Native Rights: Sharing Resources

Most news stories are multifactored and multidimensional. Before reading the information below, discuss as a class the meaning of these two terms and how they relate to news and current events in general. Then keeping the terms in mind, read the information carefully.

With much of the maritime fishing industry decimated through overfishing, one of the few areas within the industry that is still lucrative is the lobster sector. If one is lucky enough to be working as a lobster fisher on the richest lobster grounds—those found on the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia by Yarmouth— one can easily make $60 000 (before taxes) for six months of hard work. In an area of high unemployment, this makes lobster fishers the envied “haves” in a region of “have-nots.” As The Toronto Star put it, “The ruling affects more than rights, and economics. It also challenges the structure of society here, where natives are at the bottom just as surely as lobster fishermen are at the top.”

Historically, natives in the Maritimes have been dealt a difficult hand, as has frequently been the case with indigenous people elsewhere in the world. Most reserves in Atlantic Canada are desperately poor. Unemployment is over 80 per cent, and housing on the reserves is scarce, making the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet among the poorest people in Canada. Given a chance to finally get a share of the lucrative lobster pie, many natives are jubilant. But as one observer noted, “The problem is how do you take a pie that’s already fixed in size and introduce more people to it? The pieces have to be smaller.”

However, with their own families to feed and mortgages to pay, non-native lobster fishers refuse to remain passive while watching their piece of the pie being increasingly consumed by others. For over 100 years workers within the lobster industry have been part of a close-knit community that has tightly controlled the fishery. Both government and union have imposed strict regulations on when and how lobsters can be caught and have a series of rules that make it difficult for newcomers to join the field. The fishing licence alone costs approximately $200 000, and without it one cannot fish for lobsters commercially.

Although the industry is regulated by the federal government, many of the real rules have been passed down from father to son through a complex series of gentlemen’s agreements. As writer Kelly Toughill pointed out in The Toronto Star, “Tradition gives each fishing family their own little stretch of coast. If someone else tries to drop traps there—even if allowed to by law—their traps simply disappear.” This was the tradition even before the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet started to set their traps, and the practice has continued in several instances since the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Marshall case, perhaps nowhere as extreme as in Burnt Church, New Brunswick.

Discussion
1. Why is this news event multifactored and multidimensional?

2. Using an economics textbook as a resource, define the concept of supply management. In what ways have the lobster fishers in the Maritimes had an effective supply management system? Can you think of other effective supply management systems in Canada? For example, consider the agricultural sector of the Canadian economy. How are agricultural supply management systems similar to the lobster fishery? How are they different?

3. The lobster industry is one of the few fisheries that has effectively managed stock levels through restrictive barriers to entry. What are some of these barriers to entry?
4. From 1979 to 1991, lobster stocks were consistently growing. Since then, there has been a reduction in stock from 10 to 20 per cent, depending on the area. In your opinion, is there a danger in opening up the lobster fishery to more fishers? Do you think that the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision recognizing aboriginal treaty rights to make a moderate living from fishing, hunting, and gathering will have serious repercussions on lobster stocks?

5. Do you agree or disagree with the following quotation?
“It is our view that there has been an assault on the entire fishery of the coasts around the Maritimes by the world’s non-native fishermen—a fishery that excluded the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet people for two centuries. It is ludicrous for anyone to suggest that in two weeks Indian fishermen “are having a serious impact on a sustainable resource” after 200 years of depletion of the stocks by non-aboriginal people.” — Harry W. Daniels, President of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen, October 6, 1999.

6. Suggest reasons why non-native lobster fishers might be justified in not wanting to share the industry with the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet. Also suggest reasons why they might not be justified in taking that position.

7. There is a common practice in families when it comes to sharing food, especially the last piece of the pie. If two children want to share the last piece, one gets to do the dividing and the other gets to do the choosing. In your opinion, is this an effective way to teach the sharing of resources? Is it a good way? In what way might this News in Review story suggest similar challenges faced by parents who strive to develop good parenting skills?

Introduction
Managing the Community
Sharing A Lobster
Conflict on the Miramichi
Sound-Bites
Renegotiating Rights
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions

Using both the print and non-print material from various issues of News in Review, teachers and students can create comprehensive, thematic modules that are excellent for research purposes, independent assignments, and small group study. We recommend the stories indicated below for the universal issues they represent and for the archival and historic material they contain.

“The Fish War: Pirates or Patriots?” May 1995
“Native Claims: Growing Frustrations,” October 1995
“The Nisga’a Settlement: Who Owns British Columbia?” May 1996

Does Your Resource Collection Include These CBC Videos?

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