Sea to shining sea

Page 9

It was high noon on a busy Friday when a couple of hundred Aboriginal people took to the streets and marched from the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre to Harbour Centre, the building where the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has its Pacific regional headquarters.

The march was organized to show support of the Mi'kmaq Indians at Burnt Church, N.B. for exercising their treaty right to a commercial fishery, under seige by the DFO and the Canadian government.

The busy intersection of Seymour and Hastings was completely blocked for more than a half-hour with protesters singing songs, beating hand drums and waving banners in the air.

It was announced that the office of DFO Minister Herb Dahliwahl was occupied and a list of demands was read out over a bullhorn.

The demands included a call for the resignation of Dhaliwal for authorizing the use of 'excessive violence' against Mi'kmaq fishermen.

Protesters also insisted that DFO recognize and affirm the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet peoples' legal and constitutionally-recognized right to fish, hunt and gather. They wanted the DFO officers who rammed a Native fishing vessel to be brought to justice. There was also a demand that the government of Canada recognize the legal decisions of its highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada, and begin implementing the Marshall decision (which affirmed the Mi'kmaq's treaty right), and the Delgamuukw decision in order to protect and affirm Aboriginal rights and title.

Larry Wong, an Aboriginal veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces is from the Kitwanga community. He carried an inverted Canadian flag in the rally.

"I am ashamed of this country that I served 22 years in the Canadian Armed Forces, standing on line for Canada only to come back without a uniform," he said. "I have a right to be ashamed of this flag that I fought for."

The flag was burned during the rally. Patricia Kelly from Cheam, a community that also recently protested the treatment by Canada in a land rights question by erecting a road blockade, was one of the people who lit the flag on fire.

"I want Canada to stop burning Burnt Church and for Chretien to know we remember the White Paper," she said, referring to the now notorious policy paper presented in 1969 by then-Indian Affairs minister Jean Chretien calling for the assimilation of Native people. "The flag burning is my way of showing support and solidarity for the people of Burnt Church."