Moderate livelihood and the right to fish
Honouring of treaty rights would be catch of day
I wish to fully support Lennox Island Chief Darlene Bernard's stand to uphold our right to fish.
Protection of Mi'kmaq fishing rights was first guaranteed by the Treaty of 1752, then entrenched in the Canadian Constitution in 1982, and upheld by Canada's Supreme Court in 1990. These are the provisions of the 1752 Treaty that have been the focus of the Mi'kmaq treaty rights controversy: the rights to hunt, to fish, to trade — and to have these rights protected every day.
The Treaty of 1752 still applies to every Mi'kmaq person. The right to fish is a right shared collectively by all Mi'kmaq people. DFO is in violation of those collective rights if it obtains agreements pertaining to the management of Mi'kmaq fisheries without having obtained a clear consensus to do so from all Mi'kmaq people under the sanction of the 1752 Treaty and subsequent Canadian law.
The signing, even without consensus, of fisheries management agreements may compromise rights for future Mi'kmaq fisheries. The Treaty of 1752 recognized and guaranteed continued Mi'kmaq possession of most of the Atlantic provinces. The right to hunt and fish was without restrictions. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 expanded on the treaty and forbade any person or government official to acquire Mi'kmaq property without paying fair compensation.
Not long after the Supreme Court 1990 r. v Sparrow decision, the Mi'kmaq people of Epekwitk, decided to resume their hunting and fishing rights. It has been a frustrating, and at times violent 32 years since then and the issue is far from resolved.
Here are two relevant sections of the 1752 Treaty, which include promises of infrastructure for commercial use and ownership of their lands for the Mi'kmaq signatories of the Treaty.
4. It is agreed that the said Tribe of Indians shall not be hindered from, but have free liberty of hunting and fishing as usual and that if they shall think a truck house needful at the River Chibenaccadie [Shubenacadie] or any other place of their resort they shall have the same built and proper merchandize, lodged therein to be exchanged for what the Indians shall have to dispose of and that in the mean time the Indians shall have free liberty to bring to sale to Halifax or any other settlement within this province, skins, feathers, fowl, fish or any other thing they shall have to sell, where they shall have liberty to dispose thereof to the best advantage. 8. That all disputes whatsoever that may happen to arise between the Indians now at peace and others His Majesty's subjects in this province shall be tried in His Majesty's Courts of Civil Judicature, where the Indians shall have the same benefits, advantages and privileges as any others of His Majesty's subjects.
The Treaty apparently was negotiated in French, the only language that both parties could understand, and the text was published in French as well as English.
I also find it very discriminatory, and maybe against the Canadian Human Rights Act, that Indigenous fisheries are restricted by DFO to a “moderate livelihood”. But the non-native fisheries are not restricted to a “moderate livelihood”.