Beyond Criminalization of Indigenous Fisheries: Documenting injustice and envisioning just futures

Our project seeks to document the criminalization of Indigenous fishers and fisheries in so-called Canada and beyond, and use equitable knowledge-bridging and research co-creation tools to explore possibilities of transformation towards justice. The criminalization of Indigenous fisheries (among other cultural,
spiritual, and subsistence practices) is a destructive colonial practice that leads to inequity, loss of subsistence and cultural practice opportunities, and foments incendiary conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments and peoples. Coupled with exploitative colonial fisheries management and environmental practices, the unjust criminalization of Indigenous fishers has led to personal trauma and incarceration, the usurping of Indigenous rights, colonial violence, and attempted destruction of millennia-old relationships between Indigenous Peoples and Fish. In partnership with and guided by the Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources (UINR; our partner), and in service primarily to the five Mi’kmaq communities in Unama’ki/Cape Breton (in so-called Nova Scotia, Canada), we intend to together document historical and modern unjust colonial practices of criminalization of Indigenous fishers, with focus on shedding light on the just futures and transformative approaches that Indigenous Elders, youth, and knowledge holders envision for their fish, fisheries, communities, and selves. Ultimately, we hope our collective work will contribute materials, methods, approaches, and praxis to aid in confronting on-going colonial harm and pernicious power imbalances in the
context of fisheries management and beyond, with particular focus on Indigenous rights resurgence and fisheries management, conflict transformation, and Indigenous approaches to equity and relationship-building.

Faculty Supervisor:

Andrea Reid

Student:

Partner:

Unama'ki Institute of Natural Resources

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Agriculture; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: