Alaska Native Arts & Culture

Summer chum and Chinook salmon have begun their runs along the Yukon River.

Wildlife managers and fishermen met via teleconference Tuesday to discuss river conditions and the salmon’s progress upstream. Community members reported summer chum as far upriver as Huslia and Ruby, with Chinook salmon fast on their heels.

However, the much-coveted kings may not be a welcome sight to fishermen this year. Stephanie Schmidt is the Summer Season Fishery Manager along the Yukon for Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game. She said Chinook numbers continue to be low — mandating fishery closures once the salmon enter each upriver community.

“[This] is going to be another challenging year for us,” she said. “We’re expecting a Chinook salmon run similar to last year. Which was an okay run; we met escapement goals. But only because of the very conservative management goals that had to be taken and all of the efforts that fishermen took to conserve Chinook salmon.”

Several fishermen voiced frustration at the closures, not because they’ll miss out on the long-restricted kings, but because gear restrictions — such as on nets larger than 4 inch-wide mesh — will hinder their ability to capture the more abundant chum.

Jack from Huslia explained that the arrival of Chinook salmon typically coincides with the peak summer chum run in his community.

“That’s when the best fish go by for us. That’s when we lose our half-dried fish and our dried fish,” he said.

Because Chinook salmon can be caught in gill nets just as easily as chum, all nets wider than 4 inches will be off-limits once the kings arrive. Schmidt said fishermen will still be allowed to use nets that are 4 inches or smaller for sheefish and smaller species throughout the salmon closure.

That came as a small consolation in communities where purchasing other, smaller nets may be cost prohibitive.

“We have to eat along this river; everybody has to eat. They can’t live out of the store,” said Martha, a fisherman in Ruby. “I can’t afford to get another net that’s smaller.”

Schmidt thanked fisherman for their continued efforts to conserve king salmon — and said she knows it hasn’t come without sacrifice. She also shared some positive news from ADF&G researchers monitoring Chinook in Pilot Station.

“Those researchers have been reporting phenomenal catches of juvenile Chinook salmon,” she said. “More so than last year. And I just offer that as a little bit of hope. Hopefully we are creating more baby Chinook salmon that grow up to be big Chinook salmon and come back.”

The meeting concluded with an atypical concern: Fishermen wanted to know what would happen to state-managed fisheries on the Yukon, and further North, if Alaska’s legislature is unable to reach an agreement on the state budget before July 1 — instigating a partial government shutdown.

John Linderman is regional supervisor for the Arctic Yukon-Kuskokwim region of commercial fisheries. He believes it’s unlikely that lawmakers will allow the budget impasse to reach that stage. However, he said wildlife managers have considered it, and there is currently enough money to keep fisheries functional until August 2015.

 

Climate change is destroying the historical record of Arctic peoples.

Archeologists are alarmed by the rapid deterioration of organic artifacts excavated in the Arctic. Those artifacts, made of materials like wood or animal hides, were until recently abundant at digs around the region, because they’d been preserved in permafrost or silty soils.

Josh Reuther opens the heavy door to the artifact repository at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Museum of the North. Reuther is a professor of archeology and a curator at the museum, where most of the artifacts excavated in Alaska are preserved.

“Everything’s climate-controlled — temperature and humidity,” he says as he thumbs through a drawer of plastic bags filled with artifacts excavated from St. Lawrence Island in the 1920s.

“Let’s see … harpoon heads; you can see toggles; you can see drilling implements …”

Reuther says over the past few years the museum has been getting more artifacts that are more deteriorated than those excavated decades ago.

He says that’s mostly due to climate change.

University of Toronto archeologist Max Friesen is working on a dig near the MacKenzie River Delta, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

“It’s something that’s now a concern really around the entire circumpolar north,” Friesen says.

“It’s kind of a whole series of problems coming together at the same time to sort of create a perfect storm. You have the potential melting of the permafrost, you have sea level rise, you have in some cases changing weather patterns. It’s a very rich data base that’s being lost all across the Arctic.”

Rick Knecht, a professor of archeology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, agrees. He’s been working a dig near Quinhagak, in Southwestern Alaska.

“There’s so much information there that’s far away and beyond a conventional archeological site, which is just stones and bones,” Knecht said.

Anne Jensen is an archeologist and senior scientist for Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corp. who’s working at sites near Barrow, Alaska.

She says the threat to artifacts is growing, and that time is short for archeologists to recover them.

