@DorkySupergirl Said
I find your position interesting, unless I am not understanding your position.
The one thing I have always held in high regard about Natives is that most will not sport hunt and most Natives are about the preservation of species of animals and fish as well which I applaud and wish other cultures would follow. However, even if your treaty allows one to keep unlimited number of fish, allows you to keep any size, allows you to keep young fish, etc, why would you want to as we both know this will hurt spawning and hurt the preservation of fish. Sometimes we might be legally allowed to do something but morally we should not even if morals are not in the law, it goes against your culture to harm animals this way and not work to preserve them even if it is the law. It is harming the preservation of fish to keep ones too young, take too many and keep ones of certain size which are the spawners which is why white people are not allowed to do it.
We cannot, as a people, over fish, over hunt as it harms all of us, no matter our color so perhaps we should look at what is morally the right thing to do and not what a treaty says we can do.
While it pisses me off to no end to see Natives use their Treaty rights to over fish, I don't
think that's what's going on in this case.
The article indicates (maybe...) that these men were simply relocating the smaller eels from one part of the river to another so they were above a man made barrier. In our area, we have a lot of dams and our fisheries department will relocate fish to an area above the dam to ensure their survival. I
think that is what these men were doing with the eels.
I wonder though, why are they not working
with the fisheries department? Why do they have a conservation effort that does not involve the "officials" in any way, shape or form? Even if it is just an agreement like "We're going to do this and you're going to let us."