Navigating Mi'kmaq fishing after the Marshall decision: the cultural production of identities and local economies in Atlantic Canada

This dissertation examines how one Mi'kmaq First Nation community in Atlantic Canada was confronting the cultural and economic changes brought about by the 1999 Marshall decision, a legal ruling recognizing Mi'kmaq people's treaty right to fish and sell their catch for a profit. I draw on the theoretical frameworks of social practice theory, political ecology, common property theory, moral economy and the literature on the pan-Indian Traditionalism movement to understand how Mi'kmaq people were engaging discursively with their fellow community members to construct new cultural worlds of Mi'kmaq fishing and Mi'kmaq culture following the upheavals brought about by the Marshall decision. While some community members embraced the ruling as an opportunity to earn a living in the region's lucrative commercial lobster and snow crab fisheries, community Elders and less wealthy residents argued for the persistence of a local moral economy based on sharing and the distribution of wealth. Their discourses reflected a cultural world of fishing where close human-environment relationships were integral resources in the construction of Mi'kmaq identities. However, unlike previous generations, the community's commercial fishers did not associate their new livelihoods with Mi'kmaq culture; instead, they were increasingly turning to the Traditionalism movement to provide the resources with which they constructed Mi'kmaq cultural identities. I also investigate how community members' divergent approaches to fisheries management reflected their varied approaches to proper human-environment relations in the post-Marshall period. In this dissertation, I argue that, despite the difficulties and obstacles they faced, both within and outside the community, Mi'kmaq people were working as agents to shape local history, legacy, memory and subjectivities produced in the aftermath of the Marshall decision