#native alaskans

[drag-tween]

Keep your Thanks: Here’s the justice queer Native Americans really hunger for

To some Indigenous folks, Thanksgiving marks over 400 years of oppression. Here's what they're fighting for instead

[rjzimmerman]

Can traditional techniques protect against an uncertain future?

Excerpt from this story from Sierra Club:

Around the circumpolar North, there is a growing realization that substandard housing causes grave problems. Residents in poorly insulated homes spend too much money on heating, while inadequate ventilation leads to mold linked to respiratory illnesses. In Alaska, the Cold Climate Housing Research Center draws on principles from traditional Indigenous architectural techniques to create prototypes that can withstand the elements. Founder Jack Hébert’s vision for the center reflects his experience living in an Iñupiaq sod house in the 1970s. Projects have included partnering with the Tagiugmiullu Nunamiullu Housing Authority and the village of Anaktuvuk Pass to create an energy-efficient, sod-roofed home.

“There’s a reawakening occurring that is incredibly encouraging, and that is the wisdom of traditional ways,” he tells me by phone from Fairbanks. “It’s the 21st century. We’re not going back in time, but we can go back to the values and ways of living that are timeless and bring them into this day so that we can be comfortable and warm.”

Simply importing housing solutions from the south doesn’t work in the North, says Hébert, nor does “not listening to the people that live there and have lived there successfully for so long.” Listening and learning from Indigenous practices “in design and the way we build things is something that is exciting and encouraging,” he says. Using local materials, he adds, means Northern communities can “live in a compatible way with our environment.”

At Okpik Arctic Village, a small sawmill produces lumber with driftwood from the river and black spruce from the surrounding forest. Other materials are close to hand. “One of the reasons I picked this property is because it has different vegetation throughout,” says Kisoun Taylor, crouching down to show me the sod he used for the roof. “There’s all this thick willow delta, and then there’s around a square kilometer or two of tundra, which is actually muskeg,” he says, using the Cree-derived, Northern term for a grassy bogland.  

After using a chainsaw to cut sod in the fall, Kisoun Taylor and his crew allow the soil to drain. That way, it will be lighter when he gathers it onto a snowmobile in the winter. After a year or two of monitoring and trimming the roof, he says, it will become almost self-sufficient: “It keeps on growing—our house itself will be a garden.”

[wachinyeya]

https://www.ecowatch.com/oil-companies-drilling-leases-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge.html

3 Oil Companies Pull Out of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - EcoWatch

Three oil companies have canceled their drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Environmental groups praised the news.

Three oil companies have canceled their leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Drilling in the refuge has long been a controversial issue, as the 19.5-million-acre wilderness area is home to 45 species of mammals including polar bears, bowhead whales and caribou and considered sacred by the Indigenous Gwich’in people, according to the Gwich’in Steering Committee.

“These exits clearly demonstrate that international companies recognize what we have known all along: drilling in the Arctic Refuge is not worth the economic risk and liability that results from development on sacred lands without the consent of Indigenous Peoples,” the Gwich’in Steering Committee said in a statement.

The Anchorage Daily News first reported Thursday that the oil company Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of 88 Energy, had canceled its lease on the refuge’s coastal plain, as confirmed by the Bureau of Land Management.

“The Bureau of Land Management has a well-established procedure to do this, and last month rescinded and canceled the lease, as requested,” the Interior Department said in a statement reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “The Office of Natural Resources Revenue refunded (the) full bonus bid and first year rentals.”

At the same time, the paper also reported that Hilcorp and Chevron had spent $10 million to exit older leases to land owned by an Alaskan Native coorporation within the refuge.

“Chevron’s decision to formally relinquish its legacy lease position was driven by the goal of prioritizing and focusing our exploration capital in a disciplined manner in the context of our entire portfolio of opportunities,” company spokesperson Deena McMullen told The Hill.

