Mirroring the scope and ambition of the Wet’suwet’en fight to protect unsurrendered lands from theft, YINTAH offers the definitive account of a historic wave of Indigenous resistance to Canadian colonialism. Drawing from more than a decade of verité footage, the film shadows two Wet’suwet’en leaders (Freda Huson and Molly Wickham) as they reoccupy and protect their homelands in the face of state violence.

As filmmakers, we found that Canada protects its image through force. Throughout the years our camera operators were held at gunpoint, repeatedly arrested and detained, subject to illegal police exclusion zones, surveillance, harassment, and even incarceration. Despite this repression, YINTAH is a film where every consequential moment was captured, providing a remarkably cohesive account of a story that police worked hard to suppress.

As colonial forces conspired to criminalize Wet’suwet’en jurisdiction, we as filmmakers worked to uphold it. The result is a film which was compiled under the traditional laws and collective authority of the Wet’suwet’en house groups at the center of this story – developed with intensive participation from Wet’suwet’en leaders and co-directed by the immediate family members of the film’s protagonists. Adopting a decision-making structure which mirrors the practices of Wet’suwet’en self-governance, the film relied on collaboration and consensus-building to share this vital history 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. With direction from Wet’suwet’en elders and dozens of community members, and aided by narration from the film’s protagonists, YINTAH offers an honest, uncommon, and unapologetic perspective of Canada’s brief time on Wet’suwet’en lands. In the words of Violet Gellenbeck, an elder and chief who participated in the filmmaking process: “For the first time it is our own people telling our history.”