Manitoba Métis win hunting rights case
08 January 2009 | 
Author: doctor |
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CBC News - January 8 2009
A man has won a five-year legal battle against the Manitoba government with a landmark court ruling on Métis hunting rights.
But the case has potentially wide-ranging implications beyond who can hunt where and when — a legal expert says. Provincial court Judge John Coombs ruled Thursday on the case of Will Goodon, who was charged with hunting without a licence after he shot a ringneck duck near Turtle Mountain in October 2004. Goodon argued his Manitoba Métis Federation harvester card was all he needed — but Manitoba Conservation officials disagreed and Goodon was charged under the Wildlife Act. Métis, unlike status Indians and Inuit, do not have an automatic right to hunt, the province argued, since they had not established hunting was a traditional occupation of their ancestors outside Manitoba's original 1870 "postage stamp" boundaries. The judge didn't buy that argument. "Many community witnesses [some related to the accused] gave evidence about their ancestors hunting at the Turtle Mountains from the 1800s to the present day," the judge said in a 28-page ruling. "I have determined the rights-bearing community is an area of southwestern Manitoba that includes the City of Winnipeg south to the U.S. border and west to the Saskatchewan border. This area includes the Turtle Mountains and its environs."