Despite being served an injunction against blocking preliminary work for a new subdivision in T’Sou-ke First Nation, an opponent has climbed 100 feet up in a tree to continue her fight.
Kati George-Jim scaled a Sitka spruce early Thursday morning and said she isn’t planning to leave until the band reroutes the sewer line and moves the subdivision farther away from a forested area that she considers sacred and important to her cultural practices.
“I hope there’s a compromise that would be able to be reached,” said George-Jim, adding that she believes it is her responsibility to advocate for the land.
She and her mother, Charlene George, have been blocking the roundabout at McMillan Road leading to the worksite for the past two weeks.
RCMP efforts to convince the two to voluntarily dismantle the blockade were unsuccessful last week.
On Thursday, the two were served with an injunction obtained by band council ordering them to stop obstructing work.
Granted by Justice Gordon C. Weatherill on Wednesday, the court order allows for “peaceful, lawful and safe protest” provided that the terms of the injunction are observed.
Each day of the stoppage is costing the band about $24,000, according to court documents.
Work resumed Friday, with George observing from a family member’s nearby lot and George-Jim still on a platform high up in a Sitka spruce tree, which she said is in the path of a planned sewer line.
T’Souke Nation has obtained $11.4 million from Indigenous Services Canada to build a gravity sanitary sewer collection system and wastewater pump station that would bring raw sewage from 53 homes on the reserve to the District of Sooke’s wastewater treatment plant.
The infrastructure upgrades would also support a new 22-lot subdivision of single and multi-family residential units.
George said she’s not against housing and has come up with alternative subdivision plans that place homes closer to Walse‑A Road, but is opposing the current project, saying it threatens lands and coastal wetland habitat that are a key place of cultural practice for their people.
T’Sou-ke Chief Gordon Planes has said that the George family’s opposition to the project has come late, noting studies and consultations have stretched back years. “It’s great that we can build a place for our people to come home,” he said in a previous interview.
There is a housing shortage in T’Sou-ke Nation and the project will help the nation reach its target of 45 new homes on the reserve, it says.
Since 2016, the band has commissioned four environmental studies and one archeological study for the project and it maintains that no existing wetlands would be drained and filled.
George-Jim put a call out on social media Friday for people to show up and support her while she remains perched in the spruce.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
