Not long past the break of dawn, along a remote road deep in the unceded, forested mountains of southern Vancouver Island, the steady blaring of a conch shell sends a warning through the trees.
A raid is coming.
In the Savage Patch camp, a new front in a years-long struggle over the fate of some of the country’s oldest trees, a small group of forest defenders scurry to pack sleeping bags and douse the fire that kept them warm through the night.
Uncle Rico, a Cree land defender, streaks her face with red warpaint. A young, broad-shouldered settler land defender, known as Sandstorm, beats a drum gifted to him by a Native ally. He sings an ancestral Viking warrior song, the reverb of his voice echoing through the quiet of the woodland morning. In this camp, everyone goes by a pseudonym. Uncle Rico begins to sing the Women’s Warrior Song as the group forms a circle and joins the call to battle.
This fight is for the ancient forest of the Fairy Creek Watershed, which is being systematically cut down by the largest privately-owned logging company in the province.
For over three years, settler activists and Indigenous land defenders have fought to save some of the last and largest old growth trees on the planet. Thousands of forest defenders once occupied the 1,189-hectare watershed, spread across isolated camps and blockades where they chained themselves to hard blocks, set up tree sits and perched under handmade tripods dozens of feet in the air.
Their desperate attempts to stop the harvesting of majestic red and yellow cedars, trees up to 2,000 years old, have been met with force by both the RCMP and the Teal-Jones Group. Teal-Jones owns the rights to Tree Farm License 46 in the Fairy Creek Watershed, which it purchased 20 years ago. Those rights allow the company to cut stands of old growth that have not been specifically protected by the provincial government. The company produces shingles and shake from the coveted cedar wood.
These cedars are some of the oldest in the world, and their habitat is the last unprotected, relatively intact watershed on southwest Vancouver Island. Little wonder then that it has drawn so many passionate defenders. (more...)
‘Today is a good day to die’: Brandi Morin reports from a new RCMP raid at Fairy Creek
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