Fisheries and First Nations: Report from Research Stay in Canada, March-July 2010

• Main Author: Brattland, Camilla
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 2010
• Subjects: Armitage; British Columbia; Broderstad; Canada; Tromsø; First Nations; Mi’kmaq; sami; University of Tromsø
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/14129/; https://research.library.mun.ca/14129/1/Report_Fisheries_and_First_Nations_final.pdf; http://www.curra.ca/documents/Report_Fisheries_and_First_Nations_final.pdf

In the period between March and July 2010, I was able to conduct a study trip to the east and west coast of Canada with the kind financial support from the Centre for Sami Studies at the University of Tromsø as part of my PhD program. Without their support, the travel would not have been possible and it has contributed to expanding knowledge and creating contacts in a growing field of study. Many people helped to make this trip come about as successfully as it did. Thank you to my supervisor Svein Jentoft and to Else Grete Broderstad and Stine Barlindhaug and others who kindly provided contacts in Canada. Most of all, I am grateful to Barbara Neis and Peter Armitage who hosted me in St. John’s for almost two months, and also Tony Davis and his family who took me in for two weeks in Nova Scotia. The goal of the trip was to learn more about methodologies and methods for documenting fisheries in indigenous and small coastal communities and applying these to the coastal Sami context and my own research on coastal Sami fisheries. I was interested in both fisheries research methods in general and methods for documenting indigenous land use and occupancy, in addition to how the different research institutions and projects in Canada address indigenous fisheries issues. This report contains the background for the research trip, an overview of travels and activities during the stay, and a more detailed report from two of the places visited during the stay, focusing on Mi’kmaq fisheries in Atlantic Canada and salmon farming issues in British Columbia. The most central people and institutions have provided feedback to the report before it was submitted to the board at the Centre for Sami Studies.