Fish Camp Essentials...Subsistence IS a Way of Life

Journey with the 5 year old twins, Mian'aq and Nuq'aq Alexie-Leonard, to the Tuntutuliak traditional fishcamp...take a tour to the Kuskokwim River and expose yourself to:

Fish Camp Essentials



Nuq and Mian at Mekoryuk Harbor, Nunivak Island




VIDEO ARCHIVES (flash video)



To Fish Camp...Nuq and Mian along with
videographer Skip Snaith head 20 miles downriver from the hub community of Bethel to Katie and Nels Alexie's site at Tuntutuliak Fishcamp. Nuq leads us on an exploration of the puyurcivik or 'smokehouse' and the maqivik or traditional 'steambath'.




Maurluq 'Grandma' Katie Alexie Cutting King Salmon,Tuntutuliak Traditional Fish Camp, Kuskokwim River
Kuskokwim River, SW Alaska.




music from Windham Hill, The First Ten Years,
Mike Marshall and Darrel Anger track entitled "Dolphins"




Apa'urluq 'Apa' 'Grandpa' Nels describes the fine art of smoking fish to guest videographer, Skip Snaith





Fish Camp Store, provisioning in the 'bush...Apa' Nels has a store!





Apa' Nels Alexie, Mian'aq and Nuq'aq...Fish Camp Schooling. Even young chidren are given meaningful tasks at camp...here, the boys are responsible for cutting wood for the maqivik stove which will be fired up for the evening bath.




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SWITCH

To many non-Indian observers, including policymakers, subsistence is nothing more than a cultural antique -- an increasingly ineffective holdover from previous times that will inevitably disappear as market economies take over. However, subsistence is not a relic from the past. It has and continues to be the foundation of Alaska Native societies. Today, the subsistence way of life is necessary for the physical, cultural and economic survival of Alaska Native people.

Most of the 220 small Native villages in Alaska are located on or near the shores of a river or a lake, or on the coasts of the North Pacific, Bering Sea, or Arctic Ocean. The proximity to water is no accident and reflect s the dependence of Alaska Natives on the harvest of fish stocks for sustenance and the basis of their traditional way of life. In many Native villages, fresh meat, fish, and produce are unavailable except through the subsistence harvest.

Yet, as important as hunting and fishing rights are to the physical, economic, traditional, and cultural existence of Alaska Native people, the Alaska legislature refuses to recognize the importance of the subsistence way of life. The State views subsistence as nothing more than the taking of a natural resource, and as something that all citizens of the state should be entitled to engage in on an equal opportunity basis with little distinction between sport and trophy hunting and subsistence needs.

Under a federal law that protects Alaska Native subsistence rights, the State's refusal to recognize the subsistence priority requires the takeover of subsistence fishery management by the federal government. However, despite a court order mandating that the federal government implement this priority, Alaska's congressional delegation and the Department of the Interior have stifled this mandate for several years in a row, by agreeing to moratoriums which deny funding for this critical federal takeover.

[exerpted from: http://www.ewebtribe.com/NACulture/articles/alaskasubsis.htm]


Federal Governments Div. of Subsistence Management:
http://alaska.fws.gov/asm/index.htm

State of Alaska, Div. of Subsistence:
http://www.subsistence.adfg.state.ak.us/

Native American Rights Fund...legal archives, search Alaska Subsistence:
link to web query results "alaska subsistence" here

Good General Info on Subsistence:
http://www.subsistmgtinfo.org/basics.htm

State of Alaska Subsistence Court Decisions:
http://www.law.state.ak.us/department/civil/nat_cases.html