The move follows a game of political football over oil and gas exploration along the refuge’s 1.5 million acre coastal plain. In 2017, Congress passed a law mandating two lease sales in the refuge by 2024, according to The Washington Post. However, when the Trump administration held its first lease sale in the coastal plain in January 2021, Regenerate Alaska was the only oil company to buy a lease, according to the Anchoridge Daily News.

The company’s decision to pull out follows political uncertaintly over the lease, as the Biden administration put a halt to exploration in the refuge and suspended the leases for more study. Indigenous and enviornmental groups also led a campaign against drilling in the refuge, and 29 banks and 14 international insurers have now said they won’t fund drilling in the refuge, according to the Gwich’in Steering Committee.

Some have criticized the Biden administration for delaying the leases, blaming its actions for the companies’ departure.

“The Biden administration continues to tell the American people that they are doing all they can to bring down energy prices,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said, as The Washington Post reported. “Then they take actions that do the exact opposite, especially in Alaska.”

However, environmental groups responded favorably to the news, arguing that drilling in the refuge would be dangerous both to the local ecosystem and the global fight against the climate crisis.

“This is positive news for the climate and the human rights of Indigenous people whose survival depends on a healthy, thriving calving ground for the Porcupine Caribou Herd, and further proves that the oil industry recognizes drilling on sacred lands is bad business,” Wilderness Society Alaska state director Karlin Itchoak said in a statement reported by The Washington Post.

There are two entities that retain leases following the 2021 sale – the state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and an Anchorage real estate investor (AIDEA). However, experts say that it’s unlikely they will be able to develop the land independently, making fossil fuel exploration in the refuge now unlikely. Still, Indigenous activists said they would keep pressure on the remaining lease holders.

“AIDEA must show respect to the Indigenous communities they have been overlooking in Alaska projects,” executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee Bernadette Demientieff said in a statement. “We are spiritually and culturally connected to the land, water and animals. The Gwich’in people and our allies will never stop fighting to protect Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit.”

[walaw717]

Russian America - The history school left out.

Russian America (Russian: Русская Америка, Russkaya Amerika) was the name of the Russian colonial possessions in North America from 1733 to 1867. Its capital was Novo-Archangelsk (New Arkhangelsk), which is now Sitka, Alaska, United States. Settlements spanned parts of what are now the U.S. states of California, Alaska and three forts in Hawaii. Formal incorporation of the possessions by Russia did not take place until the Ukase of 1799 which established a monopoly for the Russian–American Company and also granted the Russian Orthodox Church certain rights in the new possessions. Many of its possessions were abandoned in the 19th century. In 1867, Russia sold its last remaining possessions to the United States of America for $7.2 million ($129 million in today's terms).  

The earliest written accounts indicate that the first Europeans to reach Alaska came from Russia. In 1648 Semyon Dezhnev sailed from the mouth of the Kolyma River through the Arctic Ocean and around the eastern tip of Asia to the Anadyr River. One legend holds that some of his boats were carried off course and reached Alaska. However, no evidence of settlement survives. Dezhnev's discovery was never forwarded to the central government, leaving open the question of whether or not Siberia was connected to North America.

In 1725, Tsar Peter the Great called for another expedition. As a part of the 1733–1743 Second Kamchatka expedition, the Sv. Petr under the Dane Vitus Bering 

and the Sv. Pavel under the Russian Alexei Chirikov set sail from the Kamchatkan port of Petropavlovsk in June 1741. 

They were soon separated, but each continued sailing east. On 15 July, Chirikov sighted land, probably the west side of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. He sent a group of men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to land on the northwestern coast of North America. 

On roughly 16 July, Bering and the crew of Sv. Petr sighted Mount Saint Elias on the Alaskan mainland; they turned westward toward Russia soon afterward. Meanwhile, Chirikov and the Sv. Pavel headed back to Russia in October with news of the land they had found.

