FRED STRONG There's a lot of people that sell their subsistence. I see it going on. I trade for mine. ... That's our traditional way.
Fred Strong grew up in Haines. After working on the North Slope and the pipeline and a failed marriage, he came back to Haines, married again and started a family. When the construction business dried up in the 1980s, he started commercial fishing in Bristol Bay.
I fished with Henry Jocko Jr. It was great. