Twenty years before a wharf in Saulnierville, N.S., became a flashpoint in the fight over Indigenous fishing rights in Atlantic Canada, a similar scene played out in New Brunswick on the water outside Miramichi.
Angry that Mi’kmaq fishers were harvesting lobsters outside the federally-approved season, a flotilla of more than a hundred fishing vessels chased Indigenous boats, pulled their traps from the water and sparked a wave of vigilantism, arson and brawls in what became known as the Burnt Church crisis.
Everyone was concerned that people were going to die, said Herb Dhaliwal, the former federal fisheries minister who was in charge at the time. I had commercial fishermen saying we’re going to bring our guns and we’re going to shoot anyone fishing our lobster.’
It was a violent, emotional battle over the Mi’kmaq people’s right to set their own rules for a commercial fishery. Two decades later, that tension remains this time, causing strife in Canada’s most lucrative lobster fishing zone in southwestern Nova Scotia.
Like Burnt Church, this latest lobster dispute can be linked back to 1999?s Marshal Decision, when the Supreme Court of Canada sided with Donald Marshall Jr., a Mi’kmaq man charged with fishing and selling eels without a licence. That landmark decision affirmed Indigenous people’s right to earn a moderate livelihood from fishing. But the ruling also left a lot of room for interpretation including defining what a moderate livelihood actually looks like, and how that fishery should be regulated.
The federal government negotiates fishing agreements band by band, but some, such as the Sipekne’katik First Nation, have not wanted to make the concessions over control demanded in those deals. Earlier this month, on the anniversary of the Marshall Decision, Sipekne’katik decided to assert their treaty rights, issuing their own commercial fishing licences and announcing they would determine for themselves what a moderate livelihood means. They awarded their first fishing licence to Randy Sack, the son of Mr. Marshall.
It’s believed to be the first Mi’kmaq-managed commercial fishery in the province. But it’s also prompted demonstrations and angry clashes in Saulnierville with large crowds of non-Indigenous fishers, angry that a lobster harvest was taking place after the local season had closed. Sipekne’katik fishers say their boats were blocked by more than a hundred vessels when they tried to leave the harbour, chased on the water and shot at with flare guns. Police made several arrests after supporters for both sides got physical, and are investigating complaints of sabotage against Sipekne’katik equipment.