The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 67/No. 32           September 22, 2003  
 
 
Cheam defend fishing rights
 
BY RÓGER CALERO  
AGISSEZ, British Columbia—“We are exercising our aboriginal right to fish,” Sidney Douglas told this reporter during a visit here August 25. Douglas was referring to the fight by members of the indigenous Cheam Nation to maintain its right to fish salmon on the Fraser River. That right has come under attack by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who claim that commercial fishing done by the Cheam poses a threat to “conservation.”

“We were the first commercial fishery in this province,” said Douglas. He explained how the fishing companies tried to make trappers out of them for fur. “But we never did that. We are fishermen,” he said. “We sell them. We eat them.”

In British Columbia, the Cheam have been at the forefront of the fight by indigenous people for their right to fish, against government encroachment of their territory, and for the resolution of land claims.

The Cheam reserve occupies about 1,200 acres along both sides of the Fraser River upstream of the Harrison River confluence. “But all of these lands are ours because we never conceded them,” said Douglas. “We have asked them to show us the receipt.”

The native leader explained that the rights of the Cheam people are placed after those of some 300,000 sport fishermen licensed in the province. In the meantime, “charges [for fishing out of season] keep accumulating against us,” he said.

After hearing about the attacks by Washington and Ottawa on immigrant rights, and a brief explanation of this reporter’s fight against U.S. government deportation efforts, Douglas noted that it was not until 1960 that the Cheam band obtained the right to have legal representation in cases against the government. “In the last 40 years we have been catching up for the rest of the time lost,” he said. In the 1920 s the Canadian rulers prohibited the Cheam people from gathering in groups of more than four people, forcing them to carry out their spiritual rituals and other meetings in hiding.

The day of this interview the native fishermen were active at the main fishing camp and boat launch preparing to go upstream to set and tend their gillnets for a catch. They expected band members to come down from the mountainous area of Kelowna, after they had been forced to leave their houses as the result of forest fires.

Members of the Tl’azt’en First Nation, up in Fort St. James, where the salmon showing up there this year is too mushy to eat, have been allowed to come down to catch their share off the Cheam reserve.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home