“Their protest is more disrespectful than anything," said Ditidaht Chief Brian Tate. Anti-logging protesters say they were invited and refuse to leave.
The nation pointed to recent incidents in active forestry areas of the Pacheedaht and Ditidaht First Nations, “where individuals associated with environmental non-government groups disrupted logging operations by putting safety at risk.” The decision follows a heated confrontation on Tuesday, when a group of loggers clashed with protesters near the Walbran Valley. A video recorded by the Rainforest Flying Squad showed the contracted forestry workers yelling racial slurs and acting aggressively toward the camped activists. One Indigenous protester had his phone slapped out of his hands and was allegedly roughed up, receiving minor cuts and ripped clothing. TFL 44, which covers 137,000 hectares and contains 780,000 cubic metres of allowable cut, is jointly owned by Huumiis Ventures, a forestry company owned by the Huu-ay-aht First Nations, and Western Forest Products.
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Investigations are underway after a heated confrontation between loggers and old-growth activists with the Fairy Creek blockade on southern Vancouver Island was captured on video this week.
A group of forestry workers can be seen swearing, yelling and flinging threats and racist taunts, as well as allegedly assaulting a young First Nations man filming the incident, in two videos released by the Rainforest Flying Squad (RFS) on Wednesday afternoon.
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by Contributor on Friday May 07 2021
Two cellphone videos taken by members of the Rainforest Flying Squad protest group early Tuesday afternoon showed a tense standoff between activists opposed to old-growth logging and about 10 members of a contracted logging crew who were trying to access a cut block.
An altercation between logging contractors and activists in the Walbran Valley this week where an Indigenous man was allegedly assaulted and racial slurs hurled at protesters is being condemned as “completely unacceptable” by the company and First Nation that own the forestry tenure.
Huumiis Ventures, a Huu-ay-aht First Nation company, and Western Forest Products issued a joint statement Thursday through their limited partnership, saying the incident on Tuesday is being treated with the “utmost seriousness and urgency.”
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