In November Bering's ship was wrecked on Bering Island. There Bering fell ill and died, and high winds dashed the Sv. Petr to pieces. After the stranded crew wintered on the island, the survivors built a boat from the wreckage and set sail for Russia in August 1742. Bering's crew reached the shore of Kamchatka in 1742, carrying word of the expedition. The high quality of the sea-otter pelts they brought sparked Russian settlement in Alaska. 

Beginning in 1743, small associations of fur-traders began to sail from the shores of the Russian Pacific coast to the Aleutian islands. As the runs from Asiatic Russia to America became longer expeditions (lasting two to four years or more), the crews established hunting- and trading-posts. By the late 1790s some of these had become permanent settlements. Approximately half of the fur traders came from the various European parts of the Russian Empire, while the others had Siberian or mixed origins.

Rather than hunting the marine life themselves, the Russian promyshlenniki forced the Aleuts to do the work for them, often by taking hostage family-members in exchange for hunted seal-furs. This pattern of colonial exploitation resembled some of the Russian promyshlenniki practices in their expansion into Siberia and the Russian Far East. As word spread of the potential riches in furs, competition among Russian companies increased and the Aleuts were enslaved. Catherine the Great, who became Empress of Russia in 1763, proclaimed goodwill toward the Aleuts and urged her subjects to treat them fairly. On some islands and parts of the Alaska Peninsula, groups of traders had been capable of relatively peaceful coexistence with the local inhabitants. Other groups could not manage the tensions and committed acts of violence. Hostages were taken, families were split up, and individuals were forced to leave their villages and settle elsewhere. The growing competition between the trading companies, merging into fewer, larger and more powerful corporations, created conflicts that aggravated the relations with the indigenous populations. Over the years, the situation became catastrophic. 

As the animal populations declined, the Aleuts, already too dependent on the new barter-economy fostered by the Russian fur-trade, were increasingly coerced into taking greater and greater risks in the highly dangerous waters of the North Pacific to hunt for more otter. As the Shelekhov-Golikov Company of 1783-1799 developed a monopoly, its use of skirmishes and violent incidents turned into systematic violence as a tool of colonial exploitation of the indigenous people. When the Aleuts revolted and won some victories, the Russians retaliated, killing many and destroying their boats and hunting gear, leaving them no means of survival. The most devastating effects came from disease: during the first two generations (1741/1759-1781/1799 AD) of Russian contact, 80 percent of the Aleut population died from Eurasian infectious diseases; these were by then endemic among the Europeans, but the Aleut had no immunity against the new diseases.

Though the Alaskan colony was never very profitable because of the costs of transportation, most Russian traders were determined to keep the land for themselves. In 1784 Grigory Ivanovich Shelekhov, who later set up the Russian-Alaska Company that developed into the Alaskan colonial administration, arrived in Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island with two ships, the Three Saints (Russian: Три Святителя) and the St. Simon. The Koniag Alaska Natives harassed the Russian party and Shelekhov responded by killing hundreds and taking hostages to enforce the obedience of the rest. Having established his authority on Kodiak Island, Shelekhov founded the second permanent Russian settlement in Alaska (after Unalaska, permanently settled since 1774) on the island's Three Saints Bay.

In 1790 Shelekhov, back in Russia, hired Alexander Andreyevich Baranov to manage his Alaskan fur-enterprise. Baranov moved the colony to the northeast end of Kodiak Island, where timber was available. The site later developed as what is now the city of Kodiak. Russian colonists took Koniag wives and started families whose surnames continue today, such as Panamaroff, Petrikoff, and Kvasnikoff. In 1795 Baranov, concerned by the sight of non-Russian Europeans trading with the natives in southeast Alaska, established Mikhailovsk six miles (10  km) north of present-day Sitka. He bought the land from the Tlingit, but in 1802, while Baranov was away, Tlingit from a neighboring settlement attacked and destroyed Mikhailovsk. Baranov returned with a Russian warship and razed the Tlingit village. He built the settlement of New Archangel (Russian: Ново-Архангельск, romanized: Novo-Arkhangelsk) on the ruins of Mikhailovsk. It became the capital of Russian America – and later the city of Sitka. 

