David Dennis, a founder of the West Coast Warrior Society, remembered as voice for Indigenous rights

On his first day on the waters off Esgenoopetitj, N.B., during the 2000 conflict known as the Burnt Church Crisis, David Dennis lungedwith a knife to cut into the rubber tubing around the hull of the Fisheries and Oceans vessel that was ramming his boat.

James Sakej Ward, who emerged as one of the leading Mi'kmaq voices during the fishing conflict, said the move unsettled the federal fisheries officers even as they aimed their assault rifles at Dennis's head.

"DFO freaked out and they peeled away on the boat . You could see the fear in their eyes," said Ward.

"This is the first day I met him."

That summer, the Mi'kmaq at Esgenoopetitj were stretched thin, manning a blockade and facingfisheries officers on the waters to protect their treaty right to fish. Ward received and accepted an offer for aid from the West Coast Warrior Society.

Dennis and Terry Dorward, two founding warrior society members, soon arrived in Miramichi, N.B., after a four-day bus trip from British Columbia.

Moments after stepping off the bus, Ward, who was waiting for them, said he received a report from the reserve: federal fisheries boats were again in the water.

"I said, 'gear up,'" said Ward.

"And there wasn't a moment of hesitation."

They rushed to Esgenoopetitj, about 30kilometres to the northeast, took a boat and entered the fray with no "sense of fear" facing fisheries officersusing pepper spray and ramming the smaller Mi'kmaq boats.

"Dave came off as a powerful inspiration, someone really resolute and compassionate for his people," said Ward.

Dennis died at 5:17 p.m. on May 29 in the arms of his partner Carol McCarthy after he was taken off life support at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver.He had been admitted after sufferingcomplications related to end-stage liver disease.

He was 45 andleaves behind five children.

"For many he was the voice, our voice. Because of his love for our people he left his words and the sound of his voice as a gift to us," said McCarthy, in an emailed statement.

"As a father, David instilled pride and gave so much love to each of his children from the moment they were born."

David Dennis' political life spannedthe front lines of rights and territorial conflicts on land and water,the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council offices,the post of president of the United Native Nations urban organizationand the streets of Vancouver.

He campaigned against police brutality, the child welfare system, the extinguishment policies of the modern treaty process, and championed justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Dennis drew the attention of the Canadian state security agencies and he clashed with First Nations elected leadership, but youth who heard his speeches would line up to shake his hand.

"Dave changed my whole life," said Kelly L'Hirondelle, executive director of the Mtis Community Services Society of B.C., who joined the Native Youth Movement after hearing Dennis speak at a residential schools forum.

"He had that effect on hundreds many people, many people."

On the Burrard Street Bridge

In 2005, Dennis was in the passenger seat of a van carrying 14 hunting rifles, 10,000 rounds of ammunition and camping gear when he saw flashing lights on the Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver. Itwas suddenly locked down by police for a takedown directed by the RCMP's anti-terror unit.

"They started yelling through the loudspeaker, 'Come out with your hands up,'" said Ward, who was sitting in the middle of the backseat.

Dennis had bought the rifles legally at a Vancouver gun shop for an outdoor survival program by the Tsawataineuk First Nation which had been involved in a logging blockade to protect burial grounds.

They were detained, threatened with charges that never materialized and eventually released. At the time, they accused the RCMPof orchestrating the operation to intimidate the West Coast Warrior Society which disbanded shortly after.

A few months ago, during a walk near an area connected to the events of that day, Ward said Dennis opened up about the scar it left.

"He said, 'I still have moments of almost PTSD from that;it was the thought I wasn't going to see my kids until well into their adulthood,'" said Ward.

It was one of the many psychological wounds Dennis carried from years facing the hard edge of state force on the land and waters, said Ward.

"We have Indigenous heroes among us, and we just lost one," he said.

David Dennis remembered as voice for Indigenous rights

4 years ago

Duration 1:31

David Dennis's political life spanned the front lines of rights and territorial conflicts on land and water, the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council offices, the post of president of the United Native Nations urban organization and the streets of Vancouver.

Marked for a different path

Dennis was born Feb. 7, 1975, in Vancouver.

His father Clarence Dennis of the Nuu-chah-nulth peopleand his mother Angie Todd-Dennisof the Nak'azdlipeople, attended residential school and became politically active during the Red Power days of the 1960s and '70s.

They became involved in the justice campaign on the case of Fred Quilt, a Tsilhqot'in man who died in 1971 from a severed bowel after he was detained and released by the Williams Lake RCMP.

