Canadian Indigenous leaders have warned Australian gas giant Woodside that pipelines in British Columbia (BC) are driving illegal land seizes, violent police raids and the destruction of pristine ecosystems.
Thu 11 Dec 2025 06.00
Photo: CEO of Woodside Energy, Meg O'Neill is seen during the Woodside AGM at Crown Towers in Perth, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (AAP Image/Richard Wainwright)
Canadian Indigenous leaders have warned Australian gas giant Woodside that pipelines in British Columbia (BC) are driving illegal land seizes, violent police raids and the destruction of pristine ecosystems.
A delegation has travelled to Australia to learn about how Woodside “treats people’s traditional land” and highlight the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Nations’ battle back home against two new gas pipelines.
“That’s what drives us to do trips such as this to investigate and follow that money because that is dirty money and it is killing our people and it is adding to the destruction of this planet,” said Hereditary Chief Na’Moks of the Wet’suwet’en Nation.
One of the projects is now transporting liquefied natural gas from northeast BC to a coastal terminal near the town of Kitimat, around 670 kilometres away, through a pipeline that cuts across traditional Wet’suwet’en lands in the process.
“We call it ‘rip it and ship it’. Show up in somebody’s land, extract the resources and then you’re gone,” said Kai Nagata, energy campaigner for Dogwood, a non-profit dedicated to climate justice, Indigenous rights and democratic reform.
“When you cut and trench across all of those different tributaries and streams, you disrupt ecosystems that have sustained life for thousands and thousands of years, and it can’t be repaired in the way that the industry would like to claim that it can.”
Woodside is one of 11 companies in the Rockies LNG Partners.
“Woodside is one of the fracking companies that has big upstream leases, and they want to be able to get their resource to the coast to a gas terminal,” said Mr Nagata. “They’re part of this consortium that’s backing this American owned gas terminal and pipeline.”
“We continue to see these projects really socialising costs while privatising benefits and British Colombians and Canadians are not having any more of that,” said Deputy Chief of the Hagwilget Village Council Gwii Lok’im Gibuu, Jesse Stoeppler.
Speaking on the Australia Institute’s Follow The Money podcast, Chief Na’Moks said Hereditary Chiefs never gave their consent for the project to proceed and fear it will poison their land and water.
“We live in a place where you can still drink the water and eat fish that swim right up to your doorstep. And that is pretty rare on this planet,” added Mr Nagata.
“Right now, all of that is being threatened by global oil and gas companies, including companies from Australia, who want to come and frack and build pipelines and gas terminals and destroy all of that on the basis of some really dubious economics.”
The Australia Institute’s co-chief executive Leanne Minshull shared her concerns, citing the Albanese Government’s decision to allow Woodside’s North West Shelf Project in Western Australia to continue operations until 2070.
“I think a lot of people are understanding that it’s pretty crazy these days to be developing any new fossil fuel projects,” she said. “I don’t think we can let governments off the hook here.
“They know that it’s going to destroy the artworks apart from anything else.”
Activists are concerned about the project’s proximity to the Murujuga Cultural Landscape – a vast area of ancient Aboriginal rock art that UNESCO recently granted World Heritage status.
“I think the way that Woodside operates in Australia is pretty much out of the playbook that is being used in Canada, but Canada to me sounds a little bit more terrifying,” said Ms Minshull on the podcast.
The decade-long conflict in Canada is the subject of an award-winning documentary on Netflix, titled “Yintah”.
It follows two female leaders, Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham as they reclaim their ancestral lands and resist the development, often with frightening consequences.
“They burned down our homes, they knock them down with heavy equipment. They come through our doors with axes and power saws. And that is our new normal,” said Hereditary Chief Na’Moks.
“It’s really important for us to mention that we come from a matrilineal society and within our homes, within our society, within our governance, it’s almost always females and women that make and carry the decision and often the consequences that are attached to that,” explained Gitxsan hereditary leader Gwii Lok’im Gibuu. “The world understands that you cannot mess with our women anymore.”
The delegation was invited by the Save our Songlines campaign to tour Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula, known as Murujuga, earlier this week, “so that we can bring that story back home and warn people about who we’re dealing with”.
“We’re trying to defend indigenous rights, protect our home and the people that live there and also save taxpayers across BC, Canada and Australia from projects that we think are dead end and are very quickly going to become obsolete as renewable energy technology takes over,” said Mr Nagata.
“So wrong project, wrong place, wrong time, we’re trying to get the word out to the people considering these investment decisions before they lock us into another 30, 40 years of burning gas.”
Mr Nagata said Canada’s government was trying to fast track the project “in order to lock down that investor confidence and bring in that foreign money”.
“This is a really crucial window right now.”
“As a hereditary chief, our duty is to the land, air, water. You often hear of indigenous people thinking seven generations ahead. These people are now only looking at an election cycle,” said Hereditary Chief Na’Moks.
“I just want the humanity put back into the government and into decision-making and not have the dollar bill more important than this planet.”
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