A group of First Nations wearing masks and camouflage gear sent a TransCanada pipeline survey crew packing, warning them not to return to their land without permission.

The crew took off in a helicopter from the Wet’suwet’en Nation, southwest of Houston, B.C., after the eviction that has raised tensions around pipeline development in B.C.’s interior.

“You guys know TransCanada is not allowed on this territory, right?” one of the men can be heard on a video of the incident. “Your equipment will be confiscated if you return,”

The drama was recorded by Michael Toledano, a writer for Vice Magazine working on a documentary in the area.

The people from the camp had already told TransCanada that the company was not welcome, said John Ridsdale, the Wet’suet’en hereditary Chief Na’Moks.

“There was no permission for them to be on the lands,” he said. “I believe that they wanted to see what they could do and add to a confrontation that shouldn’t have happened.”

But TransCanada said it believed the crew had permission to survey the planned route of the Coastal GasLink pipeline – and were surprised when their contractors were ordered to leave.

“While we believed we had permission to do this work, our survey crew decided to safely leave the area after being confronted by people wearing masks,” spokesperson Shawn Howard said in a statement.

To add to the confusion, one of the women working with the contractors identified herself as a member of the same First Nation, Unist’ot’en, which is one of 13 houses of the Wet’suet’en First Nation.

“This is my land,” said a woman who identified herself on Facebook as Juanita Nikal. “Get out of my face.”

On a Facebook comment, Nikal said, “I was out there to make sure that these environmental groups do their due diligence in collecting all of the data of all of our natural resources out there, every plant and every animal… Unistoten is my family and I support them 100 per cent.”

It’s not the first time a pipeline worker has been evicted, but it is a sign of resistance to pipeline construction that, combined with a well of new land claims, could mean trouble for bigger projects like Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline, said Toledano.

“This is something that is happening all over B.C. And it’s something that I’m sure companies are paying attention to,” he said.