The Economist: First Nations seek to broaden fishing rights

Thursday, May 12, 2011  

"When one category of citizens is singled out for privileged treatment, are the rights of others infringed? Phil Eidsvik, a Canadian salmon-fisher, thinks the answer is yes. He hopes his country’s newly re-elected prime minister, Stephen Harper, recalls a pledge he made five years ago: to oppose “racially divided fisheries programmes”, in other words, giving special fishing rights to indigenous groups.

But given the storm that Mr Harper’s comment provoked—he was accused of stoking white nativism—he is likely to proceed cautiously. And legal moves are now afoot to broaden the rights of indigenous fishermen. At present Canada upholds the rights of aboriginal groups to engage in traditional, subsistence fishing; hence regulators often open a fishery to a particular indigenous group for a limited time before a commercial catch begins.

One tribe, the Lax Kw’alaams, is fighting a legal battle for special rights in the field of commercial fishing, too, challenging the government’s contention that commercial harvesting only began with the arrival of whites, and so is not a traditional activity of Canada’s first inhabitants. All this horrifies Mr Eidsvik, who argues that the rights of other fishermen (including indigenous ones) are violated when a stretch of water is allocated to a particular tribe. “The individual is completely lost in the conflict over group rights,” he says, speaking for the British Columbia Fisheries Survival Coalition, an NGO. "

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Me, myself and them (The Economist 5/12)