As Baranov secured the Russians' settlements in Alaska, the Shelekhov family continued to work among the top leaders to win a monopoly on Alaska's fur trade. In 1799 Shelekhov's son-in-law, Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov, had acquired a monopoly on the American fur trade from Tsar Paul I. Rezanov formed the Russian-American Company. As part of the deal, the Tsar expected the company to establish new settlements in Alaska and to carry out an expanded colonisation programme.

Alexander Andreyevich Baranov, called "Lord of Alaska" by Hector Chevigny, played an active role in the Russian–American Company and was the first governor of Russian America.

By 1804, Baranov, now manager of the Russian– American Company, had consolidated the company's hold on fur trade activities in the Americas following his suppression of the local Tlingit clan at the Battle of Sitka. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska. For the most part, they clung to the coast and shunned the interior.

From 1812 to 1841, the Russians operated Fort Ross, California. From 1814 to 1817, Russian Fort Elizabeth was operating in the Kingdom of Hawaii.

By the 1830s, the Russian monopoly on trade was weakening. The British Hudson's Bay Company was leased the southern edge of Russian America in 1839 under the RAC-HBC Agreement, establishing Fort Stikine which began siphoning off trade.

A company ship visited the Russian American outposts only every two or three years to give provisions. Because of the limited stock of supplies, trading was incidental compared to trapping operations under the Aleutian laborers. This left the Russian outposts dependent upon British and American merchants for sorely needed food and materials; in such a situation Baranov knew that the RAC establishments "could not exist without trading with foreigners." Ties with Americans were particularly advantageous since they could sell furs at Guangzhou, close to the Russians at the time. The downside was that American hunters and trappers encroached on territory Russians considered theirs.

Starting with the destruction of the Phoenix in 1799, several RAC ships sank or were damaged in storms, leaving the RAC outposts with scant resources. On 24 June 1800, an American vessel sailed to Kodiak Island. Baranov negotiated the sale of over 12,000 rubles worth of goods carried on the ship, averting "imminent starvation." During his tenure Baranov traded over 2 million rubles worth of furs for American supplies, to the consternation of the board of directors. From 1806 to 1818 Baranov shipped 15 million rubles worth of furs to Russia, only receiving under 3 million rubles in provisions, barely half of the expenses spent solely on the Saint Petersburg company office.

The Russo-American Treaty of 1824 recognized exclusive Russian rights to the fur trade above Latitude 54°, 40' North, with the American rights and claims restricted to below that line. This division was repeated in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, a parallel agreement with the British in 1825 (which also settled most of the border with British North America). However, the agreements soon went by the wayside, and with the retirement of Alexandr Baranov in 1818, the Russian hold on Alaska was further weakened.

When the Russian-American Company's charter was renewed in 1821, it stipulated that the chief managers from then on be naval officers. Most naval officers did not have any experience in the fur trade, so the company suffered. The second charter also tried to cut off all contact with foreigners, especially the competitive Americans. This strategy backfired since the Russian colony had become used to relying on American supply ships, and the United States had become a valued customer for furs. Eventually the Russian– American Company entered into an agreement with the Hudson's Bay Company, which gave the British rights to sail through Russian territory.

At Three Saints Bay, Shelekov built a school to teach the natives to read and write Russian, and introduced the first resident missionaries and clergymen who spread the Russian Orthodox faith. This faith (with its liturgies and texts, translated into Aleut at a very early stage) had been informally introduced, in the 1740s–1780s. Some fur traders founded local families or symbolically adopted Aleut trade partners as godchildren to gain their loyalty through this special personal bond. The missionaries soon opposed the exploitation of the indigenous populations, and their reports provide evidence of the violence exercised to establish colonial rule in this period. 