“We probably only have 20, 30 years to get this data, or it’s gone,” Jensen said.

The archeologists say more funding is needed to get as much work done as possible in the time remaining.

 

New regulations are coming for a federal law created to keep Alaska Native and American Indian children in foster care within their family and tribes. Tribal sovereignty experts say the changes could have major implications for foster care in Alaska.

The Indian Child Welfare Act is a federal law that has been a constant source of contention — and endless legal battles — since it was passed in 1978. During the second day of presentations on tribal justice at the Kawerak Rural Providers Conference in Nome, John Bioff with Kawerak’s tribal court office outlined those changes revealed in March, which he said would be felt nationwide.

“There have been gaps and confusions and some bad case law that’s been made since the ICWA law was enacted,” Bioff said. “And I think the new ICWA laws are a positive development that seek to add a lot of clarification to the older ICWA law in areas that have been problematic in Alaska.”

With the vast majority of tribal court cases in the Bering Strait and Norton Sound region relating to child protection, Bioff said the new regulations would clarify what the rules are for transferring a case to a tribal court.

“The regulations spell out what are grounds to deny a transfer to a tribal court; for instance, how far along the case is in the state court is not a legitimate grounds to deny a transfer,” Bioff said.

“Overall, in our region, we work very well with the Office of Children’s Services, but over time, since I’ve been doing this work, I think overall this is going to clarify a lot.”

Bioff said the new regulations not only clarify uncertainties in old ICWA law, but they also present a host of new directives for state agencies and courts would have to comply with in order to protect family and tribal placement for foster kids.

The new ICWA regulations are far from law; the Department of Interior only just ended a comment session, and legal maneuvering for those both for and against the new rules could push their finalization anywhere from months to years off. Still, Bioff said, the process may be slow, but it’s one that’s trending toward progress.

 

Congressman Don Young’s subcommittee on Native affairs took testimony Thursday on a bill to re-open land allotment selections for Alaska Natives who served in the military during the Vietnam War. The right of Alaska Natives to acquire allotments of up to 160 acres comes from a 1906 law. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act ended that opportunity for most in 1971. But Native leaders have said for years that many Vietnam-era vets missed out because they were serving elsewhere when the application period closed.

Young’s been making that argument in Congress for years, too.

“I mean how many time have I introduced this bill? I think five times. Passed it twice, or some crazy thing.”

In 1998 Congress passed a bill to re-open the selection period, giving certain Vietnam vets 18 months to apply. Young says, in hindsight, that bill was too restrictive; It only covered those serving for three years of the war.

Nelson Angapak, an Army vet and long-time Native leader, testified Thursday in favor of another open period for vets, this time with more land to choose from.

“Our research indicated that 49 of our veterans living in Southeast Alaska applied for our Native allotments and every one of those applications were denied, primarily because of the existence of the Tongass National Forest.”

Ditto, Angapak says, for applicants in the Cook Inlet, Chugach and Arctic Slope regions.

Young’s bill is sure to be controversial because it would allow selections within the state’s two national forests and in wildlife refuges.

When an eagle dies in Alaska, its feathers may end up in a powwow — or on a graduation cap — somewhere in the Lower 48. That’s because of a federal program connecting tribes, raptor centers and wildlife officials.

A bald eagle is released back into the wild at the Alaska Raptor Center in Sitka. It’s one of hundreds treated for injuries, disease or malnourishment at centers around the state.

But the story doesn’t end with the flight.

That’s because the raptor center collects feathers rehabilitating birds lose while molting.

“Usually, that happens kind of towards the end of summer,” says Jennifer Cedarleaf, rehabilitation coordinator at the Sitka center. It collects eagle carcasses, as well as shed plumage from residents and those in rehabilitation.

“Our education birds that are here year-round, when they drop their feathers, we collect those. And they all just get saved up and I can send them down there,” she says.

“There” is the National Eagle Repository, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service near Denver, Colorado.

Only Alaskan Natives and American Indians are allowed to gather, store and use feathers or parts from eagles and some other protected birds — with a few exceptions.

If the plumage or parts aren’t available, the repository helps.

“It could be for folks who are in a powwow, dancing fans [or] bustles,” says Joseph Early, Native American liaison for the wildlife service’s Southwest region and a Laguna Pueblo tribal member.

