Supreme Court ruling on First Nations fishing rights remembered 25 years later

On Sept. 17, 1999, Donald Marshall Junior won a landmark Supreme Court ruling that allowed First Nations people to fish for what the court called "a moderate livelihood."

Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of what has come to be known as the Marshall Decision, and many – including his family – remembered its impact then and now.

"For him, it took such a toll to have to go through the court process - to be in the public eye,” said Colleen D’Orsay, Donald Marshall Junior’s widow. Marshall Junior died in 2009 from complications following a lung transplant six years earlier.

D’Orsay said while her late husband’s fight has largely been worth it, there have been several instances in of fighting on Maritime waters between Mi’kmaq and non-Native fishers in the last 25 years.

She says she and their son, Donald Marshall III, were in Saulnierville, N.S., four years ago during the so-called “lobster wars” between the two sides.

"What saddens me on his behalf and the behalf of the Mi'kmaq people is that it hasn't been implemented - the fishing rights haven't been implemented - the way that they ought to be,” D’Orsay said.

Until recently, Jeff Ward was the manager of the Membertou Heritage Park, which still has Marshall Junior's old eel nets on display from his arrest on the waters while fishing in 1993.

"Those eel nets - to us and to me – it's like the Holy Grail of evidence,” Ward said. "They've changed lives. Yet still, today, they cannot define 'moderate livelihood.' So, the work is still not done."

Herb Nash, a longtime fishermen's representative in Glace Bay, N.S., says the non-Native fishers he knows have largely had no issue sharing the waters over the past quarter-century since The Marshall Decision.

"I think at first, a few people were maybe upset about it and that but over the course of a few years - a couple of years, and that - everybody knew it was there,” Nash said. “We had to get along with it. I don't have a problem with them being here. They're not doing no more harm than our own are - we're all fishing for a living."

Artist and photographer Steven Wadden is commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Decision with a photo exhibit in Sydney's Eltuek Arts Centre.

One of the photos features Donald Marshall III - part of the next generation of Mi'kmaq fishers whose rights his father fought for.

"They are implementing those rights,” his mother said. “They are feeling that pride, and that they are moving forward and advancing these causes is really heartwarming and Junior would have really loved to have seen it."