The Dominion - wild salmon

Sinixt in Vancouver Courts

Tim McSorley — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 06:14:57 +0000

"Extinct" nation defends traditional territory

VANCOUVER—Throughout January and early February 2011, members of the Sinixt Nation were in Vancouver attending a BC Supreme Court case resulting from their three-week-long anti-logging blockade in October 2010. In this case, Sunshine Logging Ltd., as well as the Attorney-General and Ministry of Forests, are respondents to the Sinixt injunction that was obtained at that time (and which granted a temporary halt to logging operations).

The territory of the Sinixt is located in the south-east region of the province in the Slocan Valley area between the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers (including the Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes, for which the Sinixt are also named). They began the blockade in October 2010 to protect Perry Ridge, the site of proposed logging. According to the Sinixt, Perry Ridge is an important archeological site as well as some of the last remaining untouched wilderness in their territory.

The Sinixt are an interior Salish people that were declared extinct by the federal government in 1956, effectively eliminating Sinixt from any benefits under the Indian Act, including a land base (i.e., a reserve). Their traditional territory spans the US–Canada border, which was established in 1846. Many Sinixt gravitated towards the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State (which had several different tribal groups concentrated there, including Okanagan and Nez Perce). Some 80 per cent of Sinixt territory, however, is north of the border.

The Sinixt territory has been devastated by a century of industrial mining, logging and dams. Fifteen dams have been built in the region, centred around the Columbia River Basin. In fact, just one year after Canada declared the Sinixt extinct, the US–Canada Columbia River Treaty was signed (in 1957), granting the US access to vast amounts of water and hydroelectric energy from this dam system.

The dams, which have destroyed salmon habitat (a primary food source for the Columbia River peoples), are used to supply power to numerous metal smelters, including aluminum, zinc, and lead. Corporations such as Cominco (now owned by Teck Resources Ltd.) have dumped millions of tons of toxic pollutants into the Columbia River.

For the past 25 years, members of the Sinixt Nation have campaigned for recognition of their sovereignty and in defence of their land. Some also demand that the federal government re-establish the Arrow Lakes Indian Band and reserve.

Since 1989, the Sinixt have maintained a presence at Vallican along the Slocan River. The camp was established to protect burial grounds and archeological sites unearthed by road construction in 1987. At that time, the Ministry of Highways (which builds the roads and bridges for logging companies) made no effort to contact any Sinixt and instead deposited skeletal remains and archeological objects into museums.

In 1997, the Sinixt, along with local residents and environmentalists, blocked road construction on Perry Ridge. As many as 300 people participated. In 2000, non-Native residents of the area protested clear-cut logging by blockading the logging road. Most recently, on October 26, 2010, the Sinixt Nation asserted their sovereignty by initiating the Sinixt Slhu7kin' (Perry Ridge) Protection Camp on their ancestral lands.

In addition to government bureaucracy and intransigence, the Sinixt also face obstacles from neighbouring Indian Act band councils, including those of the Okanagon National Alliance and the Lower Kootenay Band, both of which claim Sinixt land as part of their traditional territories. In Washington state, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation has asserted itself as the sole representative of Sinixt in both the US and Canada.

Hearings into the case concluded on February 4, and, according to the Nelson Star, a decision could be rendered within the month. For updates, visit http://mediacoop.ca.

This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Gord Hill is from the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation and has been active in Indigenous and anti-capitalist movements for many years, including writing and graphic arts under the pseudonym Zig Zag.

Sinixt in court

Can There Be a Salmon People Without Wild Salmon?

Moira Peters — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:19:48 +0000

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, BC)—On May 8, 2010, thousands of people flowed across the lawns of BC's legislature in Victoria to protest open-net salmon farming, which Indigenous communities and others are blaming for catastrophic declines in the wild salmon population.

Calling for wild salmon to take priority over farmed salmon, a contingent led by First Nations set off on April 23 from Sointula, at the north end of Vancouver Farms, and walked for two weeks to Victoria.

Two local dailies, The Vancouver Sun and The Province, both gave a figure of about 1,000 at the legislature, while The Globe and Mail estimated 4,000, but Alexander Morton, one of the organizers of the “Get Out Migration” march, counted many more.

“The Parliament lawns reportedly hold 20,000 people and looking out over the sea of people less than one-third of the lawn was visible,” said Morton.

The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest were historically referred to as the Salmon People—their communities, stales, and culture thrived in unison with the salmon, which provided sustenance for humans and much of the ecosystem.

But the increasing number of commercial fish farms, which raise salmon in open-net cages in the ocean, poses a threat to First Nations.

