Burnt Church crisis attracts Peacemakers
BURNT CHURCH, NB - John Finlay had just taken up his early morning watch over the waters of Miramichi Bay August 29 when he saw 22 boats appear on the horizon. They belonged not to the fishermen of Burnt Church but to the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the Coast Guard and the RCMP.
An hour later a few native boats went out to harass the larger government vessels—"kind of like gnats buzzing around a bunch of dogs," says Finlay, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). The Mi'kmaq were determined to protect their lobster traps; the government officials equally determined to pull the traps from the water.
Suddenly a DFO boat went straight for a Mi'kmaq dory, running right over it, the two men in the boat leaping into the water a split second before they were mowed down. The DFO officials then pulled the men out of the water and promptly arrested them.
"As a white person I felt embarrassed and ashamed," says Finlay of the incident.
Various CPT members have been at Burnt Church (called Esgenoopetitj by the Mi'kmaq) for the past several weeks, observing the conflict between native lobster fishers and the government. Finlay, a schoolteacher from Walkerton, Ontario, says it is "extraordinarily difficult" to "make peace" in a conflict as complex and volatile as Burnt Church.
Although CPT doesn't always actively intervene in conflicts, its tendency is "to stand with those who are oppressed," Finlay explains.
Divided opinions
Opinions on whether the natives are oppressed or are pushing the limits of their rights sharply divide the communities in the region of northeastern New Brunswick. For centuries three cultures — English-speaking, French-speaking and Mi'kmaq — have inhabited the area, and the conflict goes as far back as history records.
For Gerard Basque, an Acadian Baptist pastor in nearby Tracadie, sorting through the issues is anything but straightforward. Although there are no fishermen in his church, his community is largely made up of Acadian fishermen, who are directly opposed to the natives getting what they view as special fishing rights.
But as Christians, Basque points out, "we know we have to have compassion for the natives."
In some ways, he adds, the Acadians have a similar history to the Mi'kmaq. In the mid-18th century, the French fought the English and lost; as a result the English took over their land and deported vast numbers of them to the United States. "We were doing agriculture," says Basque, whose family managed to escape expulsion. After that the remaining Acadians did whatever they could to survive, including fishing.
According to background detail in last year's Marshall decision, the Supreme Court of Canada judgment that gave Mi'kmaq the right to make a modest living from fishing, the British were trying to clear Nova Scotia (which then included New Brunswick) of both French and natives, offering rewards in 1756 for the killing and capturing of Mi'kmaqs throughout the area.
That changed in 1760 and 1761 when the government negotiated treaties with the Mi'kmaq, giving them the right to fish and to sell fish. The agreements in those treaties formed the basis of the controversial Marshall decision last fall. (A later clarification put limits on the number of traps the Mi'kmaq were allowed to put out, a number the fishermen have by far exceeded.)
Now, offers Basque, "I think the federal government is not doing their job — what they're really supposed to be doing with the native people. They're still ignoring them.
"They forced them onto reserves but want them to be Canadian," he adds. "Are they Canadian or are they not?"
Proactive stance
While some New Brunswick pastors feel at a loss as to how to respond to the Burnt Church crisis — other than to pray — Dan Kierkegaard, who pastored St. David's United Church in Burnt Church for three years until the end of June — took a proactive stance, organizing forums for representatives of all sides of the dispute to come together.
"The solution has got to be where people sit down and talk across the table," insists Kierkegaard, now with a United church in Burnaby, B.C. "A lot of the work I was doing was calling the community to do that kind of dialogue," he explains.
"It was really a brand new thing." Kierkegaard has noticed that so often, communities live side by side but have nothing to do with each other — that is, until there's a conflict. During eight meetings between April and June, natives and non-natives, officials from DFO, police and community agencies met to express their own feelings and to try to understand each other.
It was a start. The meetings dropped off after Kierkegaard's departure, and being on the west coast he finds it frustrating to observe the conflict from such a distance. But Kierkegaard wishes the church in general would take a more active role in mediating dialogues among different groups. "The church needs to begin to do that on a regular basis," he says, "not only in crisis situations."
Social problems
Added to the white-native conflict is the fact that not all Mi'kmaq agree on the tactics used, along with the observation by some that despite the promise of a living, poverty and social problems among the Mi'kmaq are rampant.
"Unemployment on the native reserves is extremely high; drug and alcohol use is extremely high," points out Todd MacLeod, pastor of Newcastle Baptist Church in the city of Miramichi. Suicide levels are higher than in any of the white communities, he notes.
"I think people feel very badly about the situation and see no winners on either side."
MacLeod says his own church has done little besides talking about the issue at prayer meetings. Miramichi, a recent amalgamation of mostly-English Newcastle and mostly-French Chatham, has its own problems to deal with. "Our church is trying to bring some unity to the French-English debate," MacLeod says.
Tom and Judi Snowdon, who live in Buctouche, an hour and a half south of Burnt Church, began their jobs as Maritime representatives of Mennonite Central Committee in August after moving east from Winnipeg. Although they have visited Burnt Church, they haven't had time to respond in any concrete way.
"What we have to do is build bridges with the native community," Judi Snowdon comments, "and that's not going to happen overnight."
Tom Snowdon agrees that their role is long term rather than to find an immediate solution. "The issue is not really over fishing," he adds. "The issue is who is in control."
"Getting in the way"
For Christian Peacemaker Teams, whose aim is "getting in the way" while challenging "systems of domination and exploitation as Jesus Christ did in the first century," the task is more clear-cut. "Our goal is to reduce the threat of violence," says Canadian coordinator Doug Pritchard, who spent some time in Burnt Church during June.
Pritchard appeared in a New Brunswick court September 7 to enter a plea of not guilty to charges of obstructing a peace officer after he recorded Fisheries officers at work in the bay. On June 12, he says, "I was on board a 12-foot dory with a video camera" recording encounters between DFO and natives. "At one point the Fisheries boat almost swamped our boat," he says. A wall of water came rushing over the dory. "I thought we were going to be drowned."
Five weeks later Pritchard, who lives in Toronto, received notice that he was being charged, along with Catholic priest Bob Holmes and lay worker William Payne.
Pritchard has not hired a lawyer and states that if he is found guilty, he will face jail rather than pay what could be a hefty fine.
"I'm certainly prepared to pay the consequences," he says without hesitation, adding, "they arrested Jesus too."
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