An Indigenous nation in the Broughton known as the Namgis First Nation has invested an extraordinary amount of membership money in an aquaculture enterprise to grow fish. If this investment is indication, apparently there is a strong interest in the Namgis territory to grow fish, in this case, at a fish farm called Kuterra.
Meanwhile, a few members of the Namgis First Nation are currently embroiled in a fight with Marine Harvest Canada, and in the process proving themselves to be incapable of inviting reconciliation, creating the impression of an embittered community in one of those picturesque territories in the country. Marine Harvest Canada and other companies grow fish in the Broughton, and it was Marine Harvest Canada that agreed Kuterra was an opportunity to open the door to reconciliation.
Marine Harvest Canada agreed to supply Kuterra with smolts for their enterprise. Moreover, Marine Harvest Canada has nothing to be ashamed of in handling the issue of reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous people. Two decades ago, Marine Harvest Canada was solicited by Kitasoo/Xai'xais to join a partnership to grow salmon and the company successfully partnered with Kitasoo Seafoods Ltd. because fish farming was something the Kitasoo/Xai'xais were intensely interested in doing, and since partnering many years ago the two companies continue fish farming on Canada's Pacific Coast, doing so with increasing success. This success begs the question, why can there be no furthering of reconciliation with the Namgis when it's demonstrably achievable elsewhere?
What is so curious about the Namgis protest in the Broughton is the level of third party interest intervening with often extemporaneous advocacy. These third parties are becoming entwined with Indigenous interests in protesting the fish farm industry's efforts to achieve reconciliation in the Broughton, including a group at Echo Bay called the Salmon Coast Field Station, and Alexandra Morton. It often sounds like the tail wagging the dog when this mix of Indigenous and activist air their issues in public and some media.
It was a visit to OrcaLab on Hanson Island where Alexandra Morton began a quixotic campaign against what she purports is a devastating impact of fish farms on killer whales, and that was in 2007, at which time she declared the orca would disappear within 10 years. But within 10 years according to every anecdotal report by OrcaLab volunteers, there is an abundance of orca surrounding OrcaLab near Robson Bight every year. It's recorded on camera, the health of whales and ceteaceans is never questioned. The abundance of food is readily apparent. At the same time most of Alexandra Morton's ferocious attacks on fish farms are removed from OrcaLab's websites. OrcaLab is sitting on a corner of the Namgis traditional territory.
With declining numbers of Pacific salmon being the main complaint of the current coterie of protesters from Namgis (mainly from Alert Bay, B.C.) illegally occupying Marine Harvest Canada's privately held farm sites, one wonders if any thought has been given to other potential causes of withering numbers of Pacific salmon in Namgis traditional territory. It is a fact that the commercial fishery in pursuit of Pacific salmon was reduced to a rump of its former self on the west coast by the 1970s and early 1980s, long before salmon farms existed.
The numbers of salmon returns in various stages are lower everywhere on the coast, including places far removed from any fish farms. Furthermore, a great deal of research that is never openly discussed, but which does in fact exist, is the failure of Canada's Pacific salmon hatcheries to provide genetically suitable salmon into the ecology, proving that the Pacific salmon being reared in publicly owned hatcheries are genetic misfits too weak for the task of living in the ocean and growing and feeding and returning to spawn (possibly two weak to evade sea lice for that matter).
This Pacific salmon failure has been studied by a scientist named Carol Schmidt who owns a company called Ocean Pacific, near Port Alberni, and has proven that a dramatic improvement in returns of Chinook salmon can be attained by performing vigilant collections of genetically appropriate eggs and milt, and raising them in hatcheries for one year instead of 6 months, thus letting nature work in favour of the fish.
It seems unlikely that a community such as Alert Bay and its Namgis residents with their illustrious history in commercial fishing, and the abundance of traditional knowledge in the various provisions of seafood in the area, would not benefit from fully engaging in the practice of fish farming. Other communities like the Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht have done so by training personnel from their communities in the environmental sciences, and creating protocol agreements that provide jobs and create small business relate to the industry. As others on the Pacific coast have done, Namgis could negotiate from positions inside the industry on matters of farm site location, employment, preservation of sacred sites and other obviously sensitive concerns. But standing on the outside with no input except from some arguably questionable suspects like Morton and the Echo Bay activists makes it difficult to take the concerns of Alert Bay area Indigenous people seriously.
It is interesting to note that Morton, an American, who benefits from funding sources, is a lay-biologist who seems to have a particular mission coincidentally supportive of the national interests of aquaculture in Alaska, which so happens to come at the expense of Canada's own Indigenous people seeking economic opportunities in the Broughton. Her subterfuge is deeply engrained and highly suspicious to some as a result, and what if it's entirely related to dismantling the potential legacy of economic opportunity in Canada's Pacific coast in favor of American investors in their thriving Alaskan aquaculture industry?
The position of First Nations in Alaska is secure by agreements and investments where they own some of the dozens of privately operated hatcheries in Alaska growing fish to release into the Pacific, which return to Alaska to be scooped into the nets and packaged as wild for markets in the USA. Canada's rather small investments in aquaculture are extraordinarily successful and a real thorn in the side of Alaskan fish farmers. Has anyone in Namgis First Nation ever thought about those aspects when Namgis children are growing up wishing they could have a job and career in their own traditional territory? As a footnote to this present foofaraw, Kuterra is a failed business enterprise too heavily burdened by debt to continue operation.