Farmed salmon have been blamed for increasing parasitic sea lice and causing viral epidemics among wild salmon.

“The fish farms operating in our territories are killing wild salmon, the lifeblood of all life that reside in our territories and the lifeblood of our culture,” said Bob Chamberlin, Chief of the Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish First Nation (KAFN) on northeastern Vancouver Island, near Alert Bay.

In a February 18, 2010 press release, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) stated, “The UBCIC has long-held the opinion that salmon fish farms has proven to have had a lethal and irreversibly toxic impact on indigenous runs of wild salmon. Especially where there is a concentration of fish farms in waters used by juvenile salmon exposed to the high concentrations of sea-lice from these fish farms.”

During the Vancouver Olympics, the UBCIC Executive joined 45 people who participated in a fast that supported the Musgamagw Tsawataineuk Tribal Council’s (MTTC) opposition to fish farm tenures in the Broughton Archipelago, in northwest Vancouver Island. They fasted for 29 hours, one hour each for the 29 salmon farms operating in the traditional territory of coastal MTTC.

The UBCIC took aim at Norway, home to most of BC's salmon-farming corporations.

“Norway voted to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was an historical vote and to Indigenous peoples it is regarded as a solemn commitment to universal human rights,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo. “Companies headquartered in countries who voted to adopt the Declaration, such as Norway, should apply the standards of the Declaration in all of their relationships with Indigenous Peoples domestically and internationally.”

“Norwegian-owned salmon farms operating in our traditional territorial waters are killing wild salmon and strangling the lifeblood of our whole culture,” said Chief Chamberlin.

The plight of the salmon has been linked with the poor health of the First Nations. In 1997, Chief Simon Lucas of the BC Aboriginal Fisheries Commission issued a warning about the negative impact of salmon farming on wild salmon.

“The issue for us is about home, about how we're dying,” he said. “If you affect in any way the clams and the other marine life, you're going to affect us.”

In The Salmon People: The Story of Canada's West Coast Salmon Fishing Industry, author Hugh W. McKervill writes about the integral role salmon play in Indigenous cultures of the North Pacific Coast.

“The people of the North Pacific Coast were and still are 'The Salmon People,'” he writes. The capture of first salmon is celebrated as if the salmon were an “honoured guest of the rank of a visiting chief.” But colonists changed the Indigenous peoples' relationship with salmon.

"Native peoples controlled their fisheries through right of use and exclusion that predated non-Native interference," writes University of British Columbia law professor Douglas C. Harris. "The Native's claim was a moral and ultimately legal claim, based not only on efficient management or material need but also on a sense of right that originated within their cultures.”

But the moral and legal claim of the Indigenous peoples was not triumphant.

“After 1894, no part of the Native fishery was exempt under Canadian law from state regulation; in this sense the legal capture of the resource was complete,” Harris writes.

Harris describes the law as an instrument of cultural domination used by colonial powers to take and justify control of other territories and peoples.

More recently, First Nations have begun attempting to use the law to their advantage, to stop salmon farming.

On February 4, 2010, KAFN filed a class-action lawsuit against the BC government’s regulation of open net-cage salmon farms.

Chief Chamberlin said the lawsuit was a last resort.

“We have been patient and respectful, attending countless meetings while damage continues to be inflicted on the wild salmon by open net-cage salmon farms,” he said. “Wild salmon stocks throughout the entire Broughton are in a sustained and serious decline; some salmon runs may become extinct and never be replaced. The salmon have existed here as long as we have, and it is essential to the survival of our distinct aboriginal culture that plentiful stocks of wild salmon survive.”

Harris told The Dominion that the KAFN civil suit says much about the status quo.

“The fact that this dispute is being deliberated, argued, and decided in a Canadian court is revealing of the longer ongoing colonial control,” Harris said.

Turning to the BC courts might be interpreted as recognition of colonial jurisdiction, Harris said. With an independent court option closed to First Nations, weighing the survival of wild salmon against Indigenous rights becomes a “strategic decision.”

Among the crowd of wild salmon advocates gathered at Centennial Square behind Victoria City Hall—prior to the final march to the Parliament Buildings—was John Haughen of the Nlaka'pamux Nation.

“[Legal action] is the only tool we have since we've been allowed to hire lawyers and use the courts,” he said.

Deata Taylor of the Dzawada'eneuw First Nation on Kingcombe Inlet supports Chief Chamberlin's lawsuit. She does not, however, recognize the jurisdiction of the BC courts in First Nation territories.

