Indian Giver
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Indian Giver |
The full story of Alaska Native subsistence is politicized and intricate, as other articles in the current Indian Giver relate.
But the ground’s-eye view of subsistence is much simpler, and program interest can begin on that basis, according to Jim Owens, Endangered Ecosystems Program Officer with the four-year-old Brainerd Foundation. Not every philanthropic organization with an interest in subsistence funding will have a program officer on staff of his background; two years of living and fishing in Bethel, Alaska, at the center of Alaska Native subsistence on the Yukon-Kuskokwim River delta, have given him an understanding of the mechanics of subsistence and what it means to its practitioners.
But any guidance he can give to other funders is “pretty simple,” he says. “Just listen and learn. And be on the land with the people if you can. When you walk into a village home and there’s a haunch of caribou on the table, and that’s dinner, then you understand. And when you talk to the people they’ll tell you what subsistence is.”
The centrality of subsistence resources may be obscured on a first impression by the presence of snowmachines, fishing skiffs with outboard motors, airplanes and other modern accouterments when the newcomer may have expected sled dogs and snowshoes. “Each village has had to come to its own terms with the cash economy,” Owens points out. But these terms are tied to subsistence. In almost every village, imported technologies represent tools for facilitating the subsistence way of life, rather than preempting it. They also ease a multitude of labor-intensive tasks that go with subsistence activities.
Owens’ engagement with Alaska Native subsistence began on a recreational boat trip with his wife and a group of friends years ago. While navigating down the river that feeds into Arctic Village in the far north of Alaska, the group encountered a Gwich’in boat coming upriver. The two boats glided up alongside one another, as boats will on these remote waterways. The vacationers asked the Gwich’in what they were doing. The Gwich’in answered: “Hunting. We’re hungry.”
That’s subsistence. So is what happened later in Arctic Village, when the hunters came back with caribou and moose and distributed their take to the entire village.
The Brainerd Foundation now funds media awareness efforts of the Gwich’in as these “caribou people” seek to protect caribou migration routes on the Arctic coastal plain from oil industry developers who would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Even something as simple as providing travel funds can be an important contribution to Alaska Native subsistence interests, Mr. Owens added. He was recently in Arctic Village and heard from an elder of how important it will be for the Gwich’in caribou protection effort to clear a road between Arctic Village and Old Crow, a Gwich’in village on the Canadian side of the U.S./Canada border.
“When you’re that far north and that spread out, sometimes just getting together can help ... There’s almost a reawakening that has been fired by seeing people from another village.”
For those philanthropists who look beyond the local setting of subsistence to the tribal, state and federal issues surrounding it, Dalee Sambo Dorough recommends proactive tribal projects as a starting point. Ms. Sambo Dorough, Director of the Indian Law Resource Center’s Alaska office, circulated views at an Environmental Grantmakers Association retreat two years ago that have not lost their validity:
“Tribal governments are taking on problems that have a tangible, practical effect for conditions on the ground. Rather than reacting to the political winds of the day, they are taking action from the ground up and taking hold of opportunities to assert their right to self-determination.”
As one among several examples, she said the riparian village of Kwinhagak (also spelled Quinhagak) decided to pursue a dialogue with the state in order to police harvesting activity on its river system without waiting on developments in state policy or courts of law.
Grantmakers can find issues and projects that fit their priorities throughout subsistence Alaska. That said, Ms. Sambo Dorough warns against grantmaker fixation on narrow program categories when considering Alaska subsistence funding. Left to their own devices, Alaska Native villages deploy a complex of integrated approaches to problem solving, comprising cultural, social, political, spiritual, and economic dimensions; but they are seldom articulated as such. Rather, they are inseparable elements of day-to-day activity in Alaska Native communities, reflective of distinct Alaska Native cultural values and practices. Alaska Natives, like indigenous peoples elsewhere, tend to conceive of these critical elements holistically and to recognize them at a glance, so to speak.
In practice, these considerations mean that Alaska Native villages submitting a proposal under one category of program guidelines will often be thinking outside the guidelines -- in the best sense. Funders should seize the opportunity to enhance the work and embrace such comprehensive approaches, Ms. Sambo Dorough said.
Finally, donors should review and assess performance relative to capacity, she added. Especially in rural Alaska, program officers should gain a sense of a tribe’s capacity for accessing and using resources. Donors should analyze overall development and programmatic activities and tribal aspirations, as well as reviewing the status of grants and programs, managerial and administrative capacity. Such a review should be done while recognizing the degree of difficulty that Alaska Native tribal governments experience simply in accessing resources.
