And what will be the gain of a protest fishery?
What is the point you are trying to get across?
Who will be the spokesman?
How will it look to the general public?
Will DFO actually listen?
Old Black Dog has the right idea here. None of his questions have effectively been answered. Most of what I've read here is all rage with neither form nor substance.
Don't get me wrong, after reading what I've had about recent fishing activities of the FN fishers I'm as frustrated as the next angler; however, it seems clear that this protest and (protests like it) are reactionary, emotional, juvenile, and counter productive.
I've been involved in A LOT of political activism for many years, and I've seen this type of thing before more times than I can count. And every single time I've seen it the outcome has inevitable been the same: frustration, dissolution, public outrage.
Don't think for a moment that the commercial fisherman are doing any of this for you as anglers. The commercial fishers have bigger problem than to worry about sportfishers. I urge you all not to throw your lots in with them.
Killing fish just to show that there are fish to be killed is patently ridiculous. The problem is that the subject is an emotional one and otherwise intelligent and insightful people (which you surely all are under less tense circumstances) have their anger and drive misdirected.
Many have questioned: "if not a protest fishery, then what?" This is the most important question, isn't it? "Doing Something" is not necessarily better than "Doing Nothing"--especially when that something is the frustrated, sensless and selfserving degradation of the fish stocks.
What else then? Well, here is my take:
-Protection of the fish stocks must be the singular focus of any action. There once were and hopefully will be again enough fish for all people to harvest
responsibily-There are people from ALL communities that have this priority and ALL these people must be involved. The only "We and They" and that has a place in this struggle is "we, the conservation minded" and "they, the selfserving resource destroyers".
-The target of any action should and must be the government, period. Not to sick them on the FN, but to protect the environment and its wild life from all destructive forces: mining, fishfarms, logging runoff, irresponsible anglers, destructive methods of commercial fishing, poor waste disposal, general over fishing and so on. The damage done by First Nations fishers is a mere drop in the bucket compared to all of the other causes of diminished fish stalks that one wonders why it is so overemphasized.
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Topic: protest fishery (Read 33857 times)