The B.C. Court of Appeal says a Wet’suwet’en chief found guilty of criminal contempt for violating an injunction can’t use a “novel” claim that he was following Indigenous law when he violated a court order.
Chief Dsta’hyl, also known as Adam Bernard Gagnon, appealed his criminal contempt conviction after he was found in violation of an injunction to prevent protesters impeding work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline in 2021.
The Appeal Court’s ruling says Gagnon raised an “uncomplicated” defence, claiming he shouldn’t be convicted of disobeying the injunction because he was “compelled” to do so under the Wet’suwet’en law of trespass.
The ruling says the chief wasn’t asking the court to condone his conduct, but sought to be “excused from liability” based on evidence heard about the Wet’suwet’en trespass law he was enforcing when he and other hereditary chiefs served Coastal GasLink an eviction notice.
A lower court judge found the proposed defence to be a “collateral attack” on the injunction, and the three-judge appellate panel agreed.
The Appeal Court ruling says disobeying the injunction was not a “last resort,” because “there were other lawful and peaceful means available to him to challenge the injunction.”
“Indigenous law has been denied, suppressed, and at times outlawed, for over a century in Canada. Canadian law has a role to play in undoing that harm and is learning to make space for Indigenous legal orders in various ways,” the ruling says.
“But that work does not include allowing parties, Indigenous or non-Indigenous, to breach court orders.”
Amnesty International in 2024 declared Chief Dsta’hyl a “prisoner of conscience” in Canada, claiming he’d been wrongfully criminalized “for defending the land and rights of the Wet’suwet’en people.”
