Editorial

Burnt Church and the Issue of Aboriginal Rights

On September 12, federal fisheries officers escalated their attacks against Mi'kmaq lobster fishers from Burnt Church, seizing four boats and arresting fourteen people who were exercising their right to participate in the lobster fishery. One Mi'kmaq boat was rammed by a fisheries vessel, throwing four people into the water and injuring one.

Federal Fisheries Minister Herb Dhaliwal and the federal Liberal caucus have justified the ongoing attacks against the rights of the Mi'kmaq people on the basis of upholding the Fisheries Act and in the interest of conservation of lobster stocks. These excuses are clearly a cover for the federal government's real agenda, which is the continuing denial of aboriginal rights.

For decades the First Nations people of the region have been essentially excluded from the commercial lobster fishery by the licensing system used by the Department of Fisheries to control the industry. They have been restricted to a small number of traps for food and ceremonial purposes. Last year the Supreme Court ruled in the Marshall case that under treaties signed with the British government in 1725 the Mi'kmaq people of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have a right to earn a "reasonable" livelihood from commercial lobster fishing. When the Mi'kmaq people attempted to exercise the rights recognized in this decision, however, their traps and boats were destroyed by both the federal fisheries officers and non-native lobster fishers. Negotiations took place over the winter months in an attempt to reach a peaceful settlement of the dispute, but the federal government has demonstrated repeatedly that it has no intention of negotiating in good faith. It has insisted that, despite the Supreme Court decision the Mi'kmaq people have no aboriginal rights in regard to exploitation of the natural resources of the region and that their participation in the lobster fishery will be only to the extent allowed by the fisheries department. They have also demanded that the Mi'kmaq fishers keep their traps out of the water while negotiations are continuing. Those "negotiations" have been continuing in one form or another since 1725, with no end in sight.

The claim that these measures are required in order to protect the lobster stocks simply does not wash. The Mi'kmaq lobster fishers have put only 5,000 traps in the water, less than half a percent of the total, which is in excess of 1,000,000. This represents an insignificant increase in the total numbers of lobster harvested, clearly not enough to have any effect on lobster stocks, at least in the short-term. Why then has the federal government converted a practical, political problem into a matter of "law and order" and reacted with such violence?

The issue clearly has nothing to do with lobster. Rather, it is to send a message to aboriginal peoples across the country that any attempt to exercise their treaty or aboriginal rights will be met with the armed violence of the state. Recent court rulings have begun to recognize that aboriginal peoples have a legal right to share in the use of a broad range of natural resource, both on the basis of treaties signed by the British and Canadian governments and the fact that they are the original inhabitants of this land. Those resource are currently under the exclusive control of the federal and provincial governments and are being exploited predominantly by huge multinational corporations, which have no intention of sharing them with the aboriginal peoples or anyone else. The case of the destruction of the cod fisheries demonstrated quite amply that the federal government and its Department of Fisheries are in the service of those multinationals and not in the service of the people.

The struggle of the Mi'kmaq people of Burnt Church is a struggle against the old, colonial relations which are tearing Canada apart. It is a struggle against a government which is determined to convert every political demand of the people into a "law and order" issue to be dealt with by the police, courts and armed forces. As such, it is not just a struggle of aboriginal peoples, but a struggle of the entire Canadian people to create a modern society and a modern nation.