The attack

The attackers came prepared for war.

February 17, 2022. Deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, 15 to 20 masked figures descended on a remote Coastal GasLink drill site. They wore snow camouflage. They carried axes and flare guns. And they had a plan.

First, they cut off escape routes. Trees were felled across the forest service road. Fires were set. A yellow school bus—more on that in a moment—was positioned to block the only way in or out. Workers were trapped.

Then came the assault itself. Equipment smashed. Vehicles destroyed. Windows shattered. The attackers moved with military precision through the site, causing an estimated $20 million in damage. When they were done, they vanished into the winter forest on snowmobiles, leaving behind terrified workers and a crime scene that would be investigated as potential terrorism.

Five days later, the RCMP released video footage captured by workers at the site. The images were chilling: masked figures advancing through the darkness, axes in hand, while explosions from flare guns lit up the night sky.

“This was a very aggressive and calculated method,” RCMP told reporters. It was, they said, “a very, very serious and significant criminal investigation.”

But here’s what haunted me when I first saw that footage: This wasn’t a spontaneous act of rage. This was the culmination of years of escalating tactics, outside funding, and increasingly radical alliances—a violent crescendo that had been building since the first protest camps appeared a decade earlier.

And the evidence of that escalation was hiding in plain sight.

The school bus

Let’s talk about that yellow school bus blocking the forest service road when the attackers struck.

I’d seen it before.

Months earlier, in December 2021, social media posts showed the same bus at Coyote Camp, a protest site along the pipeline route. In one image, it appeared parked outside the home of Adam Gagnon, a Wet’suwet’en hereditary wing chief of the Likhts’amisyu Clan and organizer with the Parrot Lake Group, which raised money online for protests.

In another image from December 25, 2021, protesters posed with the bus, including Logan Staats— a protest veteran who would later be arrested at both CGL and Fairy Creek logging protests. The bus was decorated with protest slogans and appeared to be part of the camp infrastructure.

Then it showed up on February 17, 2022, strategically positioned to trap workers and delay police response during a coordinated attack.

The bus wasn’t the only connection.

The white camouflage

In photographs from earlier protests, you can see people dressed in white winter camouflage—the same style worn by the attackers. In one image, protesters pose beneath a women’s warrior flag (an adaptation of the Mohawk Warrior Flag) wearing the distinctive white gear. Two of them are holding axes.

These weren’t random protest props. They were tools and tactics that would later be deployed in a coordinated assault.

The RCMP’s description of the attack emphasized how calculated it was: escape routes blocked, multiple fires set, coordinated movements through the site. This required planning, resources, and infrastructure.

That infrastructure had been built over years, funded by millions of dollars in crowdfunding and philanthropic grants, supported by environmental groups, and increasingly infiltrated by radical elements who saw violence as a legitimate tactic.

The long fuse

The Morice River attack didn’t emerge from nowhere. It was the endpoint of an escalating trajectory that transformed what began as Indigenous land defense into something far more dangerous.

2010: The Unist’ot’en Camp is established by Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders to protest pipeline proposals. Early on, organizers sought independence from outside groups.

2015: Strategy shifts. Protest leaders begin actively seeking support from environmental organizations. As Freda Huson explained in a 2014 interview: “We found out about pipelines proposed for our territory… We decided as a clan that we did not have skills to do peaceful and safe demonstrations. We constructed a cabin in the GPS route of Enbridge and PTP. So invited groups like Indigenous Environmental Network, Ruckus Society, and Council of Canadians to assist.”

2018-2019: First injunctions granted. RCMP enforcement begins. Blockades are rebuilt. The protest movement starts receiving international media attention and sees a surge in funding.

2020: The tipping point. RCMP raids in February lead to solidarity protests across Canada, including rail blockades that halt freight and passenger traffic nationwide. Roughly 70% of those arrested weren’t from the region—some came from other provinces, two from the United States.

2021: Tactics become increasingly aggressive. When CGL attempts to drill under the Morice River, the Gidimt’en clan and supporters set up blockades that strand around 700 workers with limited supplies. Arrests include Wet’suwet’en members, but also Michael Toledano (who “makes media for Wet’suwet’en house groups”) and Narwhal photographer Amber Bracken.

