After a summer when subsistence fishing was shut down for critical spells along both the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, the Obama administration has agreed to experiment with managing next year's Kuskokwim salmon runs jointly with tribal organizations.
The announcement from Mike Connor, deputy security for the U.S. Department of Interior, came this week during the Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage.
A push for tribal co-management of fish and game has been the subsistence motif of this year's conference, the state's biggest annual gathering of Alaska Natives.The importance of subsistence – fishing and hunting to fill drying racks and smokehouses, freezers and storage bins – has come up at AFN in speeches, workshops and candidate forums.
On the Wednesday eve of the AFN convention, Natives rallied on the Delaney Park Strip for hunting and fishing rights and to sit at the table as co-managers.
Some call it the subsistence lifestyle. Others say it is more than a lifestyle; it is how most people in the Bush live. The cost of basics like milk in hubs like Bethel is double that in Anchorage, and in villages the prices are even higher. Fishing and hunting is done for survival.
"Yuuyaraput," they say in Yup'ik, for "our way of life."
The current system for managing Alaska fish and game, including subsistence uses, is a complicated maze of federal and state rules, with different seasons, limits and other restrictions depending on the game unit or water body.
In the Copper River area, Ahtna Inc. is pushing for federal legislation to create a co-management system, Ahtna president Michelle Anderson said Thursday at a work session on subsistence. The goal is to meet the promise of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
"We've decided to take our vision to Washington, D.C., and work with our delegation and with other states and ask them to do what Congress and the governor at that time, in 1971, promised to do, which was take care of Alaska Native subsistence hunting and fishing practices," Anderson said.
The 1971 federal law settled indigenous people's land clams but failed to resolve how to manage the resources, she said.
"What we are proposing is to undo the complicated dual management system that we're currently in right now. We have five, six different game units. We have federal rules and regulations and state rules and regulations. We're saying enough of that," Anderson said.
They want a simpler structure so people don't have to feel as if they need to bring a lawyer, or a surveyor, on a hunting or fishing trip, she said.
The effort is moving slowly.
"We want to do this right," Anderson said.
In the Bethel region, an experiment will begin soon. Myron Naneng, president of the Association of Village Council Presidents, told the AFN convention that the Obama administration has agreed to try co-managing Kuskokwim king salmon runs with a tribal organization.
The structure for tribal co-management is still being worked out, he said during a break. But he anticipates that the state of Alaska will also join the experiment and that the three entities – state, federal and tribal – will work together to determine who can fish at what times using what kind of gear.
"It's a good start," Naneng, co-chair of the AFN subsistence committee, said.
As it is, he said, federal and state managers too often dismiss the traditional knowledge of rural residents as "anecdotal."
Rosita Worl, an anthropologist and president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, told the AFN crowd Friday that Native people managed their resources for 10,000 years and used science to do so.
Consider the Inupiaq knowledge of their environment, said Worl, co-chair of AFN's subsistence committee.
"They have 120 words for different kinds of ice. Now that is scientific knowledge," she said.
Leaders of the Association of Village Council Presidents and Tanana Chiefs Conference have been pushing for tribal co-management. Concerns about declining returns of king salmon led to closures on both the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers this summer. Some village residents said the inability to fish for kings was like a death in the family. Villages up and down those rivers also declared self-moratoriums on king salmon to protect the runs.
Co-management already is working in some areas. The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the Eskimo Walrus Commission work to manage hunts of those animals.
Still, Vera Metcalf, head of the walrus commission, said in an AFN subsistence work session Thursday that the Native-run organization doesn't receive enough funding to do its job. It only has a staff of two.
"It requires a lot of creativity for those of us who work in co-management commissions," she said. "There's not really a level playing ground."
The AFN convention at the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center ends Saturday.