Kweese War Trail Debunked - A shameful history

Unist’ot’en environmental and archaeological claims debunked.

In the latest PR stunt, the Unist’ot’en created yet another video intended to create more money with zero accountability for the quarter million in funds they have already received from public donations and Go-Fund-Me.

They put out calls to other first nations people to help them on the front lines, then ditch them as thankless tourists when they wish to go home again. See Pictures worth a million words

On the bright side of life, they no longer claim the water is so pure you can drink it after a bunch of them landed in Smithers hospital with beaver fever (Giardiasis) from drinking the water without boiling it first. That’s the problem when city folk protestors head out in our back-country.

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As for this latest propaganda video, you have to watch it to believe it, so we have a copy here for you. We are going to show you the evil and dark side of humanity, that they could even dare to speak about this event as a significant and important event in Wet’suwet’en history.

The video is about protecting the so called Kweese war trail, not a war that anyone should be proud of but one that brings great shame to the Wet’suwet’en people.

The original story or legend shows just how brutal men can be at their worst, and still be proud of it.

See Related articles.
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In context this story is about an angry Wet’suwet’en who exemplified the very violence against women and children that we today abhor. One MUST read the detail of the brutality to fully grasp how insane this latest stunt by Mike Ridsdale really is.

It begs the question of do they really understand what happened, or are they historically illiterate and grasp at straws using fiction and nonfiction combined in a desperate attempt to use archaeology to stop the CGL pipeline, a pipeline that they still think pumps crude oil or bitumen? Selling ignorance in desperation?

Before we look more closely at that story let’s review another one from our recent past. On March 8, 2019, The BC Oil and Gas Commission (BCOGC) released a bulletin responding to the “archaeological complaint” Unist’ot’en made upon finding several ancient stone tool artifacts on Unist’ot’en territory on the site of the proposed Coastal GasLink (CGL) Camp 9A.  Commission says place where ancient stone tools were found was ‘likely not their original location’

Also Read Commission Follows Up on Archaeological Complaint

In simple English the arrowheads were planted by the members of Hooligans Hotel. They committed a criminal offense (planting evidence) and got away with it.

Mike Ridsdale begins by saying that CGL bulldozed through the ancient Kweese war trail, without completely explaining the significance of that trail. We have a campfire story from Mooseskin Johnny and some other elders that make an outrageous claim, in particular that they wiped out all the people of Kitimat. The claim they are standing on the war trail is also outrageous, it is remotely possible but certainty is completely impossible.

Any decent woodsman can tell you deer and moose also make trails, not just humans. In fact if it was a trail used by Kweese  it would already have been long ago grown over with underbrush. Something, be it animal or human is keeping the trail they found active.

The video claims Gitxsan warriors came and trained to be part of this, it’s pure hogwash being fed to a society who still think all aboriginals are related to Pocahontas, and need protection like Bambi the deer, from the evil they call settlers.

People died in training on the trail, pure fiction, read the transcript. They once again show arrowheads, kept in a zip lock bag as evidence, the same arrowheads as can be found in Witset in the new campgrounds. (that also had NO archeological assessment done.)

They said they found culturally modified trees from 60 to 70 years ago, that dear folks was when I was a kid, also running loose in them there hills. Remember the Fall Fair in Smithers has already celebrated its 100th birthday, that speaks to the large non aboriginal population here at that time.

Decades back they also surveyed and looked into building a highway from Houston to Kitimat, so there have been hundreds of non aboriginals in that area already. Dr. Steciew used to have a guiding territory also on that area, during the 60’s once again this can be found in the Delgamuukw transcripts.

There were so many settlers already living here at the time, there is no way they can accurately say this was part of continuous occupation. The very people who made these assessments have zero qualification in that field, and can call the 60’s and 70’s as part of thier time immemorial. In simple English, before they could remember.

Read the transcript, its all there, I am referring to the transcripts created during the  DELGAMUUKW V. BRITISH COLUMBIA trial.

A word to the wise, if only the media would take the time to read what is in those files they could prove a lot of what the Office of Wet’suwet’en claim is a combination of lies and fabrications. They have the complete inability to read the existing testimony and admit they are not following their own traditions.

Seriously its mind blowing those adults would be gullible enough to buy into these fantasy stories made by professional bums and protestors. The last elder I spoke to said “What happened to the Wet’suwet’en people, we were a proud people, now it’s a story a day to Go-Fund-Me. As a nation we have become beggars to our eternal shame. (This from an elder who was over 80 years old.)

The Haisla Nation is the band government of the Haisla people, they are about 1700 people, with the majority living in Kitamaat Village. They have lived off the lands and waters of their traditional territory for thousands of years, and were NOT wiped out as per Wet’suwet’en legends.

Its absolutely preposterous that they could invent a different Kitimat Nation, and suggest the Haisla took over the Kitimat territory. There is ZERO evidence to support that story, what is more likely is that the Wet’suwet’en did not exist, and it was done by members of the Carrier Nation involved in this event. Wet’suwet’en is a name that was created for and during the Delgamuukw trial.

