Troubled waters: Why a clash over crustaceans is roiling Canada

The day began bright and clear in St. Mary’s Bay, a narrow finger of water running alongside the southwestern coast of Nova Scotia.

For Fallon Peter-Paul, Sept. 17 was to be a festive occasion affirming her Indigenous rights. Along with other members of the Sipekne’katik First Nation, she’d gathered on the wharf in Saulnierville to celebrate the inauguration of the community’s first lobster fishery aimed at helping members earn a modest living. It was intentionally launched outside the official government-set season for lobstering – and exactly 21 years to the day after Canada’s Supreme Court reaffirmed the right of the Mi’kmaq to do so.

After years of failed negotiations to put these rights into practice, the Mi’kmaq knew they would be provoking a reaction from non-Indigenous lobstermen and women whose families had worked these waters since the 1600s. But they didn’t expect what ensued.

The mood quickly became menacing the very first day. Ms. Peter-Paul, a photographer, documented community members standing on the armor stone breakwater that circled the wharf like a comma, looking out into the bay, where several dozen boats from non-Indigenous fishing communities were waiting. Once out on the water, Indigenous lobstermen and women reported acts of intimidation by the other fishers, who cut traps and fired flares at Mi’kmaw boats.

“It was a really powerful moment,” says Ms. Peter-Paul. “And it was also really sad ... that all of those people were there because they didn’t believe we should be doing what we were doing, practicing our treaty rights.”

In the days that followed, local fishers harassed and assaulted the Indigenous lobsterers. They briefly barricaded one in a storage facility, which days later was burned to the ground. They seized crates of lobsters harvested by the Indigenous

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