“Greater attention should be given to tribes that can’t put out high-gloss proposals and don’t have a paper trail they can point to,” Ms. Sambo Dorough said. “There needs to be equity of access, especially for small, isolated Native communities choosing to act independently within the framework of self-determination.
She predicts that Alaska Native communities, precisely because they are culturally and economically distinct and because they live in a place of great potential and resource wealth, will go on developing innovative and unusual programs of tremendous interest, full of unique possibilities.
Two facts dominate the landscape of Alaska Natives: the physical fact of Alaska geography and the cultural fact of subsistence activities (such as hunting, fishing, gathering), defined in law as “... the customary and traditional uses by rural Alaska residents of wild, renewable resources for direct personal or family consumption ...” (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, Sec. 803)
Geography first. Alaska geography exists on a scale beyond what most of us have experienced. Out of sight and out of mind during America’s frontier era, this enormous northern land was never engulfed on the colonial model. Early Russian traders enslaved, subjugated, proselytized and attacked pockets of the indigenous population; but Alaska Natives at large were never on a war footing with the occupying forces because a Russian Empire never got started here. When Russia “sold” the territory to the United States in 1867, most Alaska Natives had no idea that the land they knew as their patrimony now “belonged” to others. Instead of signing treaties, a few filed protests that would influence court proceedings in the next century. Because treaties were never signed, Alaska Native lands and waterways are not held in trust for them by the United States government.
Therefore, the Alaska salmon catch is not in theory divided between “co-equal” treaty and non-treaty parties, as in the continental Northwest, with each due a fair chance to their taking of an equitable share. The right of Alaska Natives to subsistence resources -- from salmon to halibut, shellfish, abalone, pike, moose, caribou, deer, berries, timber, kelp, plants and roots and much, much more -- is based on a rural priority for traditional subsistence practices assigned by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. (The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled otherwise, triggering federal subsistence fisheries management on federal waterways under the provisions of ANILCA; see Eagle Notes, p. 2, for details.) The priority is not limited to so-called “bag limits” or seasons of the year; it must be provided year-round to all residents of rural Alaska (roughly the 20 percent of the populace not living in or around Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Ketchikan), in an amount consistent with “customary and traditional use” including “customary trade.” These and other stipulations of the federal courts have led the Alaska Fish & Wildlife Conservation Fund and the Alaska Outdoor Council, among others, to conclude that subsistence harvest limits and sale restrictions are “virtually unenforceable” and that non-subsistence uses will be eliminated “long before subsistence use is significantly restricted.” Commercial and recreational fishing interests, feeling threatened, have in turn compelled a campaign in the state legislature and congressional delegation to overturn settled law through amendment.
In part the firm protections for subsistence use reflect the uncompromising character of Alaska geography. Throughout the vast tundra and ice of the Alaska interior, from the Y-K Delta (for the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers) on up to Nome and Barrow in the far north, people who are limited in what they can draw from the land are people limited in their options for survival. One doesn’t run down to the local convenience store on the Yukon Flats.
Nonetheless, the rural priority is subject to constraint by sustained yield wildlife management principles, meaning in essence that the right to any subsistence resource can be curtailed upon scientific proof that the resource is threatened by unsustainable harvesting.
Especially in the salmon fisheries, this is often the point at which the always pitched competition of interests for natural resources in Alaska becomes unshirted hell. For the federal government’s congressionally mandated moratoria on taking over fisheries management on federal waterways (as it has wild game management on the 60 percent of Alaska that is federal land; again, see Eagle Notes, p. 2, for details) has plunged state biologists into the politicized intricacies of managing the various salmon runs for maximum sustained yield – that is, the policy of authorizing the largest possible catch of particular anadromous stocks that will still allow enough fish back upstream to spawn future runs.
The commercial fishery, an enormous – and enormously powerful -- sector in the state economy, takes a lion’s share of the prized red (or sockeye) salmon runs. The sheer size of these runs, dwarfing other runs of the five salmon species that hatch and grow in the interior rivers and streams and mature in the oceans off Alaska’s 34,000 miles of coastline, supply “cash fish” for the commercial market. But also caught in the nets of the commercial trawlers are less populous stocks of salmon such as the silver (or coho) and king (or chinook). Fewer of these are then left, the argument goes, for the frustrated recreational angler and for sport fishing purposes (factions with legislative influence of their own). The stakes are so high that foreign driftnetting vessels have been blamed for low salmon returns, leading the U.S. Commerce Department to threaten genetic testing of fish purchased on the Korean and China markets for origination in Alaska waters. (This is about like blaming the two percent subsistence catch for salmon shortfalls, however: though locally popular, scapegoating foreign fishing interests simply doesn’t explain the failure of 10 million salmon to return to home waters.)