The RAC's monopoly was continued by Emperor Alexander I in 1821, on the condition that the company would financially support missionary efforts. Company board ordered chief manager Etholén to build a residency in New Archangel for bishop Veniaminov.  When a Lutheran church was planned for the Finnish population of New Archangel, Veniamiov prohibited any Lutheran priests from proselytizing to neighboring Tlingits.  Veniamiov faced difficulties in exercising influence over the Tlingit people outside New Archangel, due to their political independence from the RAC leaving them less receptive to Russian cultural influences than Aleuts. A smallpox epidemic spread throughout Alaska in 1835-1837 and the medical aid given by Veniamiov created converts to Orthodoxy. 

Inspired by the same pastoral theology as Bartolomé de las Casas or St. Francis Xavier, the origins of which come from early Christianity's need to adapt to the cultures of Antiquity, missionaries in Russian America applied a strategy that placed value on local cultures and encouraged indigenous leadership in parish life and missionary activity. When compared to later Protestant missionaries, the Orthodox policies "in retrospect proved to be relatively sensitive to indigenous Alaskan cultures." This cultural policy was originally intended to gain the loyalty of the indigenous populations by establishing the authority of Church and State as protectors of over 10,000 inhabitants of Russian America.

(The number of ethnic Russian settlers had always been less than the record 812, almost all concentrated in Sitka and Kodiak).

Difficulties arose in training Russian priests to attain fluency in any of the various Alaskan Indigenous languages. To redress this, Veniaminov opened a seminary for mixed race and native candidates for the Church in 1845. Promising students were sent to additional schools in either Saint Petersburg or Irkutsk, the later city becoming the original seminary's new location in 1858. The Holy Synod instructed for the opening of four missionary schools in 1841, to be located in Amlia, Chiniak, Kenai, Nushagak.  Veniamiov established the curriculum, which included Russian history, literacy, mathematics and religious studies.

A side effect of the missionary strategy was the development of a new and autonomous form of indigenous identity. Many native traditions survived within local "Russian" Orthodox tradition and in the religious life of the villages. Part of this modern indigenous identity is an alphabet and the basis for written literature in nearly all of the ethnic-linguistic groups in the Southern half of Alaska. Father Ivan Veniaminov (later St. Innocent of Alaska), famous throughout Russian America, developed an Aleut dictionary for hundreds of language and dialect words based on the Russian alphabet. 

The most visible trace of the Russian colonial period in contemporary Alaska is the nearly 90 Russian Orthodox parishes with a membership of over 20,000 men, women, and children, almost exclusively indigenous people. These include several Athabascan groups of the interior, very large Yup'ik communities, and quite nearly all of the Aleut and Alutiiq populations. Among the few Tlingit Orthodox parishes, the large group in Juneau adopted Orthodox Christianity only after the Russian colonial period, in an area where there had been no Russian settlers nor missionaries. The widespread and continuing local Russian Orthodox practices are likely the result of the syncretism of local beliefs with Christianity.

In contrast, the Spanish Roman Catholic colonial intentions, methods, and consequences in California and the Southwest were the product of the Laws of Burgos and the Indian Reductions of conversions and relocations to missions; while more force and coercion was used, the indigenous peoples likewise created a kind of Christianity that reflected many of their traditions.

Observers noted that while their religious ties were tenuous, before the sale of Alaska there were 400 native converts to Orthodoxy in New Archangel. Tlingit practitioners declined in number after the lapse of Russian rule, until there were only 117 practitioners in 1882 residing in the place, by then renamed as Sitka.

By the 1860s, the Russian government was ready to abandon its Russian America colony. Zealous over-hunting had severely reduced the fur-bearing animal population, and competition from the British and Americans exacerbated the situation. This, combined with the difficulties of supplying and protecting such a distant colony, reduced interest in the territory. After Russian America was sold to the U.S. in 1867, for $7.2 million (2 cents per acre, totaling $114,657,180.85 in today's USD), all the holdings of the Russian–American Company were liquidated.

Following the transfer, many elders of the local Tlingit tribe maintained that "Castle Hill" comprised the only land that Russia was entitled to sell. Other indigenous groups also argued that they had never given up their land; the Americans encroached on it and took it over. Native land claims were not fully addressed until the latter half of the 20th century, with the signing by Congress and leaders of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. 

