My home is in trouble. Two big issues are tearing apart the province of British Columbia, Canada: the debate over the logging of our forests, and fear and confusion surrounding native land claims. My instincts told me that the two issues were linked. In April 1991, I headed north to find out and to begin the research for BLOCKADE.

I’m white and I’m from the city. I knew I had to get out of Vancouver and into native and white communities which depend on the land for survival. I drove along what the northern BC road map calls Highway 16, through the logging town of Hazelton to the smaller white logging community of Kitwanga, and beside it, the Gitksan reserve of Gitwangak. The Gitskan and Wet’suwet’en people, this valley and everything within 22,000 square miles belongs to them. A lot of people, white people, don’t agree.

BLOCKADE is an exploration of this conflict between two histories and two cultures as we struggle for the clearest manifestation of self determination: control of the land.

Trust Equals Access
We were filming people deeply enmeshed in a profound struggle over who owns and controls the very land on which they live. It wasn’t easy.

Vernon Hobenshield sumed up what a lot of the white settlers thought when I first approached him. "I’ve only got one thing to say to ya, and that’s that I’m not going to say another word. That goes for my wife too." Vernon had had it with camera crews "who come up here for three days and think they know what’s going on." Five months later the Hobenshield family’s logging operations were blockaded by the Gitksan and we were still filming. The Hobenshields decided to trust us. They are now key "characters" in BLOCKADE.

It took months to gain the trust of several Gitksan people central to our story. The gitksan needed to see if this "amxsiwaa" (white) crew was prepared to slow down and listen. Art Loring is a Gitksan, an ex-logger and a lead figure in BLOCKADE. Art signed out legal relase form on the condition that I write in my own handwriting "this footage is to be used for this film only". Then he made me sign it.