The RCMP is defending the actions of a member seen on video pointing a firearm at Indigenous opponents of the Coastal GasLink pipeline during police enforcement in northern B.C. this month.
But a woman who says she was one of the people being aimed at by the Emergency Response Team (ERT) member says the RCMP’s explanations are “absurd and ridiculous,” adding she and others felt they could be shot at any moment.
The video posted to the social media account of the Gidimt’en clan — one of five clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation whose hereditary chiefs oppose the pipeline — shows police moving into the clan’s camp at the 39-kilometre mark on the Morice West Forest Service Road near Houston, B.C., on Feb. 7.
The camp sits on unceded ancestral Wet’suwet’en territory where the 670-kilometre pipeline is set to travel through.
In the video, which was shot by Denzel Sutherland-Wilson from a tower atop a bus parked at the camp, several RCMP and ERT members can be seen carrying firearms and surrounding the tower.
One member is repeatedly shown aiming what looks like a sniper rifle directly at Sutherland-Wilson from behind a truck that has been turned onto its side.
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