“We should decide whether fish farms should be in our territories,” she said.

For more than a decade, a broad coalition of groups has been advocating a solution. In 1997, the Salmon Aquaculture Review alliance—whose members included First Nations, environmental groups, fishers unions, and legal advocacy groups—called for replacing net-pens with closed containment systems. These systems are closed off from and do not disrupt natural ocean environments.

Not all First Nations eschew salmon farming.

In 1987, Larry Greba of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans started aquaculture work for the Kitasoo/Xai'xais Nation on Klemtu Island in the Broughton Archipelago. He noted a collapse in commercial salmon fishing in the late 1980s, which caused the Kitasoo/Xaixais to turn to salmon farming and form a partnership with Marine Harvest. The Kitasoo/Xai'xais retained control over the development of the aquaculture sites so they could ensure a sustainable operation.

Greba focused on the economic impact for the community.

“The current situation for Kitasoo economically from salmon farming are 60 full time jobs, of which 18 are year round at the farm and 42 are with fish harvesting/transport and processing for 7–9 months per year at the processing plant in Klemtu,” he wrote in an email. “Total annual wages are about $1.5M to Kitasoo members and when the plant is operating the band has about a 60 per cent employment rate.”

When the plant is not operating, Greba says the employment dropped to about 40 per cent, but he added this was ameliorated by a long, steady processing season that qualified most workers for unemployment benefits.

Even the formerly anti-salmon farming Ahousaht First Nation on eastern Vancouver Island have switched sides and are engaging in salmon farming to create economic opportunities in a sustainable manner.

On May 5, 2010, the “Get Out Migration” marchers arrived at Nanaimo's Maffeo Sutton Park. Chief Doug White of the Snuneymuxw First Nation described the sacred relationship of his people to the salmon, the tradition of the salmon ceremony and the revered salmon petroglyph.

“The Snuneymuxw worldview ... is one that has salmon at the center,” White said.

White stated that the 1854 Douglas Treaty, signed by British Columbia's first governor with some First Nations, ceded Indigenous rights to some land but also recognized the way of life of the Snuneymuxw people, including the Snuneymuxw’s relationship to salmon and the right of engagement.

Morton criticized Norway and its multinational aquaculture.

“For 20 years, Norwegians have done this [salmon farming]. It is time to admit it was a mistake.” Salmon farms need to be pulled out of the seas, she said. She called on people to be firm with the government.

“Salmon are dying because of politics.”

People from the Pacific Northwest First Nations have long been the Salmon People. However, the multitude that turned out in Victoria on May 7, 2010, demonstrates that Salmon People comprise a broad swath of society—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

Kim Petersen is the Original Peoples editor with The Dominion.

Salmon rock

Norwegian Farms Poison the Wild Run

Moira Peters — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:14:47 +0000

BC's salmon stocks plunge; sea lice, salmon farms to blame

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, BC)—In the late 1980s, as Norway's Consul General in Vancouver was paving the way for Norwegian salmon farming operations in BC, Norway's former Prime Minister Gro Harlem headed the United Nations commission that produced the 1987 report, "Our Common Future," popularizing the concept of sustainable development.

Two decades have passed, and the salmon-farming industry, dominated by Norwegian multinationals, is charged with imperilling ecosystems worldwide, including in Norway.

In 2002, the spawning run of pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago off northeast Vancouver Island decreased from 3.6 million to 147,000—four per cent of its population the year before. Biologists pointed to sea lice from salmon farms as the culprit. Juvenile salmon, called smolts, leave the rivers where they are born and are forced to run a gauntlet of salmon farms once they reach the archipelago, where they are exposed to high numbers of sea lice.

“Everywhere there are salmon farms and wild salmon, the wild salmon are eaten to death by sea lice,” said Alexandra Morton, following the pink salmon collapse. Morton is a biologist and founder of the Raincoast Research Society which studies ecosystems and aquatic life on the BC coast.

Last summer, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) forecast over 10 million sockeye salmon spawners would return to Sto:lo (Fraser River). Fewer than 10 per cent returned. Morton again implicated sea lice from salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago as the cause of the 90 per cent collapse in sockeye spawners.

Sockeye runs elsewhere did comparably well, Morton noted, such as in N'ch-iwana (Columbia River), Somass River and Heydon Creek—the latter situated north of the Campbell River fish farm cluster.

Morton sees a bigger threat to wild salmon than sea lice. “I know sea lice are on the Fraser sockeye—I first found this in 2005—but I think the issue is farm disease in this case.”