Clarence Dennis, who was repeatedly arrested for running away from residential school and put in a juvenile detention centre, pushed for halfway houses for Indigenous people released from incarceration. Todd-Dennis ran for Vancouver mayor in 1972under the Coalition of Progressive Electors banner, garnering 6,000 votes.

When David Dennis was in Grade 1, the elementary school principal phoned Todd-Dennis to say her son had called a student teacher a racist.

During a meeting with the family, the principal asked David Dennis why he made the accusation.

He replied "When all of us kids put up our handsbecause we know the answer, he never picks any one of usall of us that are a different colour," Todd-Dennisrecalled.

"And when [the principal] asked David, 'Do you know what a racist is?' He said, 'Yes, it's a person that thinks you're different because of your colour.'

"He was six years old."

David Dennis grew up in Vancouver, going to swim practice, playing football, teaching himself to play guitar and learning the bagpipes. But he also felt thepresence of racism, especially during high school whenhis friends never invited him over their homes, said Todd-Dennis.

David Dennis was also marked early for a different path, she said. An elderfrom northern Ontariogave him a golden eagle feather when he was 15 after a speech during a Toronto conference. It was the first of many eagle feathers he would receive, said Todd-Dennis.

"She recognized his leadership ability She was honoured and so was he," she said.

A life of politics

David Dennis's political awakening blossomed after spending two years in Hawaii while Todd-Dennis worked on her master's degree in public health. She said her son realized his brown skin didn't stand out there.

"After he came back [having] stood tall in Hawaii, I think that is when he thought, 'This is not right and I won't accept it,'" she said.

Like his parentswiththe Quilt case, Dennis founded the Frank Paul Society after the Mi'kmaw man from Elsipogtog, N.B., died in1998 from hypothermia in an alley where he was left by Vancouver police. Dennis founded the society to pressure the provincial government into implementing recommendations from a coroner's inquest into the death.

"David took it upon himself to fight for Indigenous folks, those who needed a voice, when their voices couldn't be heard," said Terry Dorward.

Dorward met Dennis around 1998-99 and stood with him through their days with the militant Indigenous rights group Native Youth Movement (NYM) and the West Coast Warrior Society.

Dorward first saw Dennis on television fighting the B.C. treaty process, which was created in the wake of the 1997 Supreme Court Delgamuukw decision that acknowledged Aboriginal title existed in the province.Dennis and NYM occupied the offices of the B.C. Treaty Commissioner in Vancouver for five daysin 1998.

"Our people on Vancouver Island said we have to meet these people, the Native Youth Movement," said Dorward.

Dennis opposed the B.C. treaty process because he saw it as a continuation ofthe aim of the first treaties extinguishment of Indigenous rights in exchange for a deal.

Warrior Society formed to 'defend from any and all threats'

Dorward said he was part of NYM's security force with Dennis, which eventually evolved into the West Coast Warrior Society.

"We were an organization a self defence unit to defend from any and all threats to any particular First Nation that needed the support at the time," he said.

"We did security training so we could have the skills to put our lives on the line for Indigenous title and rights so our people have those rights recognized."

One of the first actions by Dennis and the West Coast Warrior Society unfolded in Cheam First Nation between 1999 and 2000. It was a two-front battle on the land and in the water the province wanting to turn Cheam fishing camps along the Fraser River into parkland and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans restricting fishing rights.

"Cheam First Nation was being brutalized by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans not allowing them to fish, to set out nets on the Fraser River," said Dorward.

"We needed a more assertive approach for Indigenous title and rights and that requires a physical presence."

'He just mesmerized people'

Even as the end approached, Dennis continued the struggle, filing a human rights complaint after he was kicked off the liver transplant list over a B.C Transplant policy requiring six months of alcohol abstinence.

Dennis said the policy discriminated against Indigenous people who have higher rates of alcoholism as a result of colonial policies such as residential schoolsthat created intergenerational trauma.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said he and Dennis would often have breakfast at the Slocan, a restaurant on East Hastings Street in Vancouver. They would both order the Door Crasher two eggs, sausage, bacon or ham, toast and lemon pepper hash-brown.

"For myself, I've been clean and sober for 34 years, so I had an active interest in being there to support David in his struggles with addictions. He was like a son."

Phillip said when they first met, Dennis was a "skinny kid, big pumpkin head and a very, very likable, very engaging personality." He said Dennis evolved into a political force.

"David Dennis was a very powerful, dynamic youth leader.... He worked hard, he trained hard, he was relentless in his political work," said Phillip.

"He just mesmerized people ... David was outside the so-called conventional mainstream political structure. He had a greater following, larger support than most leaders could hope to have."