Yintah: New Documentary Follows Wet’suwet’en Nation’s Fight for Sovereignty

For more than a decade, the Wet’suwet’en First Nation has been working to reclaim their ancestral lands, reclaiming their territory, protecting it from the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, and resisting the construction of multiple pipelines. Now, the Wet’suwet’en struggle is the subject of a new documentary, Yintahcoming soon to Netflix.

“The world needs to know the truth about what happened on Wet’suwet’en territory — how a determined community went to gunpoint to protect Wet’suwet’en lands from theft,” directors Michael Toledano, Jennifer Wickham and Brenda Mitchell said in a statement. “We are thrilled that Netflix has chosen to support this story.”

Read on for more information on Yintah, and stay tuned, because the new film will be available on Netflix on October 18th.

What is this Yintah about?

Yintahmeaning “land,” is a feature-length documentary about the Wet’suwet’en First Nation’s fight for sovereignty. The film spans more than a decade and follows Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham as their nation reoccupies and protects their ancestral lands from some of the largest fossil fuel companies in the world.

When will it be? Yintah be on Netflix?

Yintah will be available on Netflix in the US, UK and Canada on October 18. The film will screen at the Camden Film Festival on Saturday, September 14, and then at the Hawai’i and Seattle International Film Festivals. More information about the film can be found on its official website.

Read the directors’ statement Yintah Here:

Reflecting the scope and ambition of the Wet’suwet’en’s fight to protect their unceded lands from theft, Yintah offers the definitive account of the historic wave of Indigenous resistance to Canadian colonialism. Drawing from over a decade of verity footage, the film follows two Wet’suwet’en leaders (Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham) as they reoccupy and protect their homelands in the face of state violence.

As filmmakers, we have discovered that Canada protects its image with force. For years, our cameramen have been held at gunpoint, repeatedly arrested and detained, subjected to illegal police exclusion zones, surveillance, harassment, and even imprisonment. Despite this repression, Yintah is a film that captures every essential moment, creating an incredibly coherent account of the story that the police tried to cover up.

As colonial forces conspired to criminalize Wet’suwet’en jurisdiction, we as filmmakers worked to maintain it. The result is a film that was compiled in accordance with the traditional laws and collective authority of the Wet’suwet’en home groups at the center of this story—developed with extensive input from Wet’suwet’en leaders and co-directed by immediate family members of the characters in the film. Adopting a decision-making structure that reflects Wet’suwet’en practices of self-governance, the film relied on collaboration and consensus building to share this important story from an authentically Wet’suwet’en perspective.

As a result, Yintah is itself both an expression of Indigenous sovereignty and an attempt to decolonize history. Under the guidance of Wet’suwet’en elders and dozens of community members, and with the narration of the film’s main characters, Yintah offers an honest, extraordinary and uncompromising perspective on Canada’s brief time on Wet’suwet’en land. As Violet Gellenbeck, an elder and chief who helped make the film, says, “For the first time, our people are telling our story.”