PBI-Canada meets with Simooget Watakhayetsxw, remains attentive to Gitanyow resistance to the PRGT pipeline

Published by Brent Patterson on October 20, 2025 October 21, 2025

Video still: Simooget Watakhayetsxw.

Last week, PBI-Canada met with Lax Ganeada Hereditary Simooget (Chief) Watakhayetsxw (Deborah Good) and members of her team, along with Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’Moks, while they were in Smithers for the sentencing hearing of criminalized land defenders Sleydo’, Shaylynn Sampson and Corey Jocko.

Simooget Watakhayetsxw opposes the construction of the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) fracked gas pipeline that would cross 50 kilometres of unceded Gitanyow lax’yip (territory) in northern British Columbia.

In August 2024, Watakhayetsxw helped lead the shutdown of the Cranberry Connector (Nass Forest Service Road) on Watakhayetsxw territory. This blockade sought to prevent any PRGT equipment for the construction of the pipeline from accessing the road.

“I am closing the road and I will keep it closed. No LNG equipment will be permitted through the territory.” – Watakhayetsxw, August 23, 2024.

By November 25, 2024, the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs posted: “We will continue our on the ground presence with new cabins, a new Indigenous Protected Area, and on-going monitoring conducted by Wilp members and the Lax’yip Guardians.”

When the British Columbia government announced on June 6, 2025, that it would allow the construction of PRGT, Watakhayetsxw stated: “We’ll continue to fight to protect our territory (Lax’yip) with all actions needed, in the courts and on the ground. From August to November 2024, we denied access for PRGT pipeline construction and we’ll be continuing our efforts to ensure no construction happens on our territory.”

In late-June 2025, PBI-Canada, along with PBI-Colombia, the Forest Peoples Programme and two human rights defenders – Jani Silva and Doris Waira Nina Jacanamijoy Mutumbajoy – from the Amazon region in Colombia, met with Watakhayetsxw to learn more about this megaproject and to forge solidarity across borders.

Now, Business in Vancouver reports that construction on the pipeline could “start as early as the New Year” with “a final investment decision by the end of this year, according to Western LNG spokesperson Rebecca Scott.” That article adds: “Pipeline construction is expected to employ 10,000 to 12,000 workers over the length of the project, Scott said, with 6,000 to 8,000 workers employed at peak construction.”

We also remain attentive to concerns about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and its Community Response Unit (CRU), the rebranded, but still controversial Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG).

PBI-Canada continues to call for the abolition of the RCMP CRU/C-IRG that is currently under “systemic investigation” by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP (CRCC).

Photo: On March 22, 2023, PBI-Canada hand-delivered to the CRCC office in Ottawa this Abolish C-IRG coalition letter calling for the suspension of the C-IRG during the CRCC systemic investigation (that continues almost three years later).

On a PBI-Canada organized webinar held in March 2024, Tara Marsden, sustainability director for the Gitanyow hereditary chiefs, commented: “Our learning is that consent only works when we say yes, if we say no, even if we say no with science behind us, and our knowledge and our laws behind us, then we will be met with force from the C-IRG, from militarized invasion and occupation and intimidation and harassment.”

We continue to follow this situation.

For more, please see the Flying Frogs Awakened website, a land-based initiative guided by Wilp Simogyet Watahayetsxw.

Map of Gitanyow territory.

Map.

Image from Dogwoodbc on Instagram.