What's all the fuss about?

Page 4

If what Native leaders in the Maritimes say is true, and a lot of the claims don't seem even a bit outlandish, then there's something interesting at work behind the astonishing amount of media fuss and outcry over Native fishing in the region.

Fact One: Native people weren't expecting such a decisive victory in the Marshall case. A couple of hundred years of frustration have led them to expect the worst, even in the face of a few hard won Supreme Court of Canada decisions in their favor in recent years.

Fact Two: Native people in the Maritimes (or most other places, for that matter), generally don't have a lot of venture capital sitting around waiting for a "can't miss" investment opportunity to come along. In fact, the unemployment rate at Burnt Church - a typical Atlantic First Nation - sits at around 90 per cent. It's been that way for a long, long time. People who have, for generations, been forced to rely on unemployment insurance and social assistance, don't have the financial ability to cash in on an opportunity such as that afforded by the Marshall decision. They can't afford commercial fishing boats that would allow them to compete in the deep water with the established fishing industry - many can't afford boats of any kind. They can't afford many lobster traps or the equipment needed to use them, either.

As we see it, the story of the Oct. 3 clash at Burnt Church, according to published reports and the accounts of Chief Wilbur Dedam and others, is all about intolerance.

Some might want to make excuses for the fishermen who feared their livelihood was being jeopardized, but closer examination reveals that liberties are being taken with the truth by those who advance that theory.

Native people who exercised their right to fish (as granted by the Sparrow decision) found that local fishermen resented their participation in the economy of the region. That resentment took the form of vandalism - the cutting of traps - and discrimination - the refusal of authorities to actively investigate and prosecute that vandalism.

The history of Canada's dealings with Indigenous people is there for those with eyes to see. It's not a contentious point to say that Indian policy in the less enlightened times of the colonial era was aimed at the elimination or subjugation of the original peoples of this continent. The reason for that policy, clearly stated in the existing historical documents of the time which remain to this day in government archives, was that Europeans believed themselves to be superior.

This smug self-satisfaction - which many modern, non-Native scholars describe as raw, undisguised racism - is the basis for the policies that created the Indian Act and the reserve system. The Indian Act and the reserve system continue to exist to this day because the Canadian government knows the electorate isn't willing to pay the cost of undoing the damages wrought by those policies.

Native people continue to be left in the margins of society, deprived of the opportunities available to non-Native people, left crammed into tiny reserves the size of which serve as a mocking reminder of the vast tracts of land they allowed the newcomers to steal from them in return for their generosity.

Bigots love to stereotype Native people as lazy wards of the Crown who soak up tax dollars, accepting government handouts of their hard earned and much-resented tax dollars. But if Native people attempt to participate in the economy, as they are now trying to do in the lobster fishery, these same bigots try to bully and intimidate them back to the reserve. In other words, they're saying, 'Get a job, but make sure you don't apply for mine or my son's or my neighbor's or my cousin's or my former high school classmate's or the job of anyone I know.'

That part of the story is easy to see for anyone with the moral courage to look. The part of the story that confuses and alarms us is the amount of newspaper coverage the story is receiving.

Nativefishing represents, at most, one per cent of the fishery, said Chief Dedam. It probably is less than the amount that licensed fishermen squeeze out of the total catch by dropping a few extra traps in the water when fisheries officers are looking the other way.

Yes, the story should be covered. But is the fact that Native people are claiming for themselves one per cent of the fishery, a tiny part of the economy, worthy of the nation-wide front page coverage that has lasted for more than two weeks and shows no sign of ending in the immediate future?

The decisions on what a newspaper covers and how it covers it are made by people whose jobs are to gauge what their readers need and want. The sheer amount of the coverage this issue has received reveals more about the fabric of this country than it does about the actions of a few fishermen in Atlantic Canada.

Whether they intended it or not (and our guess is they didn't) the various news editors and publishers of dailies around this country have, by treating the news that Native people - three per cent of the country's population - might have a treaty right to a one per cent share in the nation's economy as an earth-shaking, apocalyptic event, have proven the point of every Native activist in the country.

Canadians really don't want Native people to enjoy a fair share of this country's wealth. The recent events in Atlantic Canada prove it to the world.