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...
Observation Teams for the Chippewas of Nawash
[from PBI's Project Bulletin, September, 1996]
At the end of August, PBI responded to a request by the Chippewas
of Nawash to provide observers to a conflict over fishing. The
Nawash were monitoring sport fishing during the annual "Salmon
Spectacular" fishing derby at Owen Sound, in Ontario, Canada, and
were concerned there might be a repeat of last year's incidents
of violence.
The Chippewas of Nawash and their neighbours, the Chippewas of
Saugeen, have treaty rights to the fisheries in an area around
the Bruce Peninsula that divides Georgian Bay from Lake Huron.
Until 1992, these treaty rights had gone unrecognized by the
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), who had been
charging the Nawash with illegal fishing. In 1992 a federal court
decision upheld the Nawash fishing rights, and directed the MNR
to establish a fisheries policy that prioritized conservation,
Chippewa fishing, commercial fishing, and sport fishing, in that
order.
Since that time, the MNR has bought out all the commercial
fisheries. The Nawash are regulating their use of the fishery,
amid varying statements by the MNR and the Nawash about numbers
of the different fish species and whether the fishery should be
closed down completely. At the same time, sport fishing has
continued largely unregulated. The Nawash say that the sport
fishery has a signifcant impact on the bay's ecology, as well as
their commercial fish stocks, and asked that the fishing derby be
cancelled. The MNR responded by scheduling a meeting after the
derby is over.
At a press conference on Friday Aug 23, the first day of the
Salmon Spectacular, Ralph Akiwenzie, chief of the Chippewas of
Nawash, announced that the Nawash would monitor the fishing
during the derby.
"We hope to come up with some very interesting statistics" to
back up the idea that "conservation is a two-way street. It's not
just the native people, it's everyone," said Akiwenzie. He
stressed that the Nawash band wanted to avoid a confrontation
with anglers on the water, while underlining its conservation
concerns, and what it regards as the "unregulated" state of
sports fishing in Ontario. [The Sun Times, Aug 24].
During last year's Salmon Spectacular, a number of incidents were
seen by the Nawash as evidence of a violent backlash to their
assertion of their fishing rights. Two of their boats were sunk
in unexplained circumstances, one was burned down to the hull,
several Nawash youth were stabbed with no charges being laid for
ten months, and many yards of nets were lost to vandalism.
Earlier in the summer, a Nawash woman selling fish at the local
farmer's market was the target of an angry and violent protest by
anglers. [see Project Bulletin, Sept 1995]
PBI's observation work
Over the two weekends of the derby PBI members travelled with the
Nawash on their fisheries assessment boat as they monitored the
numbers of boats and anglers in the bay. We witnessed some
harassment from anglers in the form of angry gestures, but other
anglers were friendly and waved.
Nevertheless, in interviews with the derby co-chairs, and through
informal monitoring of the feeling amongst anglers on the shore,
we gathered that there is a great deal of hostility towards the
Nawash. There is a real, and justified, fear amongst the anglers
that the sport fishing around Owen Sound will be shut down
because of the Nawash. They do not consider their sport fishing
to be affecting the Nawash at all since the fish they catch are
almost all from their own stocking programs.
The question of how the salmon stocking affects other fish in the
bay was a topic of debate during the press conference. Salmon eat
their own weight in other fish each day, and the presence of
large numbers of salmon is assumed by the Nawash to be creating
competition with the other fish (mostly whitefish, but also some
trout) for limited food stocks. More fundamentally, the two sides
disagree on the ethics of putting salmon into Georgian Bay, where
it is not a native species.
Amongst the fisherman along the shore we heard little sympathy
for the Nawash position, and a growing sense of frustration. One
fishermen expressed his impatience by saying, "if you poke a bear
too often, he'll fight back." This feeling - that native people
are asking for and getting too much is quite common. A national
poll taken a few months ago in Canada also reflected non-Native
resentment towards Natives. Unfortunately, the poll results were
not accompanied by some basic facts about the situation of Native
people compared to non-Natives.
How the hostility we witnessed might be expressed is still
uncertain. At the moment, the low-level, everyday racism
experienced by the Nawash is likely to increase. If the sport
fishery is directly challenged, it will be even more likely that
more incidents of violence, like the ones from last year, will be
repeated. We hope that our visible witness of the situation as
outside, independent observers has some effect in reducing the
chance of such incidents. We also helped to organize local people
to participate in the observation effort, and hope that this can
challenge some of the local non-Native population to reconsider
their views on the situation.