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Freda Huson: “You can’t take any more land from us”


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As of: 29.09.2021 11:01 a.m.



Freda Huson fights against land grabbing of Canada’s indigenous people. As Wet’suwet’en leader, she received the Alternative Nobel Prize – and initiated a nationwide solidarity movement.

By Peter Mücke, ARD-Studio New York




Freda Huson is only 1.5 meters tall but combative: The 57-year-old has been known across the country at the latest since she stood up to officers of the Canadian police in February of last year and was taken away.



Huson is the so-called hereditary chief of the indigenous people of the Wet’suwet’en in northwestern Canada, in the province of British Columbia. And their protest is directed against the controversial Coastal GasLink Pipeline, which is supposed to run through the Wet’suwet’en area:

“We are sending a message to the province and the government in Ottawa. They cannot take any more indigenous land from us,” she told journalists at the time. “We protest peacefully, we are not aggressive, we don’t want to hurt anyone. But we want them to take us seriously, that we want to protect this country for our children and grandchildren.”

Howihkat (Freda Huson) is the Hereditary Chief of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous people in northwestern Canada.

Bild: picture alliance / empics


Nationwide protests started

But the police cleared the blockades of Freda Huson and her colleagues – protests across Canada were the result. Supporters – including many climate activists – blocked train routes across the country for days. The local protest had become a national movement with which many expressed solidarity – and Canada’s indigenous peoples were heard:

We don’t have much land left anyway. They’ve already taken so much from us. We use what we have left: We hunt, pick berries and teach the children our culture.

“Healing Center” instead of the boarding schools

In 2019 she traveled to the United Nations in New York to draw attention to the construction of the pipeline and the consequences for her indigenous community. At a special forum she also raised serious allegations against the Canadian government: “They want to drive us from our own land. It is part of a genocide. They want to deny us the rights to our land. But we are dependent on the land”, she said to the UN.

Recently, the fate of the so-called First Nations in Canada has come back into focus. In the past few months, more than 1,000 graves have been found near former boarding schools for indigenous children.

About 150,000 children of Native Americans and mixed couples were separated from their families between 1874 and the 1990s and sent to special boarding schools in order to force them to adapt to the white majority society.

“You will protect this land”

A few years ago, Huson founded the Unist’ot’en ​​Healing Center for them – on a mountain slope on their land: “The Canadian state has done everything to drive out the Indians in the boarding schools of our children,” she expressed the goal of the Center back then. “In our Healing Center we want to give them back the Indians so that we can be a strong people again.”

The children should have a connection to the country again: “Spiritually, culturally and psychologically. Then nobody can drive them from their country. And they will protect this country for future generations.”

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