New “Fairy Creek” documentary revisits the blockades on Pacheedaht territory that experienced RCMP C-IRG violence

Published by Brent Patterson on October 13, 2024October 13, 2024

Photo from Cinema Politica.

The frontline documentary FAIRY CREEK will premiere in Toronto at the Planet in Focus Film Festival on October 17.

Details about that screening can be found here.

That web-page notes there will be “a post screening live Q&A with the Director Jen Muranetz and Director of Photography/Co-Producer Sepehr Samimi.”

Muranetz’s website notes that she “is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and visual storyteller residing on the unceded and stolen Coast Salish territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, in the place now known as Vancouver, BC.”

Victoria Buzz adds: “The film documents the protests against Teal-Jones Group in the logging of old-growth groves near Port Renfrew, which to date is the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.”

“The RCMP faced massive scrutiny during and following this protest for their ethics in arresting the activists involved as well as their gatekeeping of the media, who were often kept from the site where they were trying to report from.”

That article further notes after the screening in Toronto “it will  be made readily available through its distributor, Cinema Politica.”

The link to Cinema Politica can be found here.

The protests against Teal-Jones logging of old-growth forest at Fairy Creek led to about 1,100 arrests and 464 charges laid by the RCMP Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) over the months of May to August 2021.

Photo from VIMooZ.

After receiving nearly 500 formal complaints about the C-IRG, and accepting more than 100 of those grievances for investigation, the Ottawa-based Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) launched a systemic investigation of the RCMP C-IRG in March 2023. That investigation includes reviewing the C-IRG’s actions at “the Teal Cedar Products Ltd injunction in the Fairy Creek watershed”.

More than 18 months after the CRCC launched this investigation we continue to wait for a final report of their findings.

Further reading: Real climate action means defunding the police and The C-IRG: the resource extraction industry’s best ally by Molly Murphy and Research for the Front Lines (published in Briarpatch Magazine).