Dear Friends, Allies, Comrades, and Supporters,
We are pleased to announce that preliminary work has begun on the Likhts’amisyu Spring Construction Camp.
This project is an initiative being led by two hereditary chiefs of the Likhts’amisyu Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. For the past ten years, the Wet’suwet’en have been fiercely resisting pipeline development on their territories. Things came to a head back in January, when the RCMP raided a resistance camp on the territory of the Gidimt’en, another Wet’suwet’en clan.
Although Spring has come to Wet’suwet’en territory, the future site of the Sovereign Likhts’amisyu camp is up in the mountains, and the snow there has yet to melt. Therefore, we must be patient and lay all the groundwork that we can while we wait for Mother Nature to do her thing. In the meantime, however, we are keeping ourselves busy, and are pre-fabricating a log cabin off-site.
We are also very much keen to recruit more helpers! Although the dates of the Likhts’amisyu Spring Construction camp were scheduled for the dates of April 28th to May 18th, the reality is that we will be requiring assistance throughout the Spring, Summer, and Fall seasons. We are planning to build a log cabin, a kitchen / mess hall, a wood shed, and a root cellar. Please consider making a trip out to Wet’suwet’en territory in the coming months to help with this grassroots, indigenous-led effort to defend Mother Earth from the threat of industrial devastation posed by the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
We are planning to move our construction crew out onto the territory on May 13th. We encourage people to come on that date, prepared to stay and to work. If you are planning on coming, or even if you’re just considering it, please do not hesitate to get in touch by emailing us at likhtsamisyu@riseup.net
Also, although we have been somewhat successful in our fund-raising efforts, we are still a long way away from our goal. We have priced out over $40 000 worth of construction materials, without including a budget for food or transportation costs. To date, we have raised only about $8000. Thankfully, this is enough for us to get started, however, it means that we must continue to fund-raise as we go. We have created a GoFundMe page, and we would highly appreciate it if folks would donate and/or share the campaign on their social media accounts.
Here are some useful links:
1. The Go Fund Me page is at: https://www.gofundme.com/manage/likhtsamisyu2019
2. The promotional video is at: https://vimeo.com/332477793
3. The Likhtsamisyu website is at: www.likhtsamisyu.com
4. The Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/likhtsamisyu/