We first posted this video in 2016, but with all that’s happening these days in Digby County, not all that far from Bear River, a re-post is warranted. There are lots of similarities, but also some differences, as the kind of fisheries featured in this video is primarily for food.

Amazingly, the Bear River fishers accomplished this while not triggering the kind of violence and racist attitudes that were displayed by DFO officials and non-native fishers during the so-called Burnt Church crisis just a few years earlier, and not that far away.

And the end-result is very special.

“When they talk about community fisheries they really talk about community fisheries,” says Martin Kaye of the Fundy Marine Resource Centre. “A sharing of the product that is caught, a sharing of the revenue that is caught. We don’t have that kind of community in the non-native communities.”

In defense of our treaties is yet another great documentary, made in 2008, by Seeking Netukulimk director Martha Stiegman, and co-produced by Bear River’s Sherry Pictou, who is also featured in the film.

“This whole territory of ours, there are several groups in it,” says Pictou, referring to the non-native fishers. “We are suffering in one way, with our colonial oppression. Those other groups are suffering too, from their forms of corporate exploitation.

“The people that live in this area, I think it’s important that we have some kind of collaborative effort, and say no more.”

Note that this video was made in 2008. I will do my best to find out what’s happening with the Bear River fisheries these days.   

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The post Weekend video. In defense of our treaties appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.

The documentary follows seven paddlers from L’sɨtkuk (Bear River First Nation) as they travel inland following almost forgotten traditional Mi’kmaq canoe routes.

“I have always heard stories about the Old people who used to do this canoe run, and here we are in 2015 and our people are doing it again,” says co-director Sherry Pictou in the documentary as the paddlers take off.

“It’s not so much about reclaiming old canoe routes, it’s more about renewal. Because reclaiming something, you’re getting into those modes of property ownership, and you don’t own the land, you belong to the land.”

Check out a few other great documentaries by Martha Stiegman we featured in the Nova Scotia Advocate over the years.

See also:

• Weekend video: Mi’kmaq teens help build birchbark canoes
• Mourning song. A poem by Shalan Joudry

The post Weekend video: We story the land appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.

We are introduced to Kerry Prosper, a Mi’kmaq elder, who teaches his grandchildren how to fish for eels, and who offers some history lessons on the long (and ongoing) battle to get treaty rights to fish recognized and accepted in Nova Scotia, and in Canada for that matter.

In particular the documentary delves into the crucial contributions of Donald Marshall, the Cape Breton Mi’kmaq who defended his treaty right to fish all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Woven into Prosper’s lessons  is the notion of Netukulimk, the idea of stewardship, that living off the land brings with it the obligation to look after that land for future generations.

There’s a thoughtful introduction to the documentary, written by documentary maker Martha Stiegman herself and published on the Ecology Centre’s Small Scales blog.

It takes time to understand the concept of Netukulimk. I’ve been lucky enough to get an introduction, by working with Kerry Prosper on this film. I’ve learned that those of us in the non-native community have a thing or two to learn from our Mi’kmaq brothers and sisters about what it means to live here, and about the traditional laws that have long been anchored in these lands and waters.

We have a responsibility to act as allies, to learn about the spirit and intent of the original Peace and Friendship Treaties, and the way of life anchored in Netukulimk they were meant to protect. And we have to find ways to become responsible treaty partners, because our governments certainly aren’t.

Seeking Netukumlimk is an excellent and beautiful documentary that will move you closer to that goal.

The post Weekend Video: Seeking Netukulimk appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.