So contrary to the claims of campfire legend, Kweese did not wipe out all of the people in Kitimat, as history does show they have been there longer than the story retold around a campfire by Mooseskin Johnny. It is possible that one small community was butchered, mutilated and sexually abused, however its campfire evidence, also known as hearsay evidence.

The story as told by Mooseskin Johnny says this event took place some 400 years ago (prior to Mooseskin Johnny’s life. Mooseskin Johnny passed away approximately in 1930. Given today is 2019 that would make this event about 500 years old.

The story goes that chief Kweese had two wifes, one of them was murdered, Kweese then organized a war party to go to Kitimat and they claim proudly murdered the entire village. The total absence of justice in the story is short of mind boggling, to be proud of murdering an entire indigenous community on the hearsay of a total stranger, and then using that massacre to justify halting a pipeline that the Haisla Nation has endorsed?

Talk about adding insult to injury, but then again the story is just that, a legend, a tale that may or may never have happened. Even the members of the Wet’suwet’en war party were ashamed of Kweese if you read the original transcript.

 

I want to make a point here, I want you to read the original text as entered into the logs of the Supreme Court of Canada. When you are done, watch the video and decide for yourself.

Verbatim from Florence Hall who was the last legitimate head chief of the house of Kweese also known as the beaver house or K’a K’en yex. The other Tsayu house is Namox. NOTE: She debunks the claim that this war party had Gitxsan members, according to her testimony, only Wet’suwet’en took part in the raid.

Also Read; The Tale of Two Tsayu, Beaver Clan Chiefs

WARNING: SOME VERY GRAPHICAL VIOLENCE IS PART OF THIS TESTIMONY

For full transcript read Commission Evidence of Florence Hall Vol. 1

“So the warriors quit doing that and they continued travelling over the mountains and then they came over the mountain top above Kitimat. When they come over the mountain top there over Kitimat, the village, the Indian village, it looked like the people down below were suspicious to seen them, so they all stood still and they make themselves look like trees and they stood like that until darkness set over them and then the people in the village all settled down and gone to bed, gone to sleep, and then all the warriors came down off the mountains and they went around the village and they killed everybody.

They cut their throats while they were asleep. When the — when they killed all the villagers there and then all the warriors, they gathered all the regalia and all the belongings and they put it all in one place and they took all their food and then they started feasting.

They took all the food in the village. They put it in one place and they — they ate and then they took all the dried berries and they put it in their canoes that they found there and they put all the dried berries in there and they soaked it in water, and all the warriors gathered around and they started eating these — these berries that was soaked in water.

And, meanwhile, all this feasting going on, Kweese was missing. He was nowhere to be seen. And then all of a sudden he appeared. He had these things on his arms. They had — he had — he had holes in him. He had them on his arms and hair on them. So when he comes and he meets where the warriors were eating these berries and they took his arms, he passed them, threw the berries in the boat and then he sucking on his arms these things on there.

And the warriors realized what it was. It was the private parts of women that he had cut out and put on his arms. And the warriors got mad at him. They push all the boats out — out on the water.

So after they finished feasting, they took all the regalia from the village and they started distributing them out and they — the warriors found a beaver hide, an old beaver hide, and they throw that at Kweese and there was a goat hide also with a head still on it. They throw that to him too, and also an eagle with no tail feathers, and a weasel, and they told him, “This is all you’re going to have because we — you caused us a lot of hardship. We’re going to take the rest.”

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So when Mike Ridsdale claims CGL bulldozed through and ancient Kweese War Trail, there is no evidence there even was a trail for the event, there is no record or recorded history that this raid happened more than once, so establishing a trail to do a one-time raid is not only ridiculous, it would be outright foolish. So the fact they found a trail may have more to do with the previous attempt to build a pipeline there as it was surveyed a number of times over the past few decades.

Surveyors do that, they make trails to accommodate their equipment, no exvidence exisits that the trail they found has any connection other than plausible location that may be on or off by as much as 80 kilometres give or take. One of the few locations marked in this retold account of history is Burnie Lake, and to the best of my knowledge it’s a long ways north of where this video is taking place.

The archaeological significance of a one-time traveled route is beyond ridiculous, and about as precious to the people of Kitimat as Auschwitz concentration camp is to Jews. They are talking about a onetime passage of a group of aboriginals, who crossed over to Kitimat for the soul purpose of massacring a village there. Do we halt all work in Canada because of possible unmarked gravesite?

Mike Ridsdale is desperately trying to come up with ridiculous excuses, if indeed archaeological were so important why do they only apply to the path of a pipeline, and never to roads built by aboriginals?

Seriously when he talks about an absence of archaeological study, the first facts that come to mind are, how many thousands of hectares of forest land were logged off by Jeff Brown, Alphonse Gagnon and some of the other chiefs of Moricetown, now called Witset.

Before logging or road building commenced, was there ever in any instance that there were archaeological studies done? It’s flat out bullshiit, but again in this group it’s not the lies that matter, it’s how much money can they earn out of it that matters.

Next we have the issue of the trail itself, that trail exists as part of a network of trails built and used by game guides, including white game guides who hunted there alongside great aboriginal elders like Leonard George See Warner Naziel is not Chief Smogelgem

Below is their latest propaganda masterpiece.

 

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