“The biggest threat is the virus ISA [Infectious Salmon Anaemia],” said Morton, “but sea lice are a problem enough that they [the sea lice] can destroy [wild salmon].”

Salmon in Chile, Norway, Scotland and New Brunswick have all suffered ISA outbreaks.

“What Alexandra means is that ISA is a serious imminent threat because wild Pacific salmon may not be immune to strains of ISA present in farm salmon eggs imported from Atlantic waters," geophysist Dr. Neil Frazer told The Dominion.

"If a wild population suffers a very large decline, recovery is uncertain because the ecological niche of the devastated species may be filled by other species,” he said.

A myriad of factors impact the viability of wild salmon in BC: clearcut logging, global warming, agricultural runoff and dam construction. According to the BC Salmon Farmers Association, salmon farming began in BC in the early 1970s. In 1984, it was introduced into the seascape of Broughton Archipelago. The Broughton Archipelago now supports 29 salmon-farming operations, BC’s highest concentration of salmon farms.

In their 2006 book, An Upstream Battle, Karl K. English, Glova J. Gordon, and Anita C. Blakely reported a 70-93 per cent decline in salmon stocks in 10 areas in BC since the early 1990s.

Wild salmon advocacy circles have recently begun to pressure Norway—where multi-national salmon-farming headquarters of the likes of Marine Harvest, Cremaq and Grieg Seafood own 92 per cent of BC's salmon farms.

“Norway is the key to solving the salmon-farming problem and [is] still home to healthy wild Atlantic salmon populations,” said Don Staniford of Pure Salmon Campaign, a global salmon advocacy project. “There is still time to save Atlantic wild salmon by moving the farms out of the path of migrating smolts. And in the Pacific, the solution is equally as simple.”

Even Norway's richest man, John Fredriksen, an avid fisherman and majority owner of the world's largest salmon-farming corporation, Marine Harvest, was alarmed: “I am worried for the wild salmon’s future. Fish farming should not be allowed in fjords with salmon rivers,” said Fredricksen in 2007 to Norway's Altaposten.

Staniford, who was in Norway last May, reported sympathy among Norwegians, whose own wild salmon are plagued by infestations of sea lice, and who support an end to open-water net salmon farming.

“Norwegians are now rising up and standing up for wild salmon,” said Staniford. “Over the last year there has been a sea change in public perception of the salmon farming industry in Norway." Staniford sees Norwegian fishermen, river owners, politicians, environmentalists and citizens as increasingly critical of the salmon-farming industry plagued with sea lice and escapes of farmed salmon.

The Vancouver Olympics brought another opportunity to pressure the Norwegian government: Norway's King Harald V was in attendance at the Games. On a sunny Saturday, February 20, the eighth day of the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) and Wild Salmon Circle held a rally in Vancouver’s Vanier Park. Although Harold V was not among them, about 200 people turned out to hear featured speakers Morton, Staniford, ex-DFO biologist Otto Langer, and Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish First Nation Chief Bob Chamberlin.

“Considering the Olympics were on—a big distraction and the reason we held the rally now—there was a great turnout,” said Maria Morlin, biology professor and emcee at the rally. “I hope our message gets through to the Norwegian government loud and clear: don’t mess up our waters; you have enough problems with your own Atlantic salmon escapees and wild salmon collapses.”

“We have a long tradition of salmon in our culture, and to be unable to pass this tradition to our children is unthinkable,” said hereditary Chief Chamberlin, emphasizing the issue was not a short-term one.

Langer argued that moving the salmon to closed-containment was an unsatisfactory solution because of negative protein production. Langer said feeding the salmon would still require 5 to 10 kilograms of other fish to produce one kilogram of food pellets. Farming carnivorous fish in open net-cages or in closed containment facilities, he held, is simply not sustainable.

For those proud of the Brundtland Commission's work on sustainability, the unsustainability of Norwegian-owned salmon farms is a stark contradiction.

"I am not talking about all aquaculture. I am referring specifically to the massive scale Norwegian feedlots," said Morton on March 15.

"There are Canadian fish farmers who know how to use tanks on land who are not impacting our wild salmon and herring. This is about saving wild salmon and all of us who depend on them."

Morton announced Get Out Migration which will promote the cause of wild salmon through a walk, open to all the public, from Sointula to Victoria.

"We hold salmon as sacred because they so generously feed our world," said Morton. "They built the soil of this province with their flesh, they grow our children, they feed the trees that make the oxygen we breath, they are food security in a world losing ability to even pollinate flowers."

Kim Petersen is Original People's editor at The Dominion.

Salmon