Sovereignty, Land Use and its Collision Course in Reconciliation

I have been following the recent events involving Canada, the Wet’suwet’en people, and the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia. The protests began with the raid on the camp after Coastal GasLink received confirmation of an interim injunction. That action sparked widespread political response—demonstrations and blockades across Canada and beyond.

The impact of these blockades has been significant: disruption, heightened public attention, and substantial costs.

The first issue concerns the Indigenous people along the pipeline route who have not consented. Their sovereignty and title were not respected. The claims appear highly damaging. There was no archaeological assessment of the route and no willingness to reroute through that territory to protect what the people value. The RCMP was deployed as a tactical force against the title rights the people asserted through occupation after governments had already backed the project in principle. The court included enforcement clauses that authorized the RCMP to intervene. Reports from the site described police using a chainsaw to breach a door; the response was the destruction of industrial equipment in a remote area of northern British Columbia.

What is striking is the rhetoric implying that Indigenous peoples are being respected. Both government and the court have reiterated that the people have been treated with dignity and respect. Corporate actions outside the courtroom, however, tell a different story.

Some groups did sign onto the project, and Coastal GasLink points to this as evidence of consent by contract. Further evidence suggests the contract language is coercive or exploitative: in exchange for money, training, and jobs, signatories cannot publicly object to the corporation’s actions. This creates a united front for public messaging while, behind closed doors, the dynamic carries the marks of duress. The power imbalance makes refusal difficult, yet some still tried.

So the question of sovereignty remains: whose?

The European concept of land title and sovereignty is rooted in common law. Underlying sovereignty is an older idea—right relationship to the land. A king was considered legitimate only if the land produced good harvests that sustained the people. That productivity was taken as evidence that the king maintained a right relationship with the land, and thus the land granted him sovereignty. If the land failed, it was understood as a failing of the king, long before modern science or climate knowledge.

People transferred authority to the king because it was his responsibility to uphold that relationship. This is a loose précis of the older mythological ideas of what we now call Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales—the cultural soil from which concepts of sovereignty and kingship grew.

In that history we also find the Scottish Clearances, in which title holders removed tenant farmers to repurpose the land. Those dispossessed people, holding no title, emigrated at various times to Canada. Similar dispossessions occurred elsewhere in Europe. I focus on the Scottish Clearances because they led my own ancestors eventually to “New France.”

Like many immigrant settler groups who came to Canada, this was a people who carried trauma from “not owning the land.” The point is not to reopen historical injustice, but to note an ancestral memory that remains only barely conscious for many.

For many Canadian settlers there is a deeply held sense of entitlement around land use. The lack of title or ownership was the very excuse that once allowed landowners to evict them, rupturing older sovereignty relationships. Hunger and famine often sharpened the point. Inherent in most family emigration stories is escape from unacceptable conditions—hunger, systems that offered no path to enough, and institutional structures of class and privilege that suppressed freedom and opportunity for ordinary people.

Then came 2020 and another round of conflict over Coastal GasLink. British Columbia, like other jurisdictions, moved to respect the United Nations by incorporating the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law. Suddenly the gap between past and present action became impossible to ignore. People witnessed the force used in northern British Columbia. Those sharing the events with the world were frightened by the level of force applied against them. Many of us were called to witness—either in person or through social media.

How could this happen in 2020? Why now?

Returning to sovereignty brings us back to right relationship. When Canada, British Columbia, and multinational corporations lack clear guidance on what “right relationship” requires, the default is what has always been done. In the vacuum of process and guidance we see boorishness and dismissiveness—no dignity, no real peace, and a lack of respect even for land title.

British Columbia has known about the hollow nature of title claims without treaties since at least 1997. Even in parts of Canada where treaties exist, and where fishing and land-use rights predate Confederation in 1867, infractions and violations continue. Why? Because rights in a country with courts must often be enforced through expensive, lengthy civil litigation. “You have rights” therefore becomes “you have rights if you can afford to fight for them.” Many ordinary people cannot, so violations proceed unopposed.

Protest, demonstration, and civil disobedience are decisions to refuse compliance with a status quo under law when that status quo lacks justice—or, more precisely, lacks right relationship.

At this stage the question is not solely about the righteousness of a pipeline or its effect on climate change. Right relationship concerns what is right for a people who have not settled with the pipeline company. Talking with the company is not the same as consent. Both sides had already taken steps through the court process.

UNDRIP supplies clearer, more respectful language that addresses a major vacuum. It opens space for deeper examination of contracts, resource extraction, and benefit-sharing—how these can be conducted with respect while accounting for power and privilege differentials between corporations and Indigenous peoples.

It is possible to do business well. There are projects in which respect for Indigenous people was built in from the start. Without enforcement, or when litigation becomes the primary tool of negotiation, right relationship suffers further.

Right relationship is a concept worth pursuing. It begins with restoring and reconciling relationships in one’s personal circle, wherever possible and appropriate. Where damage is too deep, live-and-let-live may be necessary. What experience shows about subversion and disruption—especially when opposition is present—is that failing to address issues beforehand simply means addressing them afterward at higher cost. The issues still must be addressed.

The attitude one brings can be anger or patience. Relationship, however, requires parties to act in good faith and with integrity. These are values, yet if we speak of respecting rights, principles must guide standards. White settlers who refuse to acknowledge history—particularly in light of residential schools and other traumas—could at least admit they have no lived experience of being Indigenous in Canada. They might then choose to listen and learn. What remains clear is that the sovereignty itself is not in question.

While the people whose land lies at the centre of this conflict have shown patience, I am less certain that the broader population of Canada is ready for the real actions of reconciliation. Part of the difficulty is the imbalance of power and authority and the continuing absence of right relationship. Still, as a druid I hold that this is a guiding principle, and that the journey may require many lifetimes. It is also the source of new explorations moving forward.

A clear legal history and explanation of British Columbia’s unique position within Canada can be found here:
https://www.firstpeopleslaw.com/index/articles/438.php