2022: The attack.

The anarchist alliance

What changed between 2015 and 2022? Among other things: the deliberate cultivation of alliances with anarchist and radical groups.

In a podcast interview on “It’s Going Down”—a platform for anarchist news and analysis — CGL protest leader Molly Wickham openly discussed “allyship between Indigenous warriors and anarchists.”

Self-described eco-anarchist Anton Bueckert, arrested at a CGL protest, later explained the strategy: “What anarchists have been doing for years is supporting the indigenous factions whose politics are resonant with theirs.”

Translation: Anarchists align with Indigenous groups who share their opposition to development—not because of deep commitment to Indigenous sovereignty, but because it advances their own anti-development agenda.

Deep Green Resistance, a radical environmental movement investigated by the FBI for encouraging violence, raised money for CGL protests and attended camps. Macdonald Stainsby, connected to the group, was described as central in connecting CGL protesters to self-proclaimed “troublemakers.”

This wasn’t grassroots Indigenous resistance. It was a sophisticated operation that used Indigenous identity as a shield while pursuing increasingly radical tactics.

The aftermath

The Morice River attack had consequences.

Most immediately, it scared people. According to CBC reporting, “a lot of our local community members were participating in some of the training they [the protesters] had… they got scared.” The number of protesters on-site dropped significantly after the attack.

Even some hereditary chiefs who had opposed the pipeline distanced themselves from the violence. Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief John Ridsdale (Na’Moks) told CBC: “We would never ever tell anybody or support anybody to do any kind of damage. We said we’re going to do this [protest] peacefully and we have done it peacefully.”

But the damage was done—not just to equipment, but to relationships, to trust, and to the possibility of constructive dialogue about Indigenous economic development.

The RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) spent almost $30 million policing the Coastal GasLink project. The attack itself caused $20 million in damage. The broader protest movement delayed construction and contributed to cost overruns that saw the project’s price tag more than double from $6.6 billion to $14.5 billion.

Rail blockades organized in solidarity with CGL protesters cost the Canadian economy hundreds of millions in halted shipments and delayed exports.

And for what?

The 80 per cent

Here’s what the attackers were really targeting that night: not just a drill site, but a choice.

Surveys in Witset and Burns Lake showed 80% support for the Coastal GasLink pipeline among Wet’suwet’en citizens. These weren’t people coerced or manipulated—they were exercising democratic choice about their community’s economic future.

They saw the pipeline as opportunity: jobs, revenue, partnerships, and a path toward economic self-determination. They negotiated agreements with their elected band councils. They participated in consultations. They made an informed decision.

The attack on February 17, 2022, was an attempt to override that decision with violence.

It’s easy to get lost in the details—the school bus, the camouflage, the funding networks, the anarchist alliances. But at its core, the CGL story is about a simple question: Who gets to decide Indigenous economic futures?

The 80% who supported the pipeline said: We do.

The masked attackers said: We’ll decide for you.

That’s not land defense. That’s not Indigenous sovereignty. That’s not reconciliation.

That’s colonialism with a different flag.

What economic reconciliation looks like

True economic reconciliation means respecting Indigenous choices—even when outsiders disagree with them.

It means listening to the matriarchs who supported the project and were removed from their positions for doing so. It means honouring those who economic partnership but also recognizing that there are many legitimate viewpoints in any community.

It means recognizing that Indigenous sovereignty includes the sovereign right to say yes to development, not just no.

The violence that night in February 2022 wasn’t just an attack on infrastructure. It was an attack on Indigenous economic self-determination. It was an attack on democratic choice. It was an attack on the possibility that Indigenous communities could chart their own economic futures without outside groups claiming veto power.

The attackers came prepared for war. But the real battle wasn’t over a drill site.

It was over who gets to decide what economic reconciliation means.

---

Stewart Muir is the CEO of Resource Works. This is the first essay in “Manufacturing Dissent,” a five-part series examining how the Coastal GasLink protests became a cautionary tale about Indigenous economic sovereignty.