Subsistence

Tonight’s news showed 20 Native Alaskan citizens pleading guilty of breaking federal fishing laws by taking Salmon for subsistence. The picture was nauseating. Here was a clean shaven citified judge accepting a guilty plea and lecturing these families whose lives depend literally on their traditional strategies of survival. “You are responsible for learning the federal fishing laws and adhering to them,” he said in words to that effect. One violation was merely using a net that was not the right size. The natives, women and children includes, once more sat mute in their traditional coastal dress as they listened to their rights taken away by laws written in Washington, DC by people clueless about the harsh isolated life of remote native villages. Shame on the judge for such bureaucratic judicial haughtiness. I picture him speaking through Klinefelter lips.

I saw some of this first hand when flying along the Katmai Coast where enforcement rangers rotating from down below force natives out of their hereditary lands and enforce rules that endanger the very survival of those who live or travel there. I was clueless too, when I first came here and there is still disagreement, but the picture I saw flashed on the Channel 2 News was indeed disheartening. A guilty plea for a felony, among other things, in effect denies these young men, among the 20, of any chance of joining the military.