Blockade season is upon us. A group of Mi’gmaqs and their supporters are blockading a disputed fishing site on the northwest Miramichi River in New Brunswick. Dressed in combat fatigues, they claim to be armed with firearms, nerve gas and chemical explosives.
The blockade was set up in response to a number of raids by fisheries agents in which about a dozen Mi’gmaqs were arrested while fishing on the river. In one confrontation, a fisheries officer was tossed in the river before six gillnets belonging to the Mi’gmaqs were seized.
Last May, the local Eel Ground Band Council signed an agreement with Ottawa which bans fishing with a gillnet at some points in the river.
But Frank Thomas, District Chief for the Mi’gmaq Warriors Society, said Eel Ground residents are worried their Chief sold away their rights in the agreement. Chief Thomas said no Chief has the right to sign away hunting or fishing rights that go back to a 1772 treaty signed with Britain. Those rights are also protected in the Charter of Rights, he points out “This stand is not just a question of fishing rights. It is a much bigger question of all our rights as Native peoples.” Chief Thomas called for the agreement signed in May to be abandoned.
