Mi’kmaw Fishermen Left to Walk Home Without Shoes

Photo Credit: Robert Short/CBC

On Mar. 26, Blaise Sylliboy of the Membertou First Nation and Kevin Hartling of the Eskasoni First Nation were detained by fisheries officers after fishing for baby eels, or elvers, in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. At 1:00 AM, they were left near a gas station, in 2° C weather, 45 minutes away from their fishing area with their cell phones and hip waders confiscated.

They borrowed a phone at a gas station and dialed numbers they could remember. After receiving no responses, the gas station told them to leave. From 1:00 AM to 7:00 AM,  they walked along a highway to Liverpool in an attempt to find a place to spend the night.

After two hours, they said their socks had “pretty much deteriorated” from walking on the wet pavement. However, they “felt a sign from God” after finding a clothing donation bin on the road. After walking for around six hours, a car discovered them and drove them to a convenience store, where they were able to call a friend.

Officers did not give them supervised access to their phones to write down contact information. Moreover, they were forbidden to cut the shoes off their hip waders.

"I told [the officer], like, 'Man, this is outrageous. You're leaving me with no shoes,'" Sylliboy said to CBC. "He said, 'You know the consequences’, but I said, 'I know the consequences, but this is, like, outrageous on human rights.' And he was like, 'Yeah, sounds like your guys' problem.'"

Hartling described the event to CTV News as a “starlight tour”, a term used to describe when officers pick on Indigenous people and leave them to walk home in rural areas with low temperatures.

"That's what was going through my mind the whole time [...] If we stop moving, we're going to die. If we go and just sit somewhere to rest and fall asleep, we're dead."

Priscilla Settee, a professor emerita of Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, is Swampy Cree from the Cumberland House First Nation. She said she felt “disgusted” by the incident, since it reminded her of her own memories about the impact starlight tours have on her own Indigenous community. 

“Starlight tours were intended to kill people,” she said. “When you drop someone off in 30 or 40 below [zero], with no shoes and no adequate winter clothing, then you can only read into it that it was meant to seriously injure or kill someone.”

Recently, unauthorized fishing in Nova Scotia became common as elvers were sold for thousands of dollars per kilogram to grow for food in Asia.

“It is standard practice for fishery officers to seize fishing gear related to the commission of alleged infractions, including hip waders, fyke nets and dip nets," a Fishes and Oceans Canada spokesperson wrote in an email.

Ottawa closed the Nova Scotia fishing area on Mar. 11. However, Mi'kmaq fishermen stated that they had the treaty right to fish there. 

The Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq Chiefs responded by saying that they had insufficient resources to “support court cases'' regarding fishermen arrested this year. This was because the arrest could be justified by "legitimate public safety and conservation concerns."

On Apr. 2, Prime Minister Trudeau stated that the government would begin an investigation regarding the mistreatment of Sylliboy and Hartling. 

"It's important that the laws against illegal fishing be enforced,” he said, “But there are processes and protocols in place, and the way enforcement officers need to behave, that we need to make sure was properly followed.”