The Root of Policy-Based Violence: How Government Systems Manufacture Crisis
You can see the media machine at work right now. There is a crisis at Wet’suwet’en territory, and once again the narrative is being skewed to paint Indigenous land defenders as the aggressors, as if they are acting unlawfully.
Make no mistake—this crisis is not about the Wet’suwet’en acting outside the law. It’s about how colonial public policy creates conflict through systemic strain, disempowerment, and oppression. The Wet’suwet’en have never ceded their land, and their hereditary leadership structure has been affirmed by Canadian courts. Yet still, the RCMP and pipeline companies are sent to occupy and forcibly remove people from their own territory. This is a policy choice.
That’s why I contacted the National NDP, and why I believe the BC government must be held accountable. The problem is not the people defending their land. The problem is policy.
How Policy Creates Violence
The diagram below illustrates a systems model of policy-based violence, based on peer-reviewed social science. At the center of it is community strain—a stress response triggered by spatial isolation, lack of access to resources, racialized policies, and the slow erosion of cultural worth.
Let’s break it down:
- Racialized Policies and Practices – These are not limited to overt laws but include zoning rules, funding allocations, land-use decisions, and even how police and courts are resourced. Policies that ignore Indigenous legal orders—like BC’s support for the Coastal GasLink pipeline—reinforce the idea that Indigenous people must assimilate or be removed.
- Spatial Isolation & Access to Resources – Many reserves and Indigenous communities remain underfunded, physically disconnected, or deliberately excluded from infrastructure, economic opportunity, and social support systems. This fuels a feedback loop of disempowerment.
- Internalization of Tension & Cultural Disorientation – When communities are cut off, told their governance isn’t valid, and continually criminalized for defending themselves, it creates psychological strain. That strain doesn’t disappear—it either becomes internalized (leading to despair or substance use) or expressed outward (through protest and resistance).
- Civil Unrest as a Rational Outcome – What’s often labeled “unrest” or “illegal protest” is, in reality, a predictable result of oppressive civil authority combined with spatial and cultural suppression.
- The Survival of the Fittest Norm (R1 loop) – When communities are forced to defend themselves because law enforcement is acting against them, not for them, it teaches that force is necessary for survival. That’s not criminal behavior. That’s an adaptive response to systemic violence.
- Media Complicity – By focusing on the visible result (a protest, a blockade, an arrest), media narratives erase the source: policy decisions that pushed people to the edge.
From Model to Reality: The Wet’suwet’en Example
Right now, hereditary chiefs from the Wet’suwet’en Nation are being criminalized for protecting their own unceded land. These land defenders are not protesting outside of the law—they’re upholding their own legal systems, which predate and supersede colonial occupation.
The BC government’s actions—backed by RCMP raids and surveillance—follow the exact pattern laid out in the diagram:
- Racialized policy: Ignoring Supreme Court rulings affirming Wet’suwet’en rights.
- Oppressive civil authority: Using RCMP to remove people at gunpoint from their ancestral land.
- Strain response: The community mobilizes, resisting a system that is actively erasing their governance.
This is not disorder—it’s defense. It’s the same defense we would all mount if it were our homes, our children, or our lands under siege.
Conclusion: We Must Shift the Narrative
We need to stop asking why Indigenous people are “protesting” and start asking what public policies are producing these predictable outcomes. This systems map is not just academic—it reflects the real, lived experience of Indigenous communities across Canada.
It’s time to treat community strain and violence as an outcome of failed public policy, not a failure of Indigenous character. We don’t need more police. We need better policy.
Below is an exert from the committee meeting at the UN, on this very issue.
==== Decision ====
COMMITTEE ON THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Hundredth session
25 November -13 December 2019
ADVANCE UNEDITED VERSION
PREVENTION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, INCLUDING EARLY WARNING AND URGENT ACTION PROCEDURE
Decision 1 (100)
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, meeting in Geneva at its hundredth session, from 25 November 2019 to 13 December 2019,
Acting under its Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure;
Concerned by the refusal to consider free, prior and informed consent as a requirement for any measure, such as large-scale development projects, that may cause irreparable harm to indigenous peoples rights, culture, lands, territories and way of life;
Concerned by the continuation of construction of the Site C dam and the approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Extension project without free, prior and informed consent by all the indigenous peoples affected;
Concerned by the approval of new large-scale development projects on indigenous peoples traditional lands and territories without the free, prior and informed consent of affected indigenous peoples, such as the Coastal Gas Link pipeline in the territory of the We’suwet’en people;
Disturbed by forced removal, disproportionate use of force, harassment and intimidation by law enforcement officials against indigenous peoples who peacefully oppose large-scale development projects on their traditional territories;
Alarmed by escalating threat of violence against indigenous peoples, such as the reported violent arrest and detainment of a Secwepemc defender against the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project, on 19th October 2019;
Recalling its previous concluding observations of 2017 on Canada (CERD/C/CAN/CO/21-23) and its general recommendation No. 23 (1997) on the rights of indigenous peoples, the Committee:
Calls upon the State party to immediately cease construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project and cancel all permits, until free, prior and informed consent is obtained
from all the Secwepemc people, following the full and adequate discharge of the duty to consult;
Calls upon the State party to immediately suspend the construction of the Site C dam, until free, prior and informed consent is obtained from West Moberly and Prophet River Nations, following the full and adequate discharge of the duty to consult;
Calls upon the State party to immediately halt the construction and suspend all permits and approvals for the construction of the Coastal Gas Link pipeline in the traditional and unceded lands and territories of the Wet’suwet’en people, until they grant their free, prior and informed consent, following the full and adequate discharge of the duty to consult;
Recommends that the State party establish, in consultation with indigenous peoples, a legal and institutional framework to ensure adequate consultation with the view to obtain free, prior and informed consent regarding all legislation affecting indigenous peoples;
Urges the State party to take the necessary steps to incorporate free, prior and informed consent in domestic legislation, in consultation with indigenous peoples, in compliance with international human rights obligations and jurisprudence, taking into account the Committee’s general recommendation No. 23 on the rights of indigenous peoples;
Urges the State party to freeze present and future approval of large-scale development projects affecting indigenous peoples that do not enjoy free, prior and informed consent from all indigenous peoples affected;
Urges the State party to immediately cease forced eviction of Secwepemc and Wet’suwet’en peoples;
Urges the State party to guarantee that no force will be used against Secwepemc and Wet’suwet’en peoples and that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and associated security and policing services will be withdrawn from their traditional lands;
Also urges the State party to prohibit the use of lethal weapons, notably by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, against indigenous peoples;
Encourages the State party to seek technical advice from the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
2801st Meeting 13 December 2019