Vancouver Island Rallies in Support of Rainbow Eyes

Eighty supporters of Angela Davidson, better known as Rainbow Eyes, rallied in Nanaimo in support of the land defender recently convicted of criminal contempt of court, on the first day of her sentencing hearing.

Rainbow Eyes rose to prominence with repeated acts of civil disobedience at Fairy Creek between May 2021 and January 2022, by disrupting forestry company Teal Jones’ old growth forest cutting activities. The Fairy Creek protests are considered the largest act of civil disobedience in the country’s history, involving over 1200 protesters and leading to 882 arrests.

Among supporters at the courthouse were Elder May Sam, and Howard Breen of Extinction Rebellion. Elders for Ancient Trees, whom I rode alongside with on board the Community Action Bus, contributed twenty-six heads to the turnout. The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples also made a strong showing.

I spent the whole day listening to deliberations by the parties, both clumsily attempting to sway an aggravated judge having little patience left. Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson was no more impressed by the green prosecutors as I was, repeatedly interrupting their arguments with blunt questions, such as why the Crown wouldn’t invoke the step-up principle in their sentencing recommendations.

But he expressed even more frustration toward the defence team, which attempted an indigenous character and environment angle to its own deliberations. This led the judge to frequently interrupt the presentation with sharp complaints to its overall lack of relevance from a legal standpoint. He also objected to the argument that the defendant should be rewarded for complying with conditions she actually repeatedly violated, and balked at the notion that she be shown leniency given the nature of the offence, on the ground it could draw discredit to the judicial system.

The hearing is set to resume tomorrow morning. I honestly do not know how the judge will rule. The crown asks for 51 days, the defence only time served; I expect the judge to ignore them both and issue a ruling which furthers his only priority, that is, public confidence in the judiciary. This may lead him to exceed the prosecutions’ recommendations, or on the contrary to release the defendant by sentencing her with time served.

Why would he lean toward the latter, you ask? Because today I saw the judiciary on trial in the court of public opinion, before a jury of forty of its peers, facing the charge of colonialism. Courts are known to sometimes refuse to enforce the law because doing so would actually discredit the judiciary, such as BC Supreme Court Justice Douglas Thompson refusing to extend the Fairy Creek injunction, invoking the RCMP’s extensive record of civil rights violations in enforcing it. While Hinkson definitely isn’t Thompson, he may reach a similar decision. UPDATE 2024/04/05: I’ve just learned that the judge deferred his decision until April 24th, instead of issuing it today as anticipated, suggesting some of the material he’s heard today somehow made an impression on him.