Burnt Church Crisis

The Burnt Church Crisis was a conflict in Canada between the Mi'kmaq people of the Burnt Church First Nations (Esgenoôpetitj) and non Aboriginal fisheries in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia between 1999 and 2002.

As Indigenous people, Mi'kmaq claim the right to catch and sell lobster out of season. Non Aboriginal stakeholders claimed that if this is allowed, lobster stocks (an important regional source of income and jobs) could be depleted. On September 17, 1999, a Supreme Court of Canada ruling (R. v. Marshall) acknowledged that Treaty of 1752 and the Treaty of 1760 1761 held that a Mi'kmaq man, Donald Marshall, Jr., had the legal right to fish for eels out of season. The Supreme Court emphasized the Indigenous people's right to establish a 'moderate livelihood', in modern day standards, through trade and the use of resources to obtain trade items. The Burnt Church First Nation interpreted the judgment as meaning that they could catch lobster out of season and began to put out traps. When the Marshall ruling came down in 1999 and the Native people decided to exercise their right to fish for a 'moderate livelihood', the government was not prepared to deal with rights guaranteed in the Court's decision. The government started a program of buying back licenses from non Native fishermen to give them to Native people.

Angry non Indigenous people damaged and destroyed thousands of Mi'kmaq lobster traps in the weeks that followed. On October 3, 1999, approximately 150 fishing boats headed out into Miramichi Bay to protest against the Mi'kmaq trappers who were fishing lobster out of season. Once the boats returned, shouting matches between non Indigenous and Mi'kmaq fisherman begin, after hundreds of Indigenous owned traps were destroyed. Local Mi'kmaq retaliated and conflicts ensued in the following nights, with both parties suffering injuries and damaged property. The Indigenous fishermen refused to give up the fishing rights granted by the Treaty and affirmed by the Marshall decision. Mi'kmaq set up an armed encampment on the wharf in Burnt Church to protect Indigenous people continuing to catch lobster in the bay. A lobster boat owned by a non status Indigenous person was also sunk in Yarmouth. On October 18, 1999, the West Nova Fishermen's Coalition, an organization in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, applied for a rehearing of the appeal and asked for the judgement to be set aside until a new hearing. The intervention efforts cost over $15 million for the Federal Government, not including ensuing legal costs.

In April 2002, a Federal report on the crisis suggested a number of police charges to be dropped and that fishermen should be compensated for damaged traps and boats. It also recommended, however, that First Nations fishermen should be allowed to fish only in season and that they should attain fishing licenses like non Indigenous fishermen.

The crisis concluded when an Agreement in Principle was signed with the Burnt Church community that allowed them the right to fish for subsistence purposes while it denied them the right to catch and sell the lobster.