Lobster destroyed, vehicle burned in ‘mob’ attack on Mi’kmaq fishery.
Fishery tensions
HALIFAX • An angry crowd of non- Indigenous people surrounded and damaged lobster pounds holding the catch of a Mi’kmaq First Nation on Tuesday night as tensions rose over the fishery in southwestern Nova Scotia.
RCMP confirmed in a news release Wednesday that about 200 people were present at two incidents outside lobster facilities in southwestern Nova Scotia, during which employees were prevented from leaving, rocks were thrown and a vehicle was set on fire.
Chief Mike Sack of Sipekne’ katik First Nation told a news conference that a location damaged in New Edinburgh, N.S., belonged to a licensed lobster buyer who had agreed to sell the Indigenous catch harvested by the Sipekne’katik boats.
According to the chief, the people who came to the facility removed and damaged video cameras first and “ransacked the approved buyer’s lobster pound and storage facility where the communal catch was to be housed.”
Police were notified immediately but the commercial fishers remained on the scene “to continue their intimidation tactics,” the chief said of the incident in the coastal community.
RCMP say the incident in New Edinburgh began at about 4 p. m. Tuesday, and five hours later they received calls about the second incident in Middle West Pubnico.
Photos posted on Facebook also showed lobster strewn about the Middle West Pubnico facility and a sign saying, “Chief Sacks management plan.”
The RCMP said in the release they were advised that the large group was preventing employees from leaving the lobster processing facility.
“Upon arrival, officers obser ved approximately 200 people in the area and worked to de- escalate the situation and disperse the group. Unfortunately events escalated,” resulting in further damage, the police said.
Jason Marr, a fisher from Sipekne’katik, said he and another Indigenous lobster fisherman were trapped inside the Middle West Pubnico facility after he arrived to store his lobster.
He said the non- Indigenous “mob” threw stones at the facility, broke windows and damaged his van.
“Somebody followed me to the place in Pubnico, and I wasn’t there for three minutes before 200 guys showed up,” he said in a telephone interview. “They threw rocks and smashed every window,” he said.
Marr said he and another fisher from Sipekne’ katik, had all of their catch in the facility and did not want to leave it unprotected.
He said he finally left at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday, after all of the lobster he and the other fisherman had caught — more than 1,500 kilograms — had been taken out and destroyed by the crowd.
At his news conference, Sack said he wanted a heavier police presence to protect his fishers.