FSIN leader calls prosecution of First Nations hunters waste of time, money

The provincial government should stop wasting time and money prosecuting Treaty First Nations hunters for exercising their right to hunt, an Indigenous leader says after the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturned a lower court conviction.

“The treaty and inherent rights that we have as First Nations, Treaty Indians, that has to be taught, not only with our ministers but people on the ground, conservation officers and police officers,” said Vice-Chief Heather Bear of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN).

“It’s wasting our time, wasting our resources ... (They need to) know and understand what our rights are.”

In the fall of 2015, a Saskatchewan conservation officer charged Kristjan Pierone under the Wildlife Act for hunting where he wasn’t allowed.

Pierone had shot a bull moose that was in an uncultivated slough about 70 metres off a grid road. The slough was on private land that hadn’t been farmed for a few years.

No fence separated it from the field and there were no signs prohibiting hunting.

Pierone was found not guilty in 2016, after a trial in Swift Current Provincial Court. The Crown appealed and a Queen’s Bench judge subsequently convicted Pierone in 2017.

He took his case to the Appeal Court, where Justice Neal Caldwell reinstated the not guilty verdict on the grounds that the lower court had made an error in law.

Caldwell found that Pierone had a right of access to hunt in the slough because it hadn’t been “taken up” for any “visible, incompatible use.”

Pierone said he chooses to live off the land, as his ancestors did, and he’s teaching his children to hunt.

“It gives me a great feeling to know I carry on that tradition,” he said.

“This is a significant victory given that Crown lands continue to be taken up at an alarming rate, leaving less land on which our Treaty hunters can hunt. Many First Nations continue to rely on wildlife for sustenance, and hunting supplements our incomes,” Bear noted.