At the height of Russian America, the Russian population had reached 700, compared to 40,000 Aleuts. They and the Creoles, who had been guaranteed the privileges of citizens in the United States, were given the opportunity of becoming citizens within a three-year period, but few decided to exercise that option. General Jefferson C. Davis ordered the Russians out of their homes in Sitka, maintaining that the dwellings were needed for the Americans. The Russians complained of rowdiness of the American troops and assaults. Many Russians returned to Russia, while others migrated to the Pacific Northwest and California.

[rjzimmerman]

Indigenous Tribes Facing Displacement in Alaska and Louisiana Say the U.S. Is Ignoring Climate Threats - Inside Climate News

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

About 31 Native Alaskan communities face imminent climate displacement from flooding and erosion, which could lead cultures to disappear and ways of life to transform, with four tribes already in the process of relocating from their quickly disappearing villages.

The Kivalina, Shishmaref, Shaktoolik and Newtok, along with coastal Louisiana tribes, are among the most at risk of displacement due to climate change. But their efforts to move, according to tribal leaders, have been impeded by a lack of federal programs to assist in their relocation.

While there is no specialized federal program to assist in relocation efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development can help with specific projects like construction funding or affordable housing.

Native Alaskan villages often fail to qualify for FEMA programs because they lack approved disaster mitigation plans or have not been declared federal disaster areas, according to the Government Accountability Office. Many Native villages don’t qualify for relocation assistance from HUD because federal law does not recognize unincorporated Alaska Native villages in Alaska’s Unorganized Borough as eligible units of general local government. But the Unorganized Borough, which consists of those parts of the state that are not within any of its 19 organized boroughs, encompasses nearly half of Alaska’s land mass.

Five tribes from Alaska and Louisiana, including the Native Village of Kivalina, filed a complaint in 2020 with the United Nations that the U.S. government is violating their human rights by failing to address climate change impacts that are forcing their displacement, placing them at existential risk.

In addition to the need to relocate Alaska and Louisiana tribes, two federally recognized Florida tribes, the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes, are facing an uncertain future because of sea level rise. In Washington state, Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah Village has already drafted relocation plans.

On Louisiana’s Isle de Jean Charles, a rapidly sinking Native American community about 80 miles southwest of New Orleans, Hurricane Ida demolished the few remaining homes late in August, leaving many of its residents in limbo.

[rjzimmerman]

Interior Department backtracks on public comment period for Willow Project

The government told an Alaska Native village it would have more time to give feedback on an oil project. Then it reversed course.

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

For more than three weeks, the Alaska Native Village of Nuiqsut, Congressional Democrats, and conservation groups have been urging the Department of the Interior to extend the public comment period on a draft environmental impact statement for one of the largest proposed onshore oil and gas development projects in the United States. If approved, the ConocoPhillips venture, known as the Willow Project, would allow for construction of up to 250 wells, a network of gravel roads and pipelines, and a new central processing facility in the government-managed National Petroleum Reserve, about 35 miles west of Nuiqsut.

Democrats in the House of Representatives had asked for a response to their letter requesting an extension by July 22, but the Interior Department missed that deadline, Grist reported last week. Environmental groups hoped for an answer in advance of several public meetings on the draft environmental statement, the first of which took place Monday evening. They also still haven’t heard back.

The city of Nuiqsut, however, got an answer from the Interior Department on Friday. According to three sources with direct knowledge of the correspondence, the Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska office told the city that the comment period would be extended until the end of September. City officials were also informed that a public meeting in Nuiqsut scheduled for Thursday, August 11 would be moved to the middle of next month, giving residents more time to balance the seasonal demands of the summer subsistence harvest with having to comment on a project that will have a dramatic effect on the region for decades to come. According to two Interior employees who were not authorized to speak on the record, the agency had begun to prepare a federal register notice to announce the new schedule.

