'Showdown' looms between a dozen First Nations families and the DFO

Kathryn Blaze Carlson
July 14, 2010
National Post

On the craggy shores of Fraser Canyon, where its namesake river rushes through narrow gorges, a “showdown” looms between a dozen First Nations families and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

With their fishing nets mended and drying racks sturdied, elders from Sto:lo tribal communities are camped out in tents and cabins, waiting to begin their traditional dry-rack sockeye fishery. But the federal department has not yet opened the sockeye fishery in order to conserve the early Stuart run — the first of four groups of sockeye to migrate up the Fraser River.

“It’s bogus,” said Tyrone McNeil, a tribal chief and vice-president of the Sto:lo Tribal Council, and a dry-racker who ventures to the canyon each July in the hopes of catching and curing small sockeye for the winter larder. “We’re getting to the point where a lot of our dry-rackers are frustrated, and they may end up going out there and challenging DFO by setting nets and hanging fish.”

“We could be heading for a bit of a showdown,” echoed Ernie Crey, fisheries advisor to the council in the Fraser Valley region, and former advisor to the DFO.

Lara Sloan, a communications officer for the DFO’s pacific region branch, said that while there is currently “no fishing directed at sockeye,” the department recently issued a communal licence for a Chinook fishery — a species of salmon that is much larger, fattier and more difficult to cure than early Stuart sockeye.

Read full story in the National Post. 

Read related story in the Globe and Mail; July 14, 2010; "Sto:lo threaten to cast nets without licences - Federal officials say run is too small, but band says there are plenty of sockeye – and they will fish when their elder gives go-ahead".