& - Sunday, July 19, 1992 - North Shore News

Fish tale: MacKenzie’s mean spirit lives on

SOME THINGS don’t
change.

Bob

STRICTLY PERSONAL

Listening to the whining and,
snivelling from groups like the
Fisheries Council of B.C., com-
plaining about the Musqueam In-
dian Band and two other native
nations being given the right, for
the first time since 1889, to sell
the fish they catch, | was struck
by an overwhelming feeling of de-
ja vu.

A chap named Michael Hunier
(no relative), president of the
Fisheries Council, the mouthpiece
for the major fish-processing
companies, moans that ‘‘an at-
mosphere of tremendous distrust’’
has been created by federal Fish-

* eries Minister John Crosbie’s June
29 announcement of a season-
long pilot project in which the
three native groups ere being
allowed (o sell a small quota of
sockeye and other salmon from
the lower Fraser River.

Hunter admits that most major
fish processors are refusing to buy
fish from the natives because
non-native fishermen, organized
under the banner of the Fish-
erman's Direct Action Committec
(FDAC), have threatened to
boycott the processors that do so.

The FDAC ecpposes any in-
crease in native fishing rights.

They use the argument that
native fishermen will deplete fish
stocks and <lamage the industry.

Whew! Let’s back up a moment
or two, back, say, to 1793, when
Alexander Mackenzie was making
his way back from the Pacific and

discovered a couple of gadgets
missing from one of fis caches.

He quickly assembled a group
of natives and made this
awesomely arrogant threat, as re-
corded in his diary:

“TL gravely added that the salm-
on, which was not only their
favorite food but absolutely essen-
tial to their existence, came from
the sea which belonged to us white
men; and that as, at the entrance
to the river, we could prevent
those fish from coming up it, we
possessed the power to starve
them and their children.””

{t was a threat that those who
foiiowed in Mackenzie’s footsteps
would make good repeatedly.

Probably the best book avail-
able on the subject of the B.C.
fishery and the despicable treat-
ment of native fishermen
throughout our history is Geoff
Meggs’ encyclopedic Salmon: The
Decline of the British Columbia
Fishery, published by Douglas &
MclIntyre.

Reading it, one quickly
discovers that the likes of Michael
Hunter and such outfits as the
Fisherman’s Direct Action Com-
mittee have been with us from the
beginning.

The real threat to the fishery,
all along, has been the greed of
the big fish processors, who tried
everything in their power first to
monopolize the fishery, and when
that was no longer possible, to
control it through the formation
of a cartel.

Racism and fishing went hand
in hand. In fact, the story of the
salmon fishery is the story of
virulent racism, from Mackenzie
onward.

Geoff Meges writes:

‘*The assault on native rights,
both aboriginal fishing rights and
the right to equal opportunity for
employment, had begun in earnest
with the first conservation crisis of
the 1870s. It gathered momentum
as the chaotic expansion of the
industry reached its first limits in

“*As always in the fishing in-
dustry, the argument was cloaked
in the rhetoric of conservation,
and, as always, it was really about
money. The native people had
fish, and others wanted it. Since
the others were the most powerful
members of white society, they

What A Catch!
Everyday is Fish Fryday
at the Bay and now it’s
An Unbelievable Price!

Enjoy two pieces of
delicious

served with

‘Sale Price

golden-battered fish Ye - ee 99

French Fries &
Coleslaw.
Our reg. 4.99

@ each

These people included such
famous pioneers as Alexander
Ewen, E.A. Wadhams, T.E.
Ladner, J.A. Laidlaw and J.H.
Todd, hard-nosed entreprencurs
who took their profits from the
gold rush and plowed them into
the canning industry, which quick-
ly became, in Geoff Meggs’
words, ‘a kingdom of sweat in
which thousands of workers toiled
around the clock to feed the bank
accounts of a dozen
businessmen.”

Fisheries regulations were non-
existent in B.C. until 1878. To in-
tercept chinook on the Fraser,
tens of thousands of other un-
marketable salmon caught in the
nets -— up to one-third of the
total catch — were simply clubbed
and thrown back dead into the
water.

By the time a royal commission
was ordered in 1892, fishermen
told a tale of staggering abuse of
the resource and scandalous ma-
nipulation of the licensing system.

Dummy canneries were set up
to obtain extra licences, and fish-
eries officers had been col-
laborating in a racket that forced
fishermen to pay large sums for
the right to fish.

By 1902, the Fraser salmon in-
dustry was in a State of crisis,
thanks partially to the introduc-
tion of American fish traps in
Puget Sound, the invention of the
“Iron Chink,”’ which cut labor
costs and permitted corporate
concentration of the canneries
under the banner of the B.C.
Packers Association, and the ex-
plosive growth in the number of
boats — up to 3,000 — harvesting
the Fraser.

The newly appointed federal
fisheries inspector, John Williams,
decided that none of these factors
was the real cause of declining
salmon stocks.

The salmon were being wiped
out, he concluded — just as the
cannerymen and white fishermen
had themselves concluded — by
the natives, who were stilt using
the river weirs that Mackenzie had
described as ** fishing machines’”
when he first encountered them.

Accordingly, the great ‘*conser-
vation program’’ of the day
became the push to destroy the
native weirs and traps in such
locations as the mouth of Babine
Lake and Kitwancool River.

For good measure, the right to
sell fish was also stripped away,
thereby forcing natives to work in
canneries, instead of for
themselves, as they had always
done.

Inspector Williams’ final argu-
meni in favor of smashing the
native weirs was that ‘“‘the trouble
is the Indians are so lazy and idle
they wilt not do anything at all ...
Let them come down to the can-

nery and work as all other Indians
do, not loaf."”

And here we are, 90 years later,
with fish processing companies
and white fishermen alike bitterly
complaining because, out of a run
of 6.5 million sockeye, native
fishermen are being allowed to
catch, and sell, a total of 395,000.
The mean spirit of Alexander
Mackenzie lives!

Dr. Amin Damji
BSc, D.M.D. :

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fea

Quiet Mood 18"x24”"

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