Over the weekend, though, the department reversed course. On Monday morning, Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak received a phone call, she told Grist, from the Willow Project manager, Stephanie Rice, telling her that the public comment period would not be extended. The Interior Department was reverting to the minimum 45-day public comment period required by law, despite telling Nuiqsut officials just days before that it would honor requests for an extension.

According to one source in the Biden administration briefed on the latest decision, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, political considerations regarding the passage of the Democrats’ major climate and energy bill contributed to the abrupt reversal. The legislation, which was unexpectedly unveiled by Senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin on July 27, passed the Senate on Sunday by a narrow party-line vote. It is expected to be voted on in the House by the end of this week. Manchin has not publicly discussed Willow in connection with the new bill, but the West Virginia Democrat explicitly tied his support for the legislation to the fast-tracking of some fossil fuel infrastructure projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline in his home state. The Willow Project is a top priority for Manchin’s Republican ally, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who faces a tough reelection fight this year.

[rjzimmerman]

As halibut decline, Alaska Native fishers square off against industrial fleets

The tiny fishing fleet from St. Paul is losing the fight for halibut, up against factory ships that throw away more of the valuable fish than the Indigenous fishers are allowed to catch.

Excerpt from this story from National Geographic:

The island’s small, independent fishing fleet of only 15 vessels needs all the help it can get: Far offshore, factory trawlers targeting other fish species net and chuck overboard as waste millions of pounds of the valuable fish each year. “They’re killing our halibut,” says St. Paul fisherman Myron Melovidov, who fishes with his grown sons.

Pacific halibut are flat and bottom dwelling, and can weigh hundreds of pounds. About 20 years ago, the population started taking a dive, and St. Paul fishermen—as well as halibut fishermen across Alaska—faced increasing cuts in their harvest limits.

"A lot of people had to fold,” says Jeff Kauffman, a member of the St. Paul fishing fleet whose kids have grown up fishing on his boat.

St. Paul fishermen say their future depends on those out-of-state boats wasting fewer halibut, which can fetch five times the price of the fish species the trawlers are targeting. The trawl industry has said it can’t cut halibut bycatch without dramatic cuts to its overall harvest, and without incurring significant financial losses.

With the Bering Sea as the rearing grounds for young halibut that as adults end up throughout the Pacific as far south as Oregon, the stakes are extraordinarily high for Alaska’s fishermen as fisheries managers meet this week to decide how to parcel out this shrinking resource. For St. Paul fishermen in particular, the halibut bycatch issue is also a question of justice and the right to harvest the marine resources that exist essentially in their front yards.

St. Paul lies 300 miles from the Alaska mainland, and the waters of the Bering Sea that surround this treeless outpost, one of the five Pribilof Islands, have for time immemorial fed an inordinately productive food chain. Millions of fish-eating seabirds nest on the islands each year. The largest breeding colony on Earth of northern fur seals pup here on beaches each summer. And for generations, abundant seafood has fed Native subsistence harvesters and lured fishermen from all over the world. Today, fisheries in the region are an economic engine  worth more than $2.5 billion.

But things are changing. Warming temperatures are wreaking havoc in the Bering Sea. Once-lucrative crab fisheries are crashing. Some species—such as pollock (the flaky white fish in a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich)—are charging north, following the retreat of the “cold pool,” an area of super-chilled water at the foot of the sea ice that separates northern Bering Sea species from more southerly ones.

And other fish, like king salmon and halibut, are shrinking; in the 1980s, a 20-year-old halibut could weigh 120 pounds. Now it might weigh 45 pounds, scientists said. The impacts of climate change are “unprecedented, unpredictable, and not incremental,” explains Bob Foy, director of NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which monitors more than 50 commercially harvested species in the waters off Alaska.

[drag-tween]

Climate change is straining Alaska's Arctic. A new mining road may push the region past the brink

In Ambler, northwest Alaska, a proposed 211-mile mining road has divided an Inupiaq community already devastated by climate change