On Sunday night, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and federal fisheries officers stood helplessly by as fifty white fishing boats raided the tiny lobster zone allocated to the Esgenoopetitj First Nation (EFN) at Burnt Church, New Brunsick.That no one was killed or seriously injured in the raid is more the result of good luck than good policing. The white fishermen cut lobster buoys, charged at high speed toward the much smaller native fishing boats, and threw buoys and beer bottles at EFN fishermen who took to the water to defend their gear. Later, the two sides apparently traded rifle fire, and a white boat that went aground in the melee was torched.This wasn’t some momentary blip. It marked the third, and by far the largest, raid white fishermen have staged on the Ntive fishing zone during the last month. On August 26, between nineteen (RCMP estimate) and twenty-two (Christian Peacemaker Team estimate) white vessels charged into the zone. Reports differ as to whether they did any damage. On September 2, between nine and twelve white fishing boats carried out a similar provocation.Christian Peacemaker Team members videotaped all of these events. It is a faith based group of Americans and Canadians who try to defuse violent situations by witnessing and videotaping them. It should be no source of pride to Canadians that the group currently has teams on Israel’s West Bank, in Chiapas, Mexico, in Colombia and in Burnt Church, N.B.The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and lawyers for native groups disagree about whether certain native fishing practices are legal. Federal lawyers have done their best to stall the Indian Brook Band’s attempts to get a Federal Court of Canada ruling on the legality of DFO enforcement against native fishermen. But the disagreement does not extend to the zone around Burnt Church, for which DFO has issued EFN a communal license.Even Fisheries Minister Herb Dhaliwal – hardly a fan of the Esgenoopetitj First Nation – used words like “illegal,” “completely indefensible,” “grossly irresponsible,” “reckless,” “destructive,” and “counter-productive,” to describe the white fishermen’s actions.So how could it happen – more than two years after the Supreme Court Marshall decision affirmed the Mi’kmaq’s treaty right to a limited commercial fishery – that DFO and the RCMP find themselves hopelessly ill-prepared for such a confrontation?RCMP sergeant Francois Bidal said the force had received information that a large number of white herring fishermen, upset because DFO refused to increase their herring quota, planned a peaceful demonstration just outside the EFN zone. The RCMP launched the nine small craft it had immediately available – Boston Whalers, Zodiacs, and one 13-metre converted fishing boat. DFO added a small number of patrol boats. Two helicopters and a fixed wing Coast Guard aircraft took pictures overhead.Bidal said the RCMP vessels lined up at the entrance to the zone, but from “the speed and demeanour of the approaching vessels, it was obvious they weren’t going to stop.” An officer who used a marine radio to ask the fishermen to turn back was met with obscenities and threats. So the RCMP boats withdrew and watched as the intruders lifted buoys with gaffs and cut their lines.This display of police impotence contrasts sharply with the massive force directed at native fishermen from Burnt Church and Indian Brook who have been unable to negotiate fishing agreements with Ottawa. Natives remain a minuscule part of the east-coast fishery, but attract the lion’s share of federal enforcement, even in the face of such brazen provocations as last weekend’s raid by white herring fishermen annoyed at DFO over a fishery in which natives don’t even participate. DFO has encouraged such situations by exaggerating the regulatory power granted it by the Marshall decision. Uncritical media acceptance of DFO’s dubious legal claims have encouraged the belief that dissident bands are acting illegally, when this is far from clear.Ottawa’s refusal to face the real consequences of the Marshall decision has encouraged white fishermen to believe they are immune from enforcement. Sunday’s police failure will further this belief.The week’s events caused Marion Pardy, moderator of the United Church, to write Prime Minister Jean Chretien, pleading with him “to continue and expedite good-faith negotiations with the Esgenoopetitj and other Mi’kmaq communities, to resolve the treaty fisheries issue in accordance with the direction of the Supreme Court in Marshall.””We also call on the federal government to ensure that the safety of the public, and particularly that of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in surrounding communities who report being subjected to gunfire,” Pardy wrote.If that had been done two years ago, the dispute would be over now. Continued equivocation by Ottawa risks lives and the rule of law.