First Nations are responsible for the conservation, protection and rehabilitation of eco-systems, fish stocks and habitat. Our responsibility to care for the earth comes from the Creator. We have spiritual, cultural and historic ties to all fisheries resources, especially salmon. The Musqueam are an ancient people and their ancestors lived near the mouth of the Fraser River for thousands of years. The Musqueam have always fished for salmon in the river and many small creeks that used to flow down the hills of what is now Vancouver and always based their economy on fishing.

In addition to fishing for salmon, our ancestors harvested shellfish on the beaches of Stanley Park, Bowen Island and Boundary Bay. They took sturgeon in the sloughs on the Delta Islands and Pitt Lake. Eulachon, herring, halibut, and trout are other important species fished by the Musqueam in many instances at the same locations used today.

Musqueam Nation successfully took the issue of fishing and aboriginal rights to the Supreme Court of Canada. The 1990 decision in the Musqueam’s Sparrow case concluded that a century of detailed regulations had not extinguished the Musqueam people’s aboriginal right to fish for food, societal and ceremonial purposes. The1990 Supreme Court decision led to the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy, and shared management agreements between First Nations, including Musqueam, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) that is a step to the eventual management of all aspects of fisheries in their traditional territories.

Musqueam’s Fisheries Department engages their own aboriginal fisheries to assist DFO in enforcing the fishing regulations of their communities as well as those established by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in consultation with Musqueam authorities; develops their own salmon enhancement program; and offers an excellent training program for fisheries officers who are involved in data processing in order to track fish, compliance, enforcement and quality control, among other duties.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials have called Musqueam Fisheries the cutting edge. The Musqueam want to ensure proper resource management and conservation and ensure the sustainability of fisheries resources for future generations. The SCC judgment in Sparrow confirms that the Musqueam have an aboriginal right to fish. Since Sparrow the Musqueam Indian Band has entered into agreements with DFO under the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy (AFS) in setting the ground rules for management of aboriginal fisheries. Treaties will substantiate the Musqueam’s rights by which they can enter into agreement under the (AFS). They plan to negotiate for a larger and more significant role in the fishery in all aspects from habitat management to stock management within their traditional area.

Conservation strategies and allocation processes will consider a wide range of criteria, including spawning origin, migration routes, feeding grounds, history of use, economic opportunity, social conditions, cultural, ceremonial and spiritual needs and biological factors. Musqueam also want to be adequately compensated for the depletion and extinction of fisheries resources and the loss of access to fisheries.


Traditional Musqueam Use Of Trawl Nets
Descriptions of trawl net technology are based on anthropological references published and unpublished including early accounts. Anthropologists who gathered information from Musqueam and other Coast Salish elders in the 1930s, 1950s and 1960s include H.G. Barnett, Wilson Duff, Michael Kew and Wayne Suttles.


Musqueam Salmon Fisheries
Before European settlement in British Columbia traditional Coast Salish societies like the Musqueam had an economy based mainly on fishing, hunting and gathering. The Musqueam people used salmon harpoons or spears and various kinds of traps and nets to fish in the various small streams of their traditional fishing grounds. However fishing in the Fraser River required more sophisticated and highly specialized techniques that exploit the important Fraser River salmon resources.

Decisions about when to fish and what gear to use were made by experienced Musqueam fishermen who were intimately acquainted with the timing of salmon runs and the varying stream and river conditions in their local fishing grounds. High yields were possible during the main salmon runs on the Fraser. One of the most productive fishing methods the Musqueam used was the trawl net towed between two canoes.

Trawling or dragging a drift net was a common Musqueam fishing technique which successfully exploited Fraser salmon runs, providing the tribe with an abundance of salmon supplies for winter storage foods, fresh consumption, ceremonial feasts, and for purposes of gift exchange and trade. Anthropologist Michael Kew ranked trawling or dragging as possibly the most important salmon fishing method used traditionally on the lower Fraser River.


Musqueam Trawl Net
The traditional Fraser River net was a large ‘trawl’ or drag net that was towed between two canoes. The canoes usually manned by two to four men each were paddled down stream at a rate that slightly exceeded the speed of the current so that the bunt of the net billowed out. Either a wide mouthed conical net or a flat net was used. Conical nets were typically a towing rig of poles and ropes to support the mouth of the net, holding it open. Flat nets required floats and sinkers to keep them upright. When the catch was made the canoes closed in together to take up the net.

Other words have been used to describe this technique: dragnet or bag net, bag seines, river seine, drift net, drifting bag net, pocket net, and single drifting bag seine. Suttles (1955) recorded the h¢òœ¢miò¢Â work for salmon trawl net as xe’men. A larger trawl net called ti÷e’n was used by some stalo people to catch sturgeon. To avoid confusion the word ‘trawl’ is used here because whether the net is flat or conical it was operated as a river trawl, dragged downstream to intercept the salmon runs coming up stream.

