Special to the Bulletin

Detained at Gidimt’en: Inside the media confinement zone

Jerome Turner

An RCMP convoy. An ambulance. Helicopters. Tactical officers. Assault rifles. The messages were coming in fast and furious — and then all communication ceased for more than eight hours. Here’s what happened at Gidimt’en checkpoint in northwestern B.C. on Feb. 7, 2020, after journalist Jerome Turner went dark, as told in his own words.

My journey back into Wet’suwet’en territory began on Feb. 5. I’d been reporting from the area on and off for weeks after pipeline company Coastal GasLink was granted an injunction to allow its workers in against the wishes of the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s hereditary chiefs. 

It was clear that police action was imminent, and I raced to get past police lines before the raid started.

I drove until I hit the RCMP checkpoint at the 27-kilometre mark of the Morice Forest Service Road. 

Although I had been granted entry three times prior with the same documentation, this time I was told I wasn’t allowed in due to a lack of valid media credentials. 

On a second attempt later that night, I finally made it through. I headed to Gidimt’en checkpoint, a Wet’suwet’en site at the 44-kilometre mark.

Big guns and fast helicopters

On Feb. 7, the police moved in.

Four land defenders positioned themselves where they would ultimately be arrested for breaching the injunction. Two of them went into a school bus parked near a bridge, and the other two climbed up into a lookout tower above the bus.

Among them was Eve Saint, whose father, Chief Woos, holds the traditional name to the territory from kilometre 39 to kilometre 66.

The RCMP had the road plowed to the bridge. Then two helicopters dropped off tactical and regular RCMP officers on the other side.

This created a semi-contained zone, with both ends of the road blocked by the RCMP and the land defenders in the middle.

I was watching a group of officers walk up the road when I noticed that two tactical officers kneeling on opposite sides of it were pointing their rifles in my direction.

This was a first for me, and I never want to have the feeling again.

Going dark

As soon as the helicopters had flown far enough away that I could be heard, I notified the officers that I was media. They lowered their weapons.

I was sending as many live updates to my editors as I could while this was happening. Thumbs ablaze.

Meanwhile, an officer was reading off the injunction through a megaphone.

The dropped-off officers began moving toward the tower and bus.

I had a tough decision to make: stay where I had access to Wi-Fi or get close to the bus.

I chose the bus.

This is when family, friends, and colleagues began to worry about my safety. I would later find out that they sent a ton of messages and made a lot of phone calls in attempts to reach me.

At this point there was nobody left to report at Gidimt’en checkpoint or the cabin, where two other land defenders were. I would later learn that despite a long standoff, those two individuals were not detained or arrested that day. 

Media weren’t so lucky. We were detained as soon as the RCMP reached us, and from that point on we had no freedom of movement.

In a ditch

The police moved me and a filmmaker to a ditch. We were over 60 feet from the tower and not permitted to go anywhere else.

Our options were to stand in one spot until we agreed to leave, and accept a ride out in the back of a police car, or be arrested if we tried to move and report what was happening elsewhere. 

I hope my editors make a stop-motion film using all the photos — essentially of the same thing from the same vantage point — I was able to take.

The arrests of the four land defenders were, thankfully, anticlimactic, which is to say that they did not resist and were not put in handcuffs. 

This article was originally published by Ricochet Media, and has been abridged. You can read the full story at https://ricochet.media*

Journalist Jerome Turner was held by the RCMP for eight hours while reporting on a police raid