Construction workers — accompanied by RCMP officers — began chopping down trees Tuesday morning in an area where a tree-sitter had been camped out for 27 days on a dead-end road at No. 2 T’sou-ke Nation Reserve.
Cpl. Alex Bérubé said in a statement that police were at the scene because workers were going into an area where a tree-sitter was known to be present, but nobody was there, so workers were able to go ahead without incident.
On Aug. 31, Kati George-Jim scaled a Sitka spruce on the path of a planned sewer line after she and her mother were served an injunction for blockading McMillan Road and stopping work on a new subdivision.
George-Jim had vowed to remain in the tree until the band agreed to move construction work farther away from the forested area she considers sacred.
On Tuesday about 9 a.m., RCMP began surrounding the tree with about a dozen officers, George-Jim said in a text. She stopped responding to inquiries an hour later.
Mandalena Lewis of SheBites Media, who has been filming a documentary on George-Jim and her mother for the past few weeks, said the RCMP Division Liaison Team had been occasionally visiting George-Jim for wellness checks over the past four weeks.
“My understanding is that they went to go extract Kati from her tree-sit … but she was not there,” she said, adding police told her the spruce was subsequently chopped down.
“I don’t know what they did with her belongings, like she had a whole house up there.”
Construction crews had felled seven trees before 11 a.m., Lewis said. “The workers are really going to town.”
Katie Tremblay, who was on McMillan Road as a supporter of the tree-sit, said George-Jim was safe.
The tree-sit has caused division within the community. A supporter was allegedly attacked by more than a dozen people frustrated by the protest in early September.
Lewis said several residents on McMillan Road were jeering at the supporters on Tuesday morning when police showed up.
T’Sou-ke Nation is aiming to construct a $11.4-million infrastructure upgrade that would support a new 22-lot subdivision of single and multi-family residential units off McMillan Road.
