Nawash in fish fight on Lake Huron

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Fish wars are in danger of breaking out on Lake Huron with the Native community on one side and the government and sports anglers on the other.

Following the alleged collapse of a much-touted fish co-management agreement, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources seized 3,000 pounds of fish caught by Native fishermen who had braved the lake's icy waters to set their nets in the first days of the new year.

"It's hard, dangerous work out there and now we can't pay our crew," said Guy Nadjiwon whose family has fished the waters for generations.

Last June, after the province spent $14 million buying out the fish quotas of 10 non-Native Bruce Peninsula operations, the area's two Ojibway bands, the provincial natural resources ministry and Indian and Northern Affairs reached a fish co-management agreement.

That agreement was breached, allege the fishermen, when the natural resources ministry failed to share lake-wide fish data as promised.

"So we retaliated by fishing off Meaford," said Guy Nadjiwon from the Chippewas of Nawash Cape Croker reserve on the Bruce Peninsula. His family owns one of two fish tugs at the centre of this latest dispute.

Acting without the permission of the Nawash fishery, the tugs broke through the ice on the harbor to get out onto the lake. The crews, carrying sledgehammers, had to climb onto the outside of the tugs to break off the ice formed when the spray hit below zero temperatures.

"If we don't keep the boat free of ice, it builds up. The boat becomes top heavy and tips over," said Nadjiwon.

A resources ministry map of the agreement shows the waters available to the Ojibway for commercial fishing include almost the entire Bruce Peninsula to an area a few miles west of Meaford.

But Native leaders have insisted an 1836 treaty gives them the right to a commercial fishery in an area as far as Collingwood, about 20 miles east of Meaford.

"So now we're back to where we were before the agreement," said Nadjiwon.

That's not how the natural resources ministry sees it.

Along with the hundreds of pounds of fish seized on Jan. 5, the ministry ordered fish wholesalers not to buy any more fish caught by the Nadjiwon tug and a tug owned by Jay Jones, also of Cape Croker, said John Cooper, spokesperson for the ministry's Lake Huron management unit.

"We've determined they have been fishing outside of the agreement area," said Cooper, who disputes Nadjiwon's charge that it was the ministry that breached the agreement first.

The fish seized at a fish wholesaler in Owen Sound represented Jan. 4th's catch by the tugs, he said.

Fish wholesalers who don't follow the order could face fines as high as $100,000.

By seizing the fish-worth about $6,000-without first laying charges, the ministry put the Native fishers in an impossible position, said Nadjiwon.

"We want our day in court so we can fight this and prove we are right," he said. There is no word when or if charges will be brought against the fishermen.

Cooper said the fish were seized as part of an ongoing investigation. The fish will be sold and the money held in trust. If charges are laid and proved in court the money will be forfeited. If not, the funds will be returned to the fishermen, said Cooper.

Although the ministry has ordered fish wholesalers not to buy from them, Jones and Nadjiwon had to go out Jan. 6, their nets set the previous afternoon.

"We've got no-one to sell our fish to, so we'll have to let it rot," said Nadjiwon.

Nawash Chief Ralph Akiwenzie said he wants to keep the situation low key so as not to end up with a repeat of the fish wars of recent years, when thousands of metres of Native nets were destroyed and a Native fishing tug was set afire and then sunk.

"We want to create a climate for dialogue," said Akiwenzie. "The agreement is in its infancy. There are bound to be problems with interpretation."

Nawash bylaw enforcement officers who were at the dock to weigh the fish brought in by the tugs are monitoring the situation, said Akiwnzie.

The situation escalated when Jones brought in his nets and the Jan. 6 catch. About 50 angry and sometimes jeering non-Native people had to be kept back from the dock by police.

"That's not your fish. You're raping the waters," shouted one man, cheered on by the crowd as Jones and his three-man crew unloaded 26 boxes of whitefish and five boxes of lake trout.

"There's a box of fish. Take it home with you. It's no good to me," said Jones as he threw a box of lake trout on the dock.

There were no takers.

Following the incident on the Meaford dock, Akiwenzie announced his people would withdraw from Meaford until further talks with the ministry are scheduled.

"Our fishermen have withdrawn from any areas that might be construed as being east of the boundary of the band's traditional waters," said Akiwenzie.

But Akiwenzie charges the ministry failed to follow protocols laid out in the fish co-management agreement.

The agreement calls for the allowable catch for the Native tugs to be mutually agreed upon by the parties, but the ministry set the level unrealistically low without consultation, he said.

Akiwenzie and Saugeen Chief Randy Roote offered to meet with ministry officials before the fish were seized.

"Instead, the MNR ordered local fish buyers to cease purchasing Native-caught fish," said Akiwenzie.

"We feel the agreement should be used in all disputes . . . We must not return to the old ways of confrontation," said Roote.

The ministry and the two bands have communicated by telephone but no date has been set for a meeting, said Cooper.

Meanwhile the two bands have not said how long the tugs will stand idle.