Episode 51: Chief Terry Paul - The Fight for Atlantic First Nations Fisheries

Ahkameyimok Podcast with Perry Bellegarde

"The Mi'kmaq are not leaving. We've told the associations, we told the DFO, we told anyone who would listen. The Government has to do something, and that is to help make space in the waters for us, because we are going there, because we have a right to be in those waters."

Chief Terry Paul, of the Membertou First Nation in Cape Breton joins the Akhameyimok Podcast to discuss the systemic racism behind the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and government attempts to control First Nations treaty rights to fish. He also discusses his role and the historic impact of the billion dollar purchase of Clearwater, North America's largest shellfish producer, by several East Coast Mi'kmaq Nations. And they talk about why the Canadian parliamentary report issued this week on implementing First Nations moderate livelihood fisheries in the Maritimes and Quebec deserves a lot of scepticism.

Terry Paul has been Chief of the Membertou First Nation in Cape Breton since 1984. He is one of the founders of the National Aboriginal Capital Corporation Association. And he assisted Donald Marshall Jr. in his successful 1999 Supreme Court defense of the Mi'kmaq treaty rights to fish.

For more on work of the Assembly of First Nations, please visit AFN.ca

The Ahkameyimok Podcast is produced by David McGuffin of Explore Podcast Productions in Ottawa.

Our theme music is by the Red Dog Singers from Treaty 4 Territory in Southern Saskatchewan.