Fisheries study reveals an industry under threat

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A First Nations fishery panel held hearings Feb. 20 to March 5 in seven communities about the future of Aboriginal fisheries management. The goal was to explore a vision for a post-treaty fishery involving fishery management and allocation.

Panel members included Neil Sterritt, a consultant on Aboriginal issues and an Aboriginal fisheries advocate; Marcel Shepert, executive director of the Fraser Watershed Fisheries Secretariat; and Russ Jones, a fisheries consultant. The three men were appointed by a joint steering committee of the First Nations Summit and the British Columbia Aboriginal Fisheries Commission.

The panel travelled to Kamloops, Prince Rupert, Smithers, Prince George, Fort Rupert, Nanaimo and Chilliwack. In each community, presentations, oral histories and written submissions were presented to the panel.

"The issues basically are the marginalizaton of Aboriginal people in, not just the commercial fisheries, but also with respect to their source of food in their communities because of degradation of the environment and habitat," said Sterritt.

"People (have) been moved slowly out of the commercial fishery over the years, so unemployment were big issues, connection to the fish from a traditional point of view, disconnection, those were some of the issues that we talked about.

"There's more than salmon in the fishery. This study that we did includes all the aquatic species. That includes clams, geoducks, halibut, in addition to salmon. There's been increasing commercialization of various species that Aboriginal people have relied on for thousands of years, but they're now becoming licensed.

"So those are challenges that we had to face and those are the challenges that the managers of the fish, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, are facing, so those are issues that we're trying to address too."

The panel was one of the first of its kind. Sterritt said this was one of the few fisheries panels that has been led by Aboriginal people.

"We just really have to hand it the Aboriginal communities, the people that took the time to write their papers and put their thoughts down. That was an amazing process from our point of view. They saw this as a serious effort. It's one of the few times, if not the first time, that an Aboriginal panel has sat down to hear them describe their problems and to try to put that into perspective, as opposed to non-Aboriginal commissions and task groups and so on trying to do the same thing," he said.

Findings from the hearings will be compiled in a report that will be released at the end of the month. Sterritt said that many of the details and recommendations in the report will not be revealed until it is ready to be presented to both the federal and provincial governments.

"It will end up going on to the federal government. We are presenting it to the steering committee and the Aboriginal people at the end of the month. That's our target right now, we've got a deadline there and we're hoping to meet that. We are 90 per cent sure we're going to [meet] that, but we have to allow for the fact that this is a very important report and we want it to be right," said Sterritt.

Sterrritt remains cautiously optimistic about the effects the report will have after it is presented to the government.

"The history of government response to Aboriginal needs and rights and titles has been nothing but an uphill struggle going into the second century. We're hopeful, but we have to say that the record isn't good. There's an awful lot of dust sitting on good reports in government offices, both provincial and federal. That good stuff has gone nowhere so that's part of the challenge for this panel is to keep the dust off the cover of this report and to make it happen, that's part of our challenge. It's time there was change, I can say that much," said Sterritt.