Native fishermen must enlist support before election

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The disappearance of a few hundred thousand fish in the Fraser River last fall has stirred up more than just concern for the future of a natural resource. It has polarized much of the Canadian fisheries industry over the rights of Natives to harvest food fish alongside commercial, non-Native fisheries.

And it has reignited tempers on both sides of the issue of Native rights to resource management and land use - in short, the issue of Native self-determination.

Last fall, when 500,000 sockeye salmon did not show up at spawning grounds in the Fraser River watershed, commercial fisheries immediately blamed the newly formed Native fisheries. The Native blamed Ottawa for not managing the resources properly.

An independent researcher concluded that over-fishing was to blame and that no one group was more at fault.

But the issue did not end there.

The parties involved in the B.C. dispute, the Native bands in the Fraser River watershed, the federal government, and the B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition (FSC),

have yet to agree on a solution to the real, mutual dilemma - disappearing fish stocks.

The FSC has dedicated itself to the conservation of Canada's fish resources by stopping the commercialization of Native food fisheries "to ensure fish resources are available to all future generations of Canadians regardless of race." Saving the resource seems secondary to keeping the west-coast fisheries Native-free. The future is free to allow Native fisheries on the Fraser, but the present is not.

Native groups, on the other hand, in anticipation of a possible federal election,

are steeling themselves for a bout of negative publicity from the non-Native fishing sector. Commercial fisheries will turn resource management into an election issue, Assembly of First Nations grand chief Ovide Mercredi told conference-goers in Ottawa last month. He concluded that Natives must have a national perspective to prevent further erosion of their resource rights.

So far, the FSC has done what it can to publicize its idea, paranoid though it may be, of the possible consequences of Ottawa's Aboriginal fishing Strategy - exclusive Aboriginal commercial fisheries everywhere. FSC members have held demonstrations, lobbied the provincial and federal governments and even targeted some MLAs and MPs

to garner support. And now that the AFN has its back up, a compromise between Native and non-Native fisheries seems even less likely.

But the most important issue in all of this, the rights of Natives to manage a share of a dwindling Canadian resource, has become muddled by racist fears and political rhetoric.

If Mercredi is right about the election (and he probably is) then Canadians at large will once again get the option to vote on the issue of Native self-determination. This time, resource rights in all sectors of the economy, not just fishing, will probably be on the auction block.

It's vital then that Native groups get the electorate on-side before this becomes

an election issue. Managing that will be difficult, especially as Ottawa tends to foster an air of mistrust and paranoia between parties by negotiating with Native and non-Native industries on separate levels.

But with the Canadian economy in tatters, and radicals like British Columbia's

FSC preparing to poison the general populace against the idea of a Native economy,

time is running out for Aboriginal Canadians if they want to secure their own piece of

the money pie and prevent the further delay of self-government.