Prior to confronting the intruders, Douglas had used his cell phone to contact other members of the Cheam band. Within an hour about 100 people converged on the site. They were joined by about 15 First Nations leaders who had been meeting nearby. The DFO cops were forced to release Douglas. Band members impounded their car charging that the agents had been trespassing. They later released it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Meanwhile, the three DFO cops who assaulted Douglas were forced to walk several kilometers through mountainous Cheam territory back to their offices in Agissez.

Several band members then blockaded the Canadian National (CN) rail line running through the reserve holding up several trains for a few hours to demand that the DFO stop its attacks on the Cheam people. This is the principal CN link between Vancouver, the major port on the west coast, and the rest of Canada.

Douglas told Militant reporters that the Cheam are ready to be mobilized at a moment’s notice. “When the call comes out, the community responds instantly!” he said. “If something happens on the reserve, our people move pretty fast.” This kind of solidarity is the only way they have been able to stand up to the DFO’s confrontational tactics and maintain their right to fish salmon on the Fraser River. Douglas estimated that in the last few years alone the Cheam have faced between 150 to 200 charges of overfishing. “Look around,” he pointed out. “This is an impoverished community. We’re trying to survive.”

In the summer of 2000, the Cheam blockaded provincial roads that cross their land demanding that the government stop encroaching on their territory and act to resolve the Cheam land claims.

The DFO has put the three officers who attacked Douglas on administrative leave with pay. “This is the first time that any DFO officers have ever been put on leave like this,” Douglas said. The DFO has no procedures in place to investigate the misconduct of its officers, he added.

DFO officers must notify the Cheam if they are going on their land, according to an agreement between the Cheam and the DFO that has been in effect for several years. On June 17, Douglas for the Cheam Nation and Colin Masson for the DFO signed an accord that reaffirmed the same provisions and placed additional limitations on DFO officers approaching Cheam lands by boat or in the air.

The Vancouver Sun immediately attacked the agreement for giving the Cheam too much power and undermining the DFO’s authority. Front page headlines declared, “Threats from Indian band triggered controversial deal.” The article went on to suggest that DFO officials’ lives might be at stake.

The drop in salmon stocks has been fueling the debate. The stocks have been in decline for decades because of the destruction of the spawning rivers. In addition to overfishing, destructive logging practices, hydroelectric dams, and pollution of the water have taken their toll.

A commission established by Ottawa in 1994 to study the Canadian salmon fishery criticized the government and the fishing industry for this decline. It said that incompetence by the DFO that year nearly led to the extinction of the Adams River salmon run, an important stock on the west coast.

Decades of struggle by the Cheam and other First Nations (indigenous peoples of Canada) for the right to fish, in particular the fight of the Mi’kmaq people on the Atlantic Coast, forced a 1999 Supreme Court ruling recognizing the right of indigenous peoples to sell fish caught outside the legal fishing season. The DFO in response instituted the Aboriginal Fishing Strategy, which states that a certain percentage of the catch can be allocated to Natives. In British Columbia that amounts to 5 percent.

A recent court ruling in this province underlined the challenge before the Cheam and other First Nations to enforce that right. Judge Brian Saunderson of Campbell River granted absolute discharges to 40 non-Native fishermen who caught over 5,000 fish out of season as a protest against what they felt was a premature closure of the season by the DFO. The judge said that fining the fishermen would bring the administration of justice into disrepute because “it would make the court complicit with the DFO in benefiting Indians over others.”

The Vancouver Sun applauded Saunderson’s ruling and headlined its editorial demanding “No more separate season for native salmon fishery.”  
 
 
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