Chief’s Update on Fall Fisheries 2025

The season has begun and again Mi’gmaq across our ancestral homelands are engaging in a fishery that OUR ancestors have been a part of since time immemorial. For those of you on the water, we wish you all a safe and bountiful season. You all play a major role in preserving Mi’gmaw inherent rights.

Although we are nowhere near a fair and equitable solution, we feel we have made a few small steps forward. We hope that chief and council have made it clear that our focus is two-fold: first, protecting the inherent rights WE all have inherited from our ancestors and second, including community members in every way possible.

We are also tasked with the responsibility of engaging with another inherited relationship – a COLONIAL relationship – with a federal agency (DFO) and their expectations (policies) for a Mi’gmaw fishery. This is the practical reality we all must navigate every day in various ways.

Although the representatives from such agencies understand and respect our claims of inherent sovereignty, they must adhere to rules, and regulations that do not view Mi’gmaq as sovereign, rather such rules treat Mi’gmaq as wards of the state. The issue is not with individual agencies or their representatives but with the assumption of underlying crown title to Mi’gmaw homelands – this is a historical issue that spans across centuries.

Your chief and council are firm in their position with such federal agencies that our priority is to ERB RIGHTS HOLDERS, and that THEY are the stewards of Mi’gmaw inherent rights for ERB and must always be consulted fully and completely.

We are all committed to peace and friendship with federal agencies and especially with all of you ERB community members – at the end of the day WE are YOU. Yes, chief and council are bound by INDIAN ACT policies, but rest assured, our hearts and minds remain Mi’gmaq.

300 years ago, in the face of genocidal violence our ancestors chose peace and friendship with England to protect their families and futures, and I argue that it is our responsibility as descendants to live in peace and friendship today – no matter how difficult the situation.

When the season is done, all fishers and interested community members are invited to continue the restructuring of ERB’s fisheries program, more information about this will follow in the weeks to come. Until then be safe, hug your children, and strive for peace and friendship.

 

M’SET NOGMA

-CG