But more to the point for subsistence uses – the chum runs seem to suffer most from the “interception fishery” of “factory ships” that ply the high seas and the coastal bays between the returning salmon and their terminal spawning streams. Chum, also known as dog salmon, is the stock least valued by the commercial ocean fishery; but they are extremely important to interior subsistence economies. Subsistence villages “stock up” for winter on the fall chum runs. They are the basis of many small-scale commercial subsistence uses that have sprung up on interior waterways, based on the “customary trade” provision of ANILCA’s rural priority. Elders find them more digestible than other salmon because of their lower fat content. And chum are the staple food of sled dogs, a breed that even after the advent of snowmachines “remain a part of a whole sphere of activities that is actively encouraged as an alternative to idleness, unemployment, and substance abuse” in rural Alaska, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Subsistence Division.
Above all, the depletion of chum has economic consequences for Native villages. The economic structure of the export-intensive commercial fishery is such that “a small proportion of the monetary returns from this fishery accrue to coastal communities ...,” according to 1993 research findings at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
In contrast, the terminal stream chum harvests pack a high multiplier effect in Alaska Native villages. For in coming to terms with a cash economy, as Alaska interior villages increasingly must for reasons of competitiveness and convenience, village economies have become “a complex mix of subsistence, cash, and imported technology.” Rural residents have come to rely on more capital-intensive activities to maintain subsistence production: travel by snowmachine and airplane, fishing by outboard motor skiffs, fishwheels and gillnets, fuel and maintenance purchases, hunting, trapping, dog mushing and kennels with the associated breeding and trapping activities. The recent development along interior rivers of small-scale commercial operations linked to the subsistence harvest also generates income that is channeled into local revenue and wages. Processing and distribution, mainly in fish preservation and dog food, add a further extra-traditional value to the chum catch.
It was this economic context, on top of the insult to Native rights and sovereignty considerations as well as the standing aggravation with interception fishing on the high seas, that burst the grapes of wrath in Native Alaska in 1993. The state, facing an unprecedented depression in the number of returning chum, declared a ban on subsistence fishing. Alaska Native villages throughout the interior defied the ban as a threat to livelihood and cultural continuity between generations (subsistence practice is locally organized, and by drawing productively on local knowledge and skills it becomes a way of handing on subsistence traditions, culture and spirituality in Native Alaska). The furor, if not the Native vigilance over fishing rights, abated somewhat in the improving salmon seasons of 1994 and 1995, but 1996, ‘97 and ‘98 were years of declining salmon returns culminating in the state government’s declaration of western Alaska as a disaster area.
The facts on subsistence suggest that further subsistence disasters could swiftly move from the sovereign rights arena to a survival issue:
If geographic distance often physically divides Alaska Natives, subsistence draws them together in spirit. Subsistence here has nothing to do with material poverty. On the contrary, subsistence is the wealth of Alaska Natives.
An appeal for your help on Alaska Native
subsistence
By Sherry Salway Black, Vice President
In the almost five years of publishing Indian Giver, First Nations has always intended that members of the philanthropic community would seek out the Native efforts highlighted in our issues to support their work as interests allowed. But we have never directly asked for your support for a particular issue or organization.
We are asking for that help now. In fact, I am making a personal and organizational appeal to members of the philanthropic community to support efforts to protect the subsistence way of life for Alaska Native people. Their very survival is at stake.
Efforts are currently underway in the Alaska state legislature and the U.S. Congress to undermine the subsistence way of life for Alaska Native people. These same efforts will also have a resoundingly negative effect on conservation of the environment in the state of Alaska. Whether you are interested in supporting human rights, economic or environmental justice, cultural preservation or restoration, food systems development or environmental activism or stewardship, this is an effort that should interest you. And your resources can have a profound and immediate effect.
We are especially concerned by recent threats to the integrity of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. ANILCA was hailed at the time of its passage as "the conservation vote of the century."
However, there is real risk that ANILCA will be diluted in Congress this year. One of the Act's guiding purposes, the subsistence priority, could well be undermined. Such a priority gives preference for subsistence harvesting to rural users (the majority of whom are Alaska Natives) of fish and game — over commercial and recreational users — on federal public land in Alaska (60 percent of the land is federal). The Alaska legislature refuses to take action to bring the state law into compliance with federal law as supported by the courts (stipulating a rural priority for subsistence use), and instead has offered hostile amendments to the relevant article of ANILCA (Title VIII). Concurrently, the powerful congressional delegation from Alaska has announced its intention to make substantive anti-subsistence changes to Title VIII, either through a new law or riders to appropriations bills.