Trawls work best in muddy waters where the stirred up sediment helps to obscure the net; the silt laden Fraser was perfect for this technique. Traditional trawls were also operated at night.

The most important natural features required for successful river trawling are a moderate steady current and a level streambed with depths of at least six to seven feet. The Musqueam had many suitable locations in their Fraser fishing territory.


Types and Materials
An intensive labour investment was required to produce the netting and cordage needed for large trawl nets. Materials used for the nets included nettle fibre and Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabium). Ropes were made of cedar bark.

Information collected at Katzie by Suttles (1955) states that only Salish men of rank (si’em) owned the large trawling nets.

Locations and Seasons
The evidence is that trawl nets were used on the Fraser mainly during the chinook or spring salmon and sockeye salmon runs. Typically the Musqueam caught chinook during the spring run off when the river was even more turbid than usual; they fished for sockeye in the summer; especially in August and September.

In the river deltas where bars and shoals restrict the passage of salmon the trawling net was used to advantage. Hill-Tout saw many fishermen trawling off the various mouths of the Fraser River on the tidal flats. Changes in tidal currents would no doubt affect the speed and manipulation of the trawl nets, and would be a factor determining when Musqueam fishermen could use their nets.

One reason the Musqueam developed a successful fishery with trawl nets was the need to have a productive method of fishing in the Fraser River. Unlike native communities in many parts of the coast, the Musqueam could not totally depend on dams or weirs for their major salmon production. The Fraser River was too large, and its currents were too powerful to make weirs a practical alternative. It was necessary to utilize the skills and technology required in a net fishery.

People who did not have fishing rights in the Fraser River also developed a net technology to exploit the Fraser salmon. Reef net locations at Point Roberts near the southwestern boundary of Musqueam territory were traditionally owned by Lummi people, who spoke a Straits Salish dialect. Reef nets were very large anchored nets set on shoals a few miles off the mouth of the Fraser where they could intercept the major salmon runs.

Both the trawl net and reef net techniques were highly specialized fishing methods that depended for their success on careful planning and organization of men, women and equipment, a knowledge of the timing of important salmon runs and the conditions of tides and currents.


Bibliography
Barnett. H.G.
1955 The Coast Salish of British Columbia. Eugene:
University of Oregon Press.
Berringer, P.A.
1976 Notes on Salmon Abundance in the Fraser River System.
(Unpub.) Paper prepared for Fraser Watershed Seminar,
University of British Columbia.
Berringer, P.A.
1982 Northwest Coast Traditional Salmon Fisheries: Systems of resource
utilization. MA Thesis (Anthropology), University of British Columbia.
Boas, Franz
1894 The Indian Tribes of the Lower Fraser River. Report on
North-western Tribes of Canada 9. British Assoc. for the Advancement of Science.
Duff, Wilson
1952 The Upper Stalo Indians of the Fraser River of British Columbia.
Anthropology in British Columbia, Memoir 1. Victoria
Hill-Tout, C.
1907 British North America: The Far West, the home of the Salish and the
Dene. London: Archibald Constable.
Kew, J.E.M.
1976 Salmon Abundance, Technology and Human Populations on the Fraser
River Watershed. Paper delivered to Northwest Coast Studies
Conference, May 1976, Simon Fraser University.
Lamb, W. Kaye, ed.
1960 The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser: 1806 – 1808. Toronto:
Macmillon of Canada.
Suttles, W.
1951 The Economic Life of the Coast Salish of Haro and Rosario Straits. Ph.D.
Dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle.
Suttles, W.
1955 Katzie Ethnographic Notes. Anthropology in British Columbia, Memoir
2. Victoria: British Columbia Provincial Museum.


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In 1990, the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Musqueam’s Sparrow Case ruled that section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, provides a “strong measure of protection” for aboriginal rights and it also ruled that aboriginal and treaty rights are capable of evolving over time, and must be interpreted in a generous and liberal manner.

The Sparrow decision was the first ruling of the Supreme Court interpreting section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, and the second ruling, after “Guerin” to uphold an aboriginal right. According to UBC Law Professor Douglas Sanders. “The judgement attempted to clearly settle the standard for extinguishments. The ruling stated “the test of extinguishments to be adopted, in our opinion, is that Sovereign’s intention must be clear and plain if it is to extinguish an aboriginal right” and it continues, “It is clear then, that s35 (1) Constitution Act, 1982, represents the culmination of a long and difficult struggle in both the political forum and the courts for the constitutional recognition of aboriginal rights”. The Sparrow Case strongly states that the government must not be adversarial in its treatment of aboriginal people.