Description
After the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Marshall decision recognized Mi’kmaw fishers’ treaty right to fish, the fishers entered the inshore lobster fishery across Atlantic Canada. At Burnt Church/Esgenoôpetitj, New Brunswick, the Mi’kmaw fishery provoked violent confrontations with neighbours and the Canadian government. Over the following two years, boats, cottages, and a sacred grove were burned, other folks were shot at and beaten, boats rammed and sunk, roads barricaded, and the native wharf occupied.
Based on 12 months of ethnographic field work in Burnt Church/Esgenoôpetitj, Fishing in Contested Waters explores the origins of this dispute and the beliefs and experiences that motivated the locals desirous about it. Weaving the views of Local and non-Local other folks in combination, Sarah J. King examines the community as a contested place, concurrently Mi’kmaw and Canadian. Drawing on philosophy and indigenous, environmental, and non secular studies, Fishing in Contested Waters demonstrates the deep roots of recent conflicts over rights, sovereignty, conservation, and identity.