The federal government, which already manages the wild game resources on Alaska federal land, has stated that it will end the annual moratoria on the court order to take over the management of fish resources by Oct. 1, 1999, making action by the Alaska congressional delegation a "do or die" proposition this year. Efforts to bring the Alaska constitution into compliance with federal law by acknowledging a rural preference failed in two regular sessions and one special session of the Alaska legislature in 1998, and does not look promising for the 1999 session. We can count on redoubled efforts, then, from the Alaska congressional delegation, state legislators and their sport fishing constituencies, the commercial fishing power structure, and the oil development lobby.
Maintaining a formal priority for rural subsistence users is of monumental importance to Native people, whose very existence is tied to preserving subsistence resources for their culture and – their very lives. Now many Native tribes in Alaska are working on co-management programs with the federal managers of the game resources, integrating their traditional knowledge and building their own capacity to manage these resources both on federal land (60 percent) and Native land (18 percent). Through the tribes, 78 percent of the land in Alaska could be managed to preserve, protect and enhance these resources. Tribes want to develop these co-management agreements with either the state (if the constitution were changed to include a rural preference) or with the federal government as currently organized.
The state and the congressional delegation see the federal government's role as undermining the state's authority and rights. Yet, the issue is basically economic. Because of the lowest-ever prices for oil on which the economy is based, Alaska is in a slump, facing decreases of millions of dollars in the state's budget. The oil slump has increased the pressure for profitability on other high-profile economic sectors, primarily fisheries and tourism. Removing the rural preference would further expose the fish and game resources to commercial and recreational use.
It matters because the continued existence of Alaska Native people who live in rural areas is critical. It matters because the traditional knowledge of sustainable management of resources that is embodied within this group of people is critical. It matters that the ability to manage the magnificent resources of the region in a way that benefits future generations is preserved.
The issue has pitted urban residents against rural (predominantly Native) residents. And in a real absurdity, it has pitted Native subsistence users against Native corporations whose mission is to earn profits for their Native shareholders (many of whom are the Native subsistence users). One can argue that if the state and Native corporations were to earn money by selling off the fish and game resources and that money were then passed on to the Native people who no longer have subsistence resources – that this would solve the issue. The Native people would then have cash to purchase the resources they need to exist. From where?? The local Walmart or grocery store? The land and the waters are their stores, and bringing that abundance into their lives as the gifts of Creation is their culture. Taking away the subsistence resources doesn't simply mean Native people will not have food to put on their plate. It means, in no uncertain terms, the elimination of a people and a way of life that will have dramatic repercussions on the environmental balance of the region. It is time for us to recognize the dynamic and integral relationship between Native people, the fish and game and the land upon which they live. Eliminate one and the others will soon deteriorate or become extinct.
In terms of ANILCA, protection of sustainable uses of fish and game by subsistence users is integral to the overall conservation scheme of the Act. Subsistence is a primary purpose of the Act (listed in Titles I, II, III, and VIII), thus any weakening of it will undermine the integrity of conservation in Alaska. The careful balance in ANILCA between resource development and protection of our nation's natural heritage — achieved after years of national debate — would be compromised.
Weakening ANILCA goes part and parcel with the announced intention of the Alaska congressional delegation to promote further development of the Arctic coastal plain. As a result, environmental activists and grantmakers need to be ready to oppose the pro-development movement's "divide and conquer" strategy of undermining the subsistence priority of rural users, on the one hand, and proposing further development of the protected Arctic coastal plain, on the other.
Make no mistake: the first line of defense for subsistence resources is pristine habitat, as represented by the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In the absence of pristine habitat for subsistence-harvested plant and animal life, subsistence resources are not sustainable no matter who has the priority.
There is a critical need for both short-term and longer-term support for efforts to preserve subsistence at the local village or tribal level, state level, and national level. Knowing that funders have preferences in a variety of areas, please know that you can find a piece of this work that fits exactly what you seek to fund. In addition, opportunities for flexibility abound.
First Nations is working with several tribal, state and national partners, but recognize that there may be others with whom you are more familiar and would seek to support. We are working with the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments (CATG), Intertribal Council of Alaska (ITCA), Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RuralCap), Native American Rights Fund (NARF), and National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). Our work with CATG has been to support their efforts to build capacity to manage their own resources. Together with the other groups, we are implementing the following actions:
The focus of this strategy is:
I'm hopeful that I have persuaded you to stop whatever you are doing and get more information on the subsistence issue and/or one of these efforts. If I have at least piqued your curiosity and interest, please call me because I know I can be more persuasive on the phone or in person. Or contact any one of the organizations identified above for more information. Alaska Natives need your help. Your support in the form of both technical and financial resources can have a profound and immediate effect to help preserve subsistence in Alaska.