“We have some of our tribes that use them for their very sacred ceremonies. Naming ceremonies, birth ceremonies, sometimes for funerals, graduations. It basically comes down to the individual member to be able to use that feature for however they want to,” he says.

Early discussed the program during the recent Native American Fish and Wildlife Society convention in Juneau.

He shared reports showing Alaska provided about 10 percent of the feathers, parts or whole eagle carcasses sent to the repository last year. But tribal members here only took half a percent of what was distributed.

“Eagles are fairly abundant up here, of course. But we may have some tribes up here that want golden eagles, which are a little more abundant in the Lower-48. We try to accommodate any tribes for what they want,” he says.

Tribes and members cannot give or sell eagle carcasses, feathers or parts to non-Native people.

Early says when that happens, the Fish and Wildlife Service gets involved.

“In that case … those feathers will be seized. But eventually, they could be returned back to the tribe. If not, they could end up at our … repository in Colorado,” he says.

While Alaska provides feathers from rehabilitation facilities, some Southwest tribal groups have built their own collection centers.

Early says a competitive grant program supports such construction.

“We’ve had a number of tribes establish tribal eagle aviaries where they’re allowed to retain birds that can no longer be released into the wild. They give them a good life and retain their molted features and redistribute them to their own tribal members.”

Those aviaries have first dibs when a rehabilitation center, such as Sitka’s, has an extra eagle that couldn’t survive on its own.

In addition to live birds, the Alaska Raptor Center collects carcasses for shipment to the federal repository.

Cedarleaf says one particularly bad year, more than 70 were tagged, frozen and mailed south.

“It is sad when you find a beautiful bird dead. And for us, it’s even more sad when we find one that’s banded that we knew. Like I had one that hit a powerline just a few weeks ago that we had when it was a baby. And that makes it more difficult,” Cedarleaf says.

She says knowing the carcasses will find a new use makes it a little easier.

Kitty Eddy has been a driving force behind the Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy Program at Harborview Elementary School since its inception. This week, she’s retiring after 31 years of teaching.

It’s the last day of class in Eddy’s combined kindergarten and first grade classroom. You’d think it’d be hard to gather the students, but it just takes counting down from five — in Tlingit.

“Keijín. Daax’oon. Nás’k. Déiý. Tléix’!” Eddy says in a patient yet stern manner as the students move to the front of the class to sing and dance.

The program, which began in 2000 with help from a federal grant, is a collaboration between Sealaska Heritage Institute and the Juneau School District. The two founding teachers were Eddy and Nancy Douglas.

“That first year was lot of work,” says Eddy who is Tlingit, Yanyeidi (clan). “We worked every single day to try and pull together a classroom that was different than the normal classroom that was based on our culture.”

The program has since grown to include all the elementary grades at Harborview. While the majority of the students in the program are Alaska Native, any student interested in Tlingit culture and language is welcome.

The immersion classrooms are similar to other classrooms in that they do required math and reading, but there is a difference.

“We really build a family unit so that you have a group of children who come in and want to be here and that they belong,” Eddy says.

Eddy engenders the family approach with help from elder Selina Everson and language specialist Jessica Chester, among others. Chester was born and raised in Juneau and is grateful for what the program is doing.

“I never had teachers like Ms. Kitty or Ms. Nancy,” Chester says with tears in her eyes. “So my first year here, the way I saw them work with our children was so much different from the way I was treated and my brother and my sister were treated when we were kids. I just saw that, and something inside me grew and it made me a better person, it made our community better and I am forever grateful for the work they did.”

Eddy knew the program was on the right track by the end of the first year. The kids and their families gathered for a party. All the students’ grandmothers were in tears.

“It was the very first time in their lives that they had heard our language spoken in a public school. And I really think for all of us it really brought to light, ‘Wow, we are doing something incredible and impacting not only the kids, but families,’” Eddy says.

Student test scores have had good and bad years, just like any other classroom, Eddy says.

“When you think about success it’s more than just what the data tells us,” Eddy says. “When you have kids happy to walk in the door in the morning, and they are engaged in what you’re doing, they figure out who they are as a person.”

Eddy says she hopes staff will be able to come together to continue the program without basing it on mandated curriculum. She says new administrations and changing mandates have sometimes put the program in flux.

“I think that they are amazing people who really are going to need to have fight in them to make changes that need to be made,” says Eddy.

And if they need help, Eddy says not to worry. She’ll come back occasionally as a substitute teacher or just to check on the family.