Subsistence

Families and community members on St. Lawrence Island will be eating bowhead whale this week after a local hunter caught Gambell’s second whale of the season Monday night.

Chris Apassingok, a 16-year-old who would normally be spending his days in high school, was the “striker,” or hunter credited with catching the 57-foot-long female bowhead whale for the community of Gambell. Apassingok introduces himself by his Yupik name before recounting his successful hunt:

“My Yupik name is Agragiiq. The girls on top of the beach saw a whale, and they thought it was two of them, it was this bowhead whale,” Apassingok said. “(We) went out and chased it for maybe an hour and a half; the other boats could have gotten it, but they never got close enough to strike. It came up right in front of us, and I struck it.”

Apassingok’s mother expressed joy for her son, who, she said, was born to be a hunter.

“My name is Susan Aakapak (which means ‘big sister’ in our language) Apassingok,” she said. “My son has been hunting since he was in diapers and drinking from the bottle, he’s been whaling. His life has been nothing but hunting.”

The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commissioner for Gambell, and uncle to Chris the striker, is Edmond Apassingok. He says the approximately 200-year-old whale was caught about two miles away from the village, but further out there is significant open water around the island.

“In the past, we have pulled our boats on the ice and went through open water where there are whales, but now, we can’t do either. It’s either too thin or too thick to go through or on it. It’s changed,” stated Edmond. “The winds move the ice more quickly, and it melts just as fast as soon as the wind picks up to 20 or 30 miles an hour.”

Edmond Apassingok believes ice conditions like these have made hunting for whale more challenging over the past five years or so.

According to the International Whaling Commission regulations, whalers in Gambell have six attempts or strikes for whales left in their catch limit, but Edmond Apassingok noted this whaling season is going by quickly, and the bowheads are already starting to migrate.

Karen Trop also contributed to this story.

A unique guide that combines the traditional knowledge of reindeer and caribou food preparation, as well as other Arctic recipes and culinary traditions, is set to be released in a few months. The cookbook may provide Alaskans with new ideas for economic opportunities in a changing Arctic.

“This is the plate with a lot of reindeer food. And this is very traditional” said ViviAnn Labba Klemensson in her video blog on luckyreindeer.com. “I’m going to tell you what each piece is. This is the tongue from the reindeer. It’s boiled and we eat it like it is. It’s really a delicacy.”

“This is intestines filled with reindeer blood,” said Klemensson, a reindeer herder of the Swedish Sami people, as she described some of her favorite dishes.

Klemensson’s video blog covers topics ranging from reindeer biology and herding techniques to commenting on development that threatens her herd’s grazing grounds and persevering in a male-dominated profession.

“We’re actually doing something really essential,” said Klemensson inside a lavvu or a cone-shaped tent. “We’re smoking the reindeer meat. And this is yum! It’s really a delicious, delicious food when it’s ready.”

For the indigenous people of the circumpolar north, nothing is wasted when harvesting domesticated reindeer or the larger, migratory subspecies known as caribou. Everything from the animal is used.

Sinew is used for sewing. Hide, antlers and bones, of course, are used for clothing and tools.

“The Sami people and the reindeer herding people, they used to use a lot of reindeer skin and hide to make handicraft,” said Klemensson in another segment of her video blog.

Now, possibly for the first time ever, thousands of years’ worth of traditional knowledge is being compiled into a new book about Arctic culinary traditions and indigenous food culture. But it’s not just an ordinary cookbook.

“We call it, rather, a cookbook about people, ” said Anders Oskal, director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry in Norway.

Oskal actually prefers to call it a food book.

“Traditional food, traditional ways of preparing food, traditional dishes, and also modern dishes, newer dishes,” Oskal said. “But we had a steady focus on what we might term the food systems of the Arctic indigenous peoples and the culinary traditions that go with it.”

The project was commissioned by the Arctic Council with youth from the Arctic’s various indigenous groups compiling the traditional knowledge.

“We need to have to some long-term responses to this, which is one reason why it’s very sensible for us to work with youth,” Oskal said. “We have to work on these issues today. If we start working on this in 20 years, 30 years, we’re going to lose out. We’ll be running next to the bicycle, to put it that way.”

Oskal said they want to use traditional knowledge to build local economies from within.

“That’s a pathway by which we can have a development based on own knowledge, our own premises and our own people,” he said. “And trying to make the opportunities of a changing Arctic, opportunities for all.”

James Gamble of the Aleut International Association is one of the indigenous representatives to the Arctic Council called Permanent Participants.

“It’s not just about reindeer,” Gamble said. “In the Aleutians, it’s about pickled seal fin, and it’s about other recipes from other Permanent Participants.”

Gamble sees the food book as key in taking advantage of the latest opportunities in education and entrepreneurship that are opening up with potentially troubling changes in a warming Arctic.

