment, as outlined in a report from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The report highlighted “ongoing violations and abuses against Wet’suwet’en Indigenous Peoples and communities related to the development of the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, as well as the human rights violations of land rights defenders peacefully demonstrating against the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline under construction that was approved in 2018 without the consent of the impacted Indigenous Peoples represented by the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs.”
The cinema verité style allows viewers to witness the events themselves. Information is shared through long-form interviews with Howilhkat and Sleydo’.
“There is definitely a delicate balance between showing the beauty of the Yintah and being real about the level of violence that the people and the land experience,” says Wickham.
The film also communicates a decade of change for Howilkhat as she ages, and as she builds the healing centre. The audience sees Sleydo’ becoming a mother of three children.
From the beginning, following cultural protocol in creating the film was key, says Wickham. “We decided our guiding principles very early on: that we would be consulting with, and taking direction from, the house groups – Unist’ot’en for Howilhkat, and Cas Yikh for Sleydo’…. So we’ve been doing ongoing screenings with the house groups at every stage of the film, and doing consultation all throughout. Following Wet’suwet’en law, neither house group interferes with the other house group’s business, so each house group has autonomy over shaping the story and how they want it to be told.”
“We want people … to really focus on who they are as Indigenous peoples and how they move in the world – as opposed to all the things that we’re up against.”
—Jennifer Wickham
In this way, direction and production were collaborative, with Wickham (Cas Yikh house) co-directing with Chief K-eltiy Brenda Michell (Unist’ot’en house) and Toledano. Wickham explains the creative process was very open-ended, following the cues from key moments in the footage.
Yintah invites viewers not only to bear witness to the struggle, but also to envision a world where Indigenous sovereignty reigns supreme.
Telling silenced stories
Central to Wickham’s creativity is believing in artists’ roles in speaking up and telling the stories of people that are being silenced, she says. “The role of the artist is the same as the role of the lover. And it’s our job to show our loved ones things that they aren’t seeing,” Wickham explains.
“I think it’s really critical, especially in times that we’re seeing now in the world, to find ways to communicate with each other that the general public is receptive to. And I find that people have lower defenses when it comes to consuming art than they would if you’re yelling at them with a megaphone in the street,” Wickham says.
“Canadian police went to great lengths to silence this story,” explains Toledano. “Journalists and filmmakers documenting this history have variously been blocked from accessing newsworthy events by expansive and unlawful police exclusion zones, subjected to surveillance and harassment, detained, arrested, and held at gunpoint.”
“I was held in jail for four days after filming a police raid on Gidimt’en land,” says Toledano. Photojournalist Amber Bracken’s arrest in November 2021 while covering RCMP attempts to arrest the Wet’suwet’en land defenders is another example of such silencing. Wickham has also experienced that silencing in her life, “seeing it in the people around me, and the people that I love, and my family.”
Yintah empowers and challenges viewers to confront uncomfortable truths, to mobilize for collective action to reclaim cultural heritage, and to assert their rights and sovereignty.
“Personally, my goal has been to cancel Canada with the film,” Wickham laughs, “and that remains.”
“The message that we have always wanted people to receive is more about what we’re fighting for, our right to be Wet’suwet’en people and govern ourselves on our own land.”
“We want people to move as Mi’kmaq, as Haudenosaunee, as Anishinaabeg… to really focus on who they are as Indigenous peoples and how they move in the world – as opposed to all the things that we’re up against,” says Wickham.
“That’s what I’m hoping people will see in the film, is a nation asserting their right to be Wet’suwet’en, and that they will go out and do the same.”
Odette Auger (Sagamok Anishnawbek) is an award winning Independent journalist and storyteller, living in the Salish Sea. Follow all of her work here.
Originally published on Windspeaker.com, republished here via the Local Journalism Initiative.
