Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska Native leaders call for legal overhaul to protect traditional fish harvests

October 23, 2o23 — The crash of salmon stocks in Western Alaska’s Kuskokwim River has sparked a bitter court fight between the federal and state governments, and now Alaska Native leaders are calling for congressional action to ensure that Indigenous Alaskans have priority for harvests when stocks are scarce.

The conflict has gripped this year’s Alaska Federation of Natives convention underway this week in Anchorage, where delegates expressed anger over state policies and fears for the future of fish and wildlife upon that they and their ancestors traditionally harvested.

A resolution introduced at the convention urges the federal government to “aggressively protect our hunting and fishing rights in court” against a state government that is “actively undermining Alaska Natives’ rights to subsistence.” The resolution also calls for Congress to strengthen federal law to “permanently protect the right of Alaska Native people to engage in subsistence fishing” in Alaska waters.

Subsistence is the term that describes traditional harvests of fish, game and plants for personal and noncommercial use. Salmon has traditionally been a subsistence staple.

For Alaska Natives, subsistence is of cultural as well as practical importance. Within the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, a sweeping federal law passed in 1980, there are subsistence harvest protections for residents of rural Alaska – regions where communities are largely Native – but not for Native people specifically.

It is time to change those terms to explicitly protect Native traditions, convention attendees said. The sentiment was particularly strong among residents of the affected Kuskokwim River area.

“After decades of failed and broken promises, we urge Alaska’s state and federal policymakers to recognize and protect Alaska Native rights to subsistence uses of fish and game. We ask that they act quickly to stop the physical and cultural starvation of our people,” Curt Chamberlain, an attorney for the Yup’ik-owned Calista Corp., said during a three-hour session Friday afternoon on subsistence problems.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Alaska Native advocates and leaders call for expanded federal subsistence protection

October 22, 2023 — Advocates for Alaska Native interests say they see an opening to significantly broaden a key federal subsistence protection across Alaska amid a court dispute between the state and the federal government over that protection.

With support from Alaska’s 200-plus tribes, Congress could expand the protection to new swaths of Alaska, say attorneys with the Native American Rights Fund and Alaska Native groups.

They want the protection, which provides a fishing priority in times of shortage for rural residents who are typically Native, to expand beyond sections of rivers associated with federal lands such as refuges, where the law currently applies.

They want it to cover the entirety of rivers, including sections of rivers associated with state lands.

“Up and down the river,” is how it would be applied, not just on part of a river, said Heather Kendall-Miller, a part-time attorney with the Native American Rights Fund.

Also, the priority for rural residents should be expanded to include Alaska Natives, to ensure it benefits Indigenous people living in urban and rural areas, they say.

State officials said Thursday those proposals, if Congress approved, would allow federal authority to supplant state authority on rivers across the state.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Menhaden Fishing: from the 1860s through Present Day

September 9, 2015 — It is an oily little fish only surpassed by its ugliness. But to the Native Americans and subsequently the early settlers along the eastern seaboard, it was more valuable than caviar. When the settlers came to Virginia and New England, methods of growing food were much different than from their homelands. The soil was sandy and less fertile than home which made farming difficult. The Native Americans taught the colonists how to place two small fish in each hill where seeds were planted. The decomposition of the fish added the required nutrient, and corn, introduced to the colonist by the Indians, became a staple food for settlers. In long rows, the fish were laid end to end and covered up. As they decomposed, the usually sandy loam soil became much more fertile and would support crops.

The fish was called munnawhateaug 
by the Native Americans. It has been called a variety of other names in English such as bunkers, porgy, fat back, yellow tail but mostly menhaden. The fish usually does not exceed 10-12 inches in size and its main diet is plankton making it a very important part of the aquatic food chain in the waters from Maine to the Mid-Atlantic.

The menhaden schooled very close to shore. They were harvested by haul sein nets from the shore, in gill nets worked by canoes or small boats, in pound nets, or in some cases schools of fish were pressed against the shoreline and scooped up in baskets.

Quite by accident, the oil produced by rendering the fish was found to be satisfactory for use instead of whale oil. In about 1850, an old lady named Mrs. John Barlett from Blue Hill, Maine was cooking some menhaden to feed to her chickens. She noticed as the fish boiled, there was an abundance of clear oil left on top of the water. According to an 1874 statement by Eben Phillips, an oil merchant in Boston, Mrs. Barlett skimmed the oil from the kettle and brought him a sample of the oil. He told her that he would pay $11 per barrel for all she could produce. The next year she produced 13 barrels and then 100 barrels the next year and so forth. As in the case of most “discoveries” by accident, a lady cooking chicken feed was the beginning of the menhaden industry along the East Coast from Maine to the Carolinas. The oil from these small fish huddled close to shore became competitors with the ocean going New England whalers producing lamp oil and oil for other uses. The by-product of boiling the fish was collected, ground and sold as fertilizer and refined for animal feed.

Read the full story at The House & Home Magazine