Fighting Invasive Infrastructures: Indigenous Relations against Pipelines

In Unist’ot’en territory in northern British Columbia, Canada, clan members of the Wet’suwet’en people have built a permanent encampment in the pathway of numerous potential and proposed pipelines. In response to the characterization of these pipeline projects as “critical infrastructure,” the camp’s spokesperson, Freda Huson, notes that the pipelines were proposed to run through the clan’s best berry patches. By resisting pipeline construction, she explains, “what we’re doing here is protecting our critical infrastructure.” The language game of the response inverts the promise and inevitability of settler infrastructures but does not replace it with a network that works within the