Issues surrounding indigenous hunting are always tough. {The Métis} have embarked on an out-of-season {antelope} hunt to assert what they claim is their inherent right to hunt for food anywhere in the province.
Some of them say they may never use the right, but they are determined to claim it just the same.
"It's not about hunting; it's about aboriginal rights," says Jones, who was born in Edmonton, but moved into the mountains to trap and guide when he reached his teens. "If we don't exercise our rights, we don't have any rights."
The Métis say a Supreme Court of Canada decision upholds this constitutional right, but the Alberta government continues to deny it.
Under Alberta's rules, which came into effect last summer when the province cancelled a negotiated interim harvesting agreement, Métis cannot hunt on this prairie between Calgary and the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary. It has removed their legal right to hunt for food in all of central or southern Alberta.
Photo by Olorin1.
1 comment:
This, only one in a long line of similar cases, proves that indigenous peoples have no more concern for wildlife OR the environment than the rest of society.
The one and only reason they didn't cause environmental disasters earlier in their history is that they didn't have the means to do it
Lars K
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