First of all, I just want to note that any information that I'm quoting I can share with the clerk after the presentation, if you like, because I know that people were sending their presentations in.
My name is Sydney Paul and I'm the consultation coordinator for Kingsclear First Nation. Gordon Grey is also with me; he works in consultation for Kingsclear.
I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for the invitation and to our Mi’gmag; we are sitting on unceded traditional Mi’gmag territory.
We are here to speak on behalf of the six Maliseet communities in New Brunswick. However, our presentation today is not intended to be a comprehensive list of the Maliseet nation's concerns about wild Atlantic salmon. A full-scale consultation would need to be undertaken to obtain a complete understanding of the Maliseet nation's priorities and concerns. Nothing in our presentation should be able to limit, define, or otherwise constrain the Maliseet from bringing additional information forward. In no way does our presentation prejudice the extent of our traditional resource use of wild Atlantic salmon and/or our treaty and aboriginal rights.
The ability to continue our reciprocal relationship with salmon has existed since time immemorial and has been nearly extinguished in the entire Maliseet territory. Legally we are not allowed to fish salmon in our traditional territory.
I would like to state that we have had little time to prepare for this session, and therefore the information that I will provide in this presentation is not a complete presentation of the issues and concerns of the Maliseet.
We call ourselves the Wolastoqiyik, which means people of the Wolastoq. Translated, it means beautiful river. English speakers know this river as the Saint John River. Our name for ourselves illustrates our deep-seated relationship to the river. We are the people of the beautiful river. Our relationship with the river has guided our language, culture, traditions, and society for thousands of years. The importance of the interwoven relationship between the river, the Atlantic salmon, and our people cannot properly be described in 10 minutes. A lot of education needs to happen about the importance of our culture and section 35 constitutionally protected rights. Our oral traditions teach us of our relationship with Wolastoq territories since time immemorial and also give records of environmental degradation to our river system from contact onward.
In our relationship with the Atlantic salmon and our fight to maintain our traditional way of life in context, I would like to read a passage from historian Jason Hall. This comes from our Maliseet traditional land use study that we're currently undertaking.
In 1840, New Brunswick's Indian agent, Moses Perley, advocated damming the mouth of the mouth of the Tobique River as he believed that destroying the most viable food supply available to the local Maliseet community would force them to become more productive farmers and assimilate them into settler society. Perley's vision of a hydroelectric dam on the Tobique did not come to fruition until 1953. It was preceded by dams on the Aroostook River in 1923 and Grand Falls in 1931. The Tobique dam was also followed by Beechwood in 1958 and the Mactaquac in 1968. The dams had and continue to have large-scale negative effects on our society and culture. They flood our villages, cemeteries, plant resources such as fiddleheads, and areas of cultural importance. They also continued to decimate the Atlantic salmon population in our river system to a point where our members can no longer continue the relationship including language and ceremonies that accompany harvesting activities with salmon in the Saint John.
I would like to read a quote from our traditional land use study that is being completed. This is from one of our members we had interviewed:
They completely destroyed our way of life when they made the dam. We had a natural playground for our community, we had water, we had islands, the fiddleheads that were on those, and we had natural swimming pools and a pump house. On weekends in summertime you could see the families just going there. We had ball games on that reserve. Families would go down and take their kids. I remember seeing our guides, the elder women, they all had their place. Some were flat rods and some using spinners and they'd sit there...
Sorry, this is just direct quotes from what they were saying:
They'd fish maybe until before dark. After the dam, that came to an end. That way of life is gone and the livelihood.
As mentioned in the above quote, the way of life is now gone. I cannot fish salmon in the waters that my ancestors fished, and it is unlikely that I would be able to pass this knowledge along to my children. Dams and industries like forestry are eradicating our aboriginal and treaty rights to fish wild Atlantic salmon.
A resource development project is being proposed within our territory, and we feel that it further degrades the habitat of the salmon. We have hired Canadian Rivers Institute to do a study on salmon because we are so concerned. We hoped that even the chance of negative impacts on the salmon would be enough to stop the resource development project, but that does not seem to be happening.
Your report identifies habitat improvement as one of the most important undertakings to sustain and ultimately improve salmon stocks. Since 2008, the Maliseet Nation Conservation Council has been working with Maliseet communities through the aboriginal fisheries strategy to collect habitat data. This data collection is done through stream enhancement, water quality testing, and culvert surveys. The data enabled our community to establish whether brooks are able to support salmonid populations. Our community members are actively taking part in the stewardship of our territory in hopes that the streams and brooks will become viable salmon habitats.
The Tobique River is now under construction for a fish passageway, which is anticipated to decrease the fish kill of Atlantic salmon and the American eel. The Maliseet appreciate that DFO has pushed to incorporate a downstream passageway at the location, but overall efforts seem minimal at Beechwood and Mactaquac. We were told that fish passages were coming to these locations, but where's the sense of urgency? The Mactaquac dam's fish passage is currently a fish hatchery that trucks Atlantic salmon to the Tobique River.
The Mactaquac dam, which is adjacent to my community of Kingsclear, is now making headlines with NB Power picking among its four options by the end of this year. The Maliseet have told NB Power that we prefer option three, which is the river restoration. A councillor from Kingsclear First Nation, Patrick Polchies, describes removing the dam as the single greatest cultural event for the Maliseet in our memories, which would go a long way toward achieving reconciliation with the Maliseet.
The Maliseet believe the dam removal would greatly improve habitat, which is on the committee's recommendation list. The Maliseet are also concerned that the recreational fishing is an option in your recommendations. Although you note that mortality is low if best practices are used, with Atlantic salmon populations as low as they are, we do not see those as adequate conservation measures. The Sparrow decision basically says that aboriginal peoples of Canada have an inherent right to fish for food, social, and ceremonial purposes. This right supersedes recreational fisheries, and recreational fishing should not be allowed until viable populations return.
In conclusion, the Maliseet are deeply concerned about the status of the wild Atlantic salmon. Our knowledge and relationship to salmon is instrumental to rebuilding the population of our river. We need to be meaningfully involved in the recovery. To date our issues have not been adequately addressed by DFO, and our relationship with DFO is unreliable. The federal government must include first nations in decision-making about Atlantic salmon recovery. We have had a deep cultural connection to the species since time immemorial and our traditional knowledge cannot be understated. We want to work with those people who can help us in gaining back our rights to salmon within our traditional territory.
Woliwon.