Teaching YINTAH: Centering Indigenous Resistance in an Abolitionist Classroom

When I attended a screening of YINTAH (2024) at a local theatre this past summer, I knew immediately that I had to incorporate it into my new third-year undergraduate course titled Abolition and the Carceral State. This course is taught in the context of a critical criminology program and immerses students in contemporary discussions of abolition while also honoring the long history of abolitionist and transformative justice movements in Canada and elsewhere. Through readings, lectures, podcasts, documentaries, dialogue, and reflection, students enhance their understanding of surveillance, policing, prisons, and punishment as key mechanisms of the ongoing projects of colonization and racial capitalism in Canada (Chartrand and Rougier 2022; Maynard 2017). Course topics include: abolition feminism; police abolition; prison abolition; abolition geography; decolonization, liberation, and abolition; alternatives to policing, prisons, and punishment; and building abolitionist futures.

To emphasize the importance and impact of Indigenous representation in this course on penal and carceral abolition, I will offer a brief overview of the film, YINTAH, share the readings I assigned to students to prepare for watching the film, and explain an assignment that asked students to reflect on extractive capitalism, settler colonialism, and the relationship between the police and the media when it comes to reporting on Indigenous resistance and anticolonial struggle. Finally, I will share insights from students through assignments and course reflections that demonstrate how they connected what they learned from YINTAH to broader conversations about colonization, extractive capitalism, policing, and abolition.

YINTAH, a Wet’suwet’en term that means “land,” is a documentary film that centers on Indigenous resistance to oil pipelines and other government and corporate encroachments on Wet’suwet’en territory, located in the central interior of British Columbia, Canada. It also highlights the ongoing surveillance, policing, and criminalization of Indigenous land defenders. The film takes viewers through more than a decade of anticolonial struggle, primarily through the lives of two Indigenous women and community leaders, Tsakë ze’ Howilhkat Freda Huson and Tsakë ze’ Sleydo’ Molly Wickham (Tsakë ze’ is a Wet’suwet’en term that means “Hereditary Chief”). Throughout the film, viewers are captivated by not only the stunning landscape across Wet’suwet’en territory but also by the strength and resilience of Indigenous communities actively protecting their land and reclaiming their culture, language, and sovereignty. While YINTAH focuses specifically on the persistent efforts of oil companies and the federal government to destroy land and water for pipelines and resource extraction, viewers are also reminded of the history of colonial violence in Canada that includes the reservation and pass systems (Cram 2016), residential schools (National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation 2026) the Sixties Scoop (Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre 2026), the ongoing epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (National Inquiry 2026), and the high rates of suicide among First Nations people, Métis, and Inuit in Canada (Kumar and Tjepkema 2019). As Cody, a member of the Gidimt’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en, states about the current legal and physical battles against pipeline development, “This is a generational struggle, and we need to prepare for a generational struggle” (26:09).

To prepare students for viewing and discussing this film, I assigned two readings. The first is a chapter titled “Northern Gateway Pipelines: Policing for Extractive Capitalism” (Crosby and Monaghan 2018). This reading gives students an understanding of extractive capitalism and focuses specifically on oil pipeline projects in western Canada. In this section of the book, the authors also focus on the “public and covert mechanisms” used by police for “tracking pipeline opposition” across Canada, specifically within Indigenous communities (2018, 83). The second reading is a magazine article from Briarpatch (an independent Canadian publication) titled “Weaponizing Words: How the RCMP Uses Press Releases to Reconstruct the Narrative at Fairy Creek and Wet’suwet’en” (Murphy and Research for the Front Lines 2024). This reading encourages students to think more critically about the relationship between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the media. The authors effectively demonstrate how the police regularly use press releases and mobilize public relations teams to control the narrative and foster animosity toward Indigenous land defenders and others working to protect Indigenous sovereignty and rights.

After watching YINTAH, students had an opportunity to complete a brief discussion and reflection assignment (I create eight of these assignments throughout the term, and students must submit six). Discussion and reflection were prompted by the following quotation and questions:

Despite the substantive issue raised surrounding Indigenous jurisdiction and environmental impacts, a state-corporation collaboration emerged to mitigate opposition and try to push the pipeline through, demonstrating the pivotal role of extractive capitalism to settler colonialism in Canada (Crosby and Monaghan 2018, 67).

1. Briefly define extractive capitalism in your own words (but drawing from course content).
2. How did watching this documentary YINTAH shape your own understanding of the impacts of extractive capitalism and settler colonialism in Canada? What did you find most compelling about this film?
3. In the documentary, we see how the RCMP treats the media and journalists. How does keeping media out and creating “exclusion zones” during the protest impact reporting on this issue? You might think about this through the lens of free speech, transparency, and accountability.

Submissions to this Quotes & Queries assignment revealed the immediate and profound impression that YINTAH left on students and confirmed the importance of incorporating Indigenous media in the classroom. Students interpreted the film as a powerful representation of the function and impact of extractive capitalism and expressed that it was important to see “what actually happens.” Others focused their reflections on the “horrific” interactions between police and Indigenous land defenders and appreciated how the film “showed the truth behind the pipeline discourse.” Many students reflected on the emotions they felt while watching YINTAH and witnessing “the resistance and solidarity” across Indigenous communities. Finally, students were also honest about their lack of knowledge of the issues highlighted in the film and credited YINTAH for encouraging them to be more critical of the relationship between governments, corporations, media, and the police. Overall, I was deeply impressed at how well students incorporated course materials into these reflection assignments, especially considering that I showed the film early on in the course.

Students continued to write about YINTAH in both mid- and end-of-term reflection assignments. A few highlighted the film as their favorite piece of course content and shared that they had talked with others (family, friends, and students in other classes) about it outside of the course. These comments were heartening to read, as I was feeling uncertain about incorporating longer films and documentaries into my lectures. Reading these reflections assured me of the benefits of this specific pedagogical choice. It confirmed that incorporating visual media, especially content created and consented to by historically marginalized and oppressed communities, is an effective strategy for decolonizing and Indigenizing the classroom and curriculum.

One of the greatest sources of excitement (and relief) that I experience as an educator is when I come across a piece of visual media that I am confident will have a profound and lasting impact on students. This experience is amplified when it happens in the context of a course that I am teaching and planning for the first time. YINTAH allowed me to center Indigenous resistance in a course on abolition and was an important turning point for many students as they were starting to grapple with the function and form of the carceral state in Canada. While there are several texts that I could have referenced to build a lecture focused on extractive capitalism and the ongoing surveillance, policing, and criminalization of Indigenous communities as they resist colonial violence, this film—created in collaboration with those on the front lines of anticolonial resistance—evokes far more powerful sentiments. Its careful curation of stories, sounds, and scenery delivers a deeper emotional impact. I am thankful for the creators of this film and for the strength of storytelling power that emanates from Indigenous communities as they continue to fight for land, water, and life.

Samantha McAleese (she/her) is an assistant professor at Brock University—located on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples—whose research focuses on the collateral consequences of punishment in Canada. Samantha teaches in the critical criminology program, and her courses focus on community engagement, penal and carceral abolition, and life after incarceration. Samantha strives to incorporate visual media as much as possible in her teaching to better connect students to the lived realities of those subject to surveillance, criminalization, punishment, and various social, political, colonial, economic, and environmental harms.