Shots fired at Mi'kmaw fisherman in Nova Scotia, Canada; one person arrested
by Aaron Beswick
December 15,2020
| Source:
The Telegram
Sylvia Bernard offered to go.
“I said ‘No, it might be dangerous’,” recalled her partner, Gary Denny.
It was Sunday afternoon, Dec. 13, and a fishing boat was amongst the traps they set under a moderate livelihood licence issued by the Pictou Landing First Nation.
So Denny launched the family’s 16-foot aluminum boat with a side-by-side and steamed toward the Cape Islander alone.
“He starts coming toward me full speed and I kind of froze, thinking he’s going to get me either way — either he will ram me or his wake will capsize me,” said Denny.
According to Denny, the Cape Islander came within 10 metres and then made a sharp port turn toward the northeast.
As he rode out the swell from the larger boat, he heard the first gunshot.
Bernard, watching from the yard bedecked with the toys of their three children, heard it, too.
“Gary just sat there in the boat for what felt like 10 minutes — it wasn’t — it would only have been seconds, and I was yelling at him, I thought he’d been shot,” said Bernard on Monday.
Three shots were fired and Denny said he saw one of them skimming along the water some 15 metres from his craft as the bigger vessel steamed away.
“I was thinking to myself, I might die, I might be injured, but for my people to fish in peace, I was willing to take a bullet,” Denny said Monday.
Sunday’s incident is the latest escalation in this fall’s moderate livelihood struggle.
The Sipekne’katik, Potlotek, Membertou and Pictou Landing First Nations have all issued their own tags for lobster traps to be fished by their members.
The move comes 21 years after the Supreme Court of Canada instructed the fisheries minister to create and consult on a regulatory framework that allowed Mi’kmaw and Maliseet members to earn a moderate livelihood off the resource.
While DFO spent some $540 million buying up commercial licences and transferring them to First Nations, it never began consultation on a separate fishery that addressed the right acknowledged by the court in its famous Marshall decisions.
That is until this fall, when First Nations began launching their own fisheries.
Two weeks ago, federal Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan sent Sipekne’katik First Nation a memorandum of understanding that would have provided the band with 10 licences for 70 traps each that had to be fished during the LFA 34 commercial fishery (late November through to spring).
Chief Mike Sack ended talks with Jordan last week, saying his First Nation refused to be lumped in with a commercial fishery.
Sipekne’katik has 15 commercial lobster licences among LFA’s 33, 34 and 35.
There are apparently consultations going on between the minister and other First Nations but Jordan has refused to release further details on them as they are “nation to nation.”
Commercial fishermen have called for a moderate livelihood fishery to be conducted during the local commercial seasons, which were established for conservation and market purposes.
Prices for licences and gear vary according to the area they are fished, but $400,000 is common figure along this stretch of coast, where the commercial fishery runs through May and June.
Many commercial fishermen have been reticent to speak publicly, saying they fear being labelled as a racist or targeted on social media if their names are used.
They say they fear that new effort on a limited resource will hurt their enterprises.
And that the resource has been kept healthy because of voluntary measures adopted by the industry, such as v-notching, trap reductions, escape hatches in traps and returning productive females to the water.
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