Last month -- after a wait of 239 years -- the Supreme Court uphed the right of natives in the Maritimes to hunt, fish, and log without a government licence.
Donald Marshall Junior -- the same Donald Marshall who spent much of his youth in jail for a murder he did not commit -- had been taken to court for selling eels. The court ruled in his favour. The ruling opened the door for the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and Pasamaquoddy first nations to finally exercise treaty rights that had been violated for more than two centuries.
A small number of native fishers, in the days after the decision, put new lobster traps in the ocean. Rob North, who spent the first week in October in Yarmouth, told CBC that he'd seen a total of five additional native boats.
But the media fanned a racist backlash. Almost 4,000 lobster traps owned by native fishers were destroyed in a frenzy of violence.
Three native men were injured, one seriously. At least one fishing boat was sunk.
The racist attacks were fuelled by local government officials and the police. Ken Clark, a Miramichi councillor helped vandalize the native lobster traps.
The RCMP had six officers out on the water watching the vandalism. "No one has reported any crime to us," was the cynical response of Inspector Norm Mazerolle.
Since 1752, the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet people have been entitled to the right to fish, hunt and otherwise support themselves in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick regions.
But governments have consistently ignored that constitutionally protected treaty right.
From 1752 to 1985, governments and big business successfully shut aboriginals almost completely out of those resources.
In 1985, 1991 and 1993, court decisions slowly began to recognize the fact that natives had the right to fish to survive.
Finally, last month, the Supreme Court upheld the right of Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy to commercially fish and make a moderate living.
Since this decision was announced, irresponsible voices in the public have scapegoated aboriginal peoples for the depletion of lobster stocks.
This is a racist lie.
Non-native fishermen in the New Brunswick fishing areas of the Gulf of St. Lawrence have close to 400,000 lobster traps. Natives have only 4,600, little more than one percent of all the traps.
Native fishers have landed just 84 metric tons of lobster, less than 1.5 percent of the 5,769 metric tons landed in 1998.
In reality the blame for the depletion of stocks should be laid at the feet of big businesses like Clearwater, businesses which hold many fishing licenses and whose only concern is profit, not conservation.
The blame also lies with the governments that support these businesses at the expense of real conservation. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans and big business have set seasons according to markets, not according to conservation. In the regular lobster season, 80% of female lobsters harvested have not had a chance to reproduce.
Those same policies destroyed the ground fishery in the entire Atlantic region. Fishers who used to take their livelihood from cod and other ground fish have been forced to turn to lobster - the only remaining viable fishery.
The only lasting solution to this situation is to manage the resources at the community level, with control of the resource by the fishers themselves.
In the words of Don Grady, vice president of the Southwest Nova Fishermen's Rights Association:
"We should let the people actually affected by the management of the resource decide how to allocate it, without interference by the government or big business."
In the long run, the only way to save all resources is to get rid of the influence of the market altogether.