Significant Metis Rights Case Underway In Yorkton

Significant Metis Rights Case Underway In Yorkton

Thursday, June 08, 2006 at 15:37

 

 

A Metis lawyer says a trial in Yorkton could very well determine how Metis harvesting rights are treated in southern Saskatchewan.

 

Dwayne Roth, the recently-resigned president of the Metis Nation of Saskatchewan, is representing four men who stand accused of fishing without a licence.

 

Roth says the men told officers they were relying on their Metis rights to harvest fish in their traditional area.

 

He believes the incident is similar to the Laviolette case, in which a judge ruled Meadow Lake was part of a larger tract of land that Metis traditionally hunted and fished.

 

In the case in southern Saskatchewan, Dennis Langan and his son Jeff were charged in May 2004 after officers saw them fishing on Lake of the Prairies, near the Manitoba border.

 

Abraham Martin and Gary Pelletier, who are cousins, were charged a year later for doing the same thing on a lake west of Yorkton.

 

Roth says the judge has given him a little over a month to produce documentation supporting the men’s claim that Yorkton is traditional Metis land.

 

Roth says the general Metis position is that land west of the Great Lakes in Ontario to the Rockies in Alberta is traditional territory for the Metis.