“But can we take advantage of them? ” Gamble asks. “There’s going to be more shipping through the North Sea route. Does that mean that there’s more opportunity, for instance, for bringing food products to different places and having an avenue to transport and sell things?”

Oskal said the food book is now being edited and will be unveiled at the Arctic Council’s ministerial meeting in Fairbanks in May.

There may be fewer king salmon on the Kuskokwim River this summer than hoped, and some residents want to meet with state biologists now to figure out how best to manage both expectations and the fishery.

“Our preference is that preseason plan doesn’t start being discussed the very last few days of March, or April or May,” said Mary Sattler Petola, one of four members of the Kuskokwim River Salmon Management Working Group who sent a letter to the State Fish and Game Department asking for a meeting well before the season begins. “(In) May we are all preparing for fish camp.”

In the letter, Peltola, along with Fritz Charles, Bev Hoffman and LaMont Albertson, said biologists have the information they need by January to begin a summer management plan and should have been consulting with the working group in February.

Peltola and the other signers of the letter are concerned that state biologists’ estimates of King returns this summer may be too optimistic.

She points to the parents of this year’s kings, which swam up the Kuskokwim in 2013. They showed up in such low numbers that there were practically no late kings to speak of that year.

“We harvested it pretty heavily,” Peltola said. “So I think it would be best if the department did have conversations with us about the possibility about it being another tough summer.”

Nowhere near enough kings made it to the spawning grounds, but luckily for the fishermen, there was a nice silver run to help fill nets and pantries that summer.

Fish are not a small issue for Yupik people.

“Our word for fish, neqa, is our word for food. Our generic word for food; the same word,” Peltola pointed out.

In their letter, the four working group members worry that the projections for the king return may be too optimistic. They point to Fish and Game’s reliance on models that may not truly reflect what is going on in the salmon populations. The members say those models need to be reviewed by independent scientists.

“Getting really solid peer review is important,” Peltola said. “There is this concern that Fish and Game may be having these conversations among just Fish and Game people or retired Fish and Game folks. Maybe the peer review should happen earlier and with a broader group of people.”

The king runs on the Kuskokwim have been struggling for some time.

Peltola, who grew up fishing the river, said that 2010 was the year she first realized that the king run was in major distress.

“When I think about fish camp and king fishing I have the pre-2010 memory, and then the more recent memory after 2010 that has been much much tougher,” Peltola said. “Even with me it was very emotional. Thinking about kings being weak, weak runs, it was like a family member being sick.”

In their letter, the four members of the Kuskokwim River Salmon Management Working Group said they want the state to take a conservative approach and limit fishing on kings to help restore the run to its former strength.

Fish and Game is trying to schedule a meeting of the Working Group in Bethel for the end of March.

The Sitka Tribe of Alaska wants to see more protection for subsistence harvesters when herring season begins next month.

The Tribe’s Herring Committee is recommending a pair of proposals to reserve more areas for subsistence and to cut the commercial harvest by half.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan is urging the Alaska Board of Game to get behind legislation to repeal a rule regulating predator control on federal wildlife refuges in Alaska.

Sullivan is sponsoring a resolution of disapproval similar to one already passed by the U.S. House that would turn back the Obama-era rule that specifically bans some bear, wolf and coyote killing techniques, including certain aircraft, trap and bait assisted harvests.

A subsistence harvest for Emperor Geese has been proposed this spring for the first time in 30 years. The population declined in the early 1980s. The last subsistence hunt took place in 1987. Jason Schamber, who is a wildlife biologist with Alaska Department of Fish and Game, says that the decades of conservation have paid off.

“Over the last 30 years the population has grown slowly at about three percent per year,” says Schamber. “In 2015, it finally reached the level where managers felt that the population could sustain a harvest.”

The Alaska Migratory Birds Co-Management Council developed a management plan for the spring, summer subsistence hunt, and agreed to adopt it for an initial three-year trial period beginning this year. The approved plan is a customary and traditional hunt, meaning that there will be no bag limit.

Still, the population remains susceptible to overhunting. Gayla Hoseth represents Bristol Bay on the AMBCC. She says that education will be key, along with monitoring and potential restrictions, if this trial run is to lead to a sustainable annual hunt.

“In Bristol Bay, we have our Yaquillrit Keutisti Council, and it’s also known as Keeper of the Birds, meeting. We’re going to be having a meeting here before April to talk about these kind of things, education outreach,” Hoseth says. “We don’t want to overharvest.”

Education outreach will include presentations on conservation in some villages that hunt emperor geese and informational mailers.

In addition to the subsistence hunt, there will also be a fall and winter sport hunt. There will be an unrestricted number of permits, but there will be a limit of 1000 birds taken statewide. The specific limit for the Bristol Bay region is 150. The subsistence harvest is scheduled to open April 2 and run through August 31. The fall hunt is set to begin in September.

Proposed changes are open for public comment until March 13.