Buttons for Tyendinaga Protest | #WetsuwetenStrong February 18 2020

One button can stand for so much, but like a news headline or soundbite, sometimes you need the story behind the button to fully understand what a button stands for. This is the case for these #WetsuwetenStrong buttons. 

Here at People Power Press, we are pleased to have been asked to do a run of custom buttons for the protests at the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. For those of you who have felt inconvenienced by the blockade of the Lakeshore West Rail Corridor, or just aren't sure what is going on, we’d like to take a moment to appreciate why this protest matters.

It matters much more than a $6.2 billion dollar pipeline being built on land traditionally used, conserved and maintained by the Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia.

Of course that matters, but also at stake here is the ability of the Supreme Court of Canada to render fair and impartial judgements about the laws of our nation.

In December 1997, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, which clearly established Aboriginal title over unceded ancestral lands. The Wet’suwet’en Nation have signed no treaties, so the case is very clear in the eyes of the highest court of Canada.

What followed the Delgamuukw decision in B.C. has been 25 years of resource industry lobbyists encouraging the government to overcome, subvert and ignore the ruling. A detailed history of those efforts can be found here. 

As Wet’suwet’en protesters are arrested, the RCMP has become complicit in ignoring the law and ruling of our Supreme Court. If Canada has a judiciary that can be so easily ignored by our government and justice system, then we don’t have very much in this country. 

We make a lot of buttons at PPP for all sorts of reasons and for a variety of causes. There are some buttons that we are very proud to make and this is an example of one of those buttons. We at PPP are very proud to stand behind the Wet’suwet’en and Tyendinaga Mohawk protesters, and their valiant effort to make Canada respect its own laws.