Fuel to the fire

Page 6

The accusations that Indians killed a herd of Bighorn sheep near Rocky Mountain House has blown the lid off a simmering pot of explosive opinions regarding Native hunting rights.

Many people have long disputed the special status of Indians when it comes to hunting, and this incident just adds fuel to the fire. It has already prompted an Alberta Wilderness Association biologist to press for a restriction of Treaty hunting rights.

The incident, coupled with another media-dubbed "senseless shooting" of elk along Highway 40 in southern Alberta's Kananaskis Country, has Gregg Smith appearing on radio and television defending Treaty rights and insisting that the second killing is a set-up to further implicate Indians as irresponsible hunters.

As an ex-policeman, he has many questions about the legal aspects of the sheep killing, namely ? why have no charges been laid against the alleged young Indians who were described by onlookers as wildly shooting their guns and narrowly missing a lodge-owner who witnessed the whole spectacle? Surely someone jotted down the license number of the one-tonne flatbed truck the Indians piled the sheep onto.

There are a number of questions about the incident that remain unanswered. Perhaps they never will because Fish and Wildlife officials have indicated they intend to drop the entire matter. They believe the incident is so embarrassing to whatever faction actually did the killing that they would never admit to it anyway.

They have a point. Even though Chief John Snow, of the Good Stoney band has gone on record as saying his people did not do the killing, but public opinion that they did cannot be changed so easily.

Whether or not any law-enforcing is done over the incident, one thing emerges perfectly clear ? the real issue here is wildlife management.

A day or so before news of the killing hit the media, an Indian Association of Alberta contingent sat down with Forestry Lands and Wildlife Minister LeRoy Fjordbotten to talk about forming a Native group to deal with conservation of wildlife resources. The proposal involved the development of an education series by Natives to teach young people to conserve wildlife and know their Treaty rights.

Perhaps if the government involved Indians more closely with wildlife management issues they would see that most still follow traditional methods of wildlife conservation and are more than capable of managing this resource.