EDITORIAL: DiCaprio should listen to Ellis Ross

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It’s happening again. Non-Indigenous do-gooders are stepping forward to take a shot at Canada’s resource sector. They’re appropriating the cause of First Nations without taking an honest enough look at the situation to really get what’s going on.

The current matter at hand is the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia. It’s become the latest flashpoint for activism and protests against the resource sector.

It’s bad enough when Canadians on home soil do this, and that certainly happens a great deal. It’s worse when it’s done by foreigners who have even less of a clue what they’re talking about.

Enter Leonardo DiCaprio.

“After setting up a blockade to protect their land, community, and sacred headwaters Wedzin Kwa from Coastal GasLink’s planned fracked gas pipeline, the Wet’suwet’en Nation has faced militarized raids from the RCMP,” the film star posted to social media recently. “We must protect the rights of land defenders.”

We’d prefer to ignore the actor’s social media musings, the only problem though is that Leo and others like him have the ability to influence how the world sees the issue, and they’re missing a lot of context.

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Enter Ellis Ross.

Ross was the former Chief Councillor for the Haisla Nation. He knows a thing or two about working with the resource sector to get results for First Nations — having done so with a previous LNG project.

Ross is now a BC MLA and is running for the leadership of the BC Liberal Party. He thinks Leo is wrong and explains why in a guest column in the National Post.

“My people and many other First Nations communities, leaders, and elders, including 20 democratically elected Chiefs whose bands support the Coastal Gas Link project, are proud to champion British Columbia’s world-class resource sector,” Ross writes.

“These leaders have been elected by their communities, as I was when I fought to bring liquified natural gas (LNG) development to our province. I suppose you haven’t thought about how in siding with the unelected hereditary chiefs opposed to the Coastal Gas Link project, you are ignoring the democratic rights of thousands of First Nations people?”

Good question. Have you thought this through Leo?