In the days following the ruling Natives set up lobster traps, even though it was not fishing season, along the coast of the Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. "This is a question of establishing in life our right to fish," said Clarke Dedam from the Burnt Church Mi'kmaq community.

Natives argue that the ruling applies to other sectors of their activities as well. In mid-October, Mi'kmaqs from Big Cove, some 100 miles southwest of Burnt Church, cut logs from Crown (publicly owned) land and transported them to a saw mill in a widely publicized demonstration to assert their rights. The New Brunswick government seized the wood, arguing the operation was illegal. Provincial authorities warned saw mills not to accept logs unless the timber was cut by a licensed logging enterprise, thus excluding Natives.

On October 21, Mi'kmaqs succeeded in getting the Federal Court of Appeal to halt a multibillion dollar natural-gas project scheduled to be functioning by the end of November. Bernd Christmas, lawyer for the Nova Scotia Mi'kmaqs, said Natives are not willing to let the consortium pump gas from Sable Island, off Nova Scotia, until the socioeconomic impact of the project on Native people is dealt with.

On the West Coast, five Vancouver Island native bands stated their intention to open an unauthorized salmon fishery, citing the Supreme Court ruling.  
 

Government attacks Natives' rights

These mobilizations, however, are running up against the opposition of the Canadian government. Preston Manning, leader of the right-wing Reform Party, the main opposition party in the federal government in Ottawa, said the Supreme Court was wrong to grant fishing rights to Natives. He denounced the ruling as being "race based," and posed as a defender of the environment, as cover to his racist stance. "I don't think the court took into account the environmental consequences at all," Manning declared.

While recognizing that the Natives had the right to sell their fish all year round, the Supreme Court itself contradicted this first part of its ruling by giving Ottawa power to unilaterally limit Natives' fishing to allow them a "moderate living." The Toronto Globe and Mail underlined the fact that Ottawa's power "does not presume [Natives'] agreement."

Natives got an idea of what Ottawa thinks a "moderate living" is for a Native when Canada Fisheries minister Herb Dhaliwal ruled that the Mi'kmaqs from Burnt Church would be limited to 600 lobster traps among 1,450 people. In the same area, commercial fishermen are allowed 325 traps each. On October 22, Ottawa's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) seized Natives' lobster traps, claiming that they exceeded the limit of 600.

Ottawa itself presided over the exclusion of Natives from the lobster industry, through the establishment of a system of licenses in the 1970s. Natives were prevented from buying these licenses because they could not afford to buy large, technologically advanced boats to qualify for them. Non-Native fishermen could get loans from provincial governments. Native fishermen were told they didn't qualify because they were a federal responsibility under the Canadian Indian Act.

Since the 1970s no new licenses have been issued. The only way to get a license today is to buy one from a retiring fisherman. These licenses are now worth between Can$50,000 and as much as Can$250,000 (Can $1=US$0.67).

In the early 1990s, the Supreme Court ruled Natives had the right to fish for food and ceremonial purposes as long as they didn't sell their catch. The Mi'kmaqs from Burnt Church were allowed 375,000 pounds of lobster. "But what we need is an income, a job," said Clifford Larry, a Mi'kmaq fisherman from Burnt Church. "We proposed to the Canadian government to reduce the amount of lobster we were allowed for food to 125,000 pounds in exchange for commercial licenses. The DFO promised us 10 commercial licenses. In the end we got only five for the whole community."

Peter John Levi, a 61-year-old Mi'kmaq from Big Cove, explained how he was prevented from fishing. "For decades, my salmon fishing nets were regularly stolen," said Levi. "It took me some time before I finally discovered that the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] was stealing my fishing nets. They never charged me. All they wanted was to prevent me from fishing." Levi was in Burnt Church to support local Native fishers.

Their exclusion from fishing and working the forests is one of the reasons Natives earn much less on average than whites. Their life expectancy is shorter, infantile mortality much higher; illiteracy is far more than double. In Burnt Church, for example, 90 percent of the population lives on social welfare.

"We cannot give up, now that some things are coming our way," said Peter John Levi. "If we negotiate [with Ottawa] without fighting, we will offer them our weakness."

This sentiment is particularly strong in Burnt Church, one of the two Native communities that rejected a temporary moratorium on fishing accepted by representatives of 35 Native communities after the Supreme Court ruling.  
 

Reaching out to non-Native fishermen

On October 22 the Acadia First Nation and Nova Scotia commercial fishermen came to an agreement that Native fishermen will participate in the winter lobster fishing season beginning at the end of November. The settlement was reached behind Ottawa's back. Natives and commercial fishermen said they have two things in common: their interest in preserving the resources and their refusal to work with Ottawa.

Prior to this agreement, a series of clashes had taken place between Natives and fishermen. On October 3, some 150 non-Native fishermen went on a rampage, destroying more than 2,000 Native lobster traps in Burnt Church. This well-organized action took place in front of RCMP officers and several Coast Guard boats, while Native fishermen were standing on the wharf, outnumbered and unable to intervene.

The Department of Fisheries "could have prevented this," noted Ray Kimball, a Mi'kmaq from Burnt Church..

Later that night, three young Natives were savagely attacked by a white fisherman with a baseball bat.

Lobster fishers are small exploited producers. While licensed fishermen need one or two other persons on their boats during the fishing, usually these are members of their family. Fishermen hope that as long as there are no new licenses issued and the fishery is profitable, they will be able to sell their license at the end of their active life for more than they paid for it. These prospects hinge on restricting access to commercial lobster fishing. It is in this context that some of them see the emergence of Native fishermen as a threat.

In a statement released October 4, the day after the rampage off Burnt Church, the Maritime Fishermen's Union (MFU) said, "Licensed fishermen were forced to disable lobster traps," because "the Government of Canada…drove the fishermen into the position of having to defend their own livelihood." The statement asserted, "We do not accept that such treaty rights allows for unlimited and unregulated Native fishing."

Fisheries minister Dahliwal acknowledged that what Natives were catching was less than 1 percent of the overall harvest.

The MFU is not opposed to sharing the lobster fishery with Native fishermen. "Natives are not represented in the commercial fishery, there is some catching up to do," said Maurice Thériault from the MFU office in Shédiac, New Brunswick.

"The vast majority of our own members consider themselves fortunate if they make a 'moderate living,' " said the MFU statement. "We expect any Micmac people interested in earning a moderate livelihood from fishing will be able to do so in the commercial fisheries as they are conducted presently."

Natives and commercial fishermen are severely affected by the economic crisis hitting Canada's Atlantic Coast particularly hard. The region has been hit by the closing down of the east coast cod fishery due to overfishing by big fish companies. Federal government cutbacks on unemployment insurance led to big demonstrations by workers in northern New Brunswick and the adjoining Gaspé region of Quebec in the mid-1990s. Among the main targets of these cuts were workers relying on seasonal jobs, such as fishermen.

Acadians, a French-speaking oppressed nationality, played a big role in these mobilizations. They also successfully fought against attempts by the provincial government to shut down some of their schools. Many of the non-Native fishermen from Northern New Brunswick are Acadians. "We don't hold Acadians as a whole responsible for the October 3 attack against us," said Clifford Larry, from Burnt Church. "In fact Acadians and Natives have had good relations in the past."

The majority of the 300-plus workers at the Néguac Seafood fish processing plant, only few minutes from Burnt Church, earn the equivalent of US$4 an hour. Because of the lack of other jobs, some workers travel one hour each way to work there even though they rarely work 40 hours a week.

This struggle by Natives is an example of the kind of fight that they have put up in the past that led to the Supreme Court ruling. These struggles also break the isolation of Natives from other fighters and win support for the justice of their demands for access to jobs, for the settlement of land claims, and for Native self-government.

Michel Dugré is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Textile and Industrial Employees and Grant Hargrave, of the International Association of Machinists. Both are from Montreal.  
 
 
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