“Invading Indigenous Territory is Not Reconciliation”: Problematizing War Frames in News Coverage of Wet’suwet’en Solidarity Actions.

The article critically examines the use of war-related language in Canadian mainstream news coverage of the 2019–2020 Indigenous-led solidarity mobilizations supporting the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s struggle against the Coastal GasLink pipeline on their unceded territory in British Columbia. It finds that while war frames often naturalize and legitimize militarized police violence by conflating police with military forces, these frames simultaneously articulate and validate Wet’suwet’en sovereignty by portraying the RCMP’s presence as an illegal invasion of sovereign Indigenous lands. The study highlights how direct quotations from land defenders within news reports complicate dominant protest paradigms by centering Indigenous perspectives and sovereignty claims, revealing tensions in media portrayals of Indigenous resistance. This analysis contributes to understanding how mainstream media framing both reinforces and unsettles settler colonial power structures in Canada, emphasizing the ongoing importance of Indigenous self-determination and the role of media in shaping public discourse.