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To clarify a common misunderstanding, the Mi'kmaq fishery is a nation-to-nation relationship, it is not "race-based." Its a political & legal relationship that the Mi'kmaq have with Canada re fisheries. This is why the Province of NS & commercial fishers have no jurisdiction here
Douglas Harris ( @douglascharris) wrote this over a decade ago in the Tyee and it helped my own understanding immensely (as a white girl growing up in a commercial fishing town):
"Aboriginal rights are not based on race but, as the Supreme Court... indicated, on the fact that 'when Europeans arrived in N. America, Aboriginal ppls were already here, living in communities on the land & participating in distinctive cultures as they had done for centuries'...
...The source of an Aboriginal right to fish, therefore, lies not in a racial designation, but rather in the use & management of the fisheries by distinct political communities whose existence long preceded the British assertion of sovereignty." -D. Harris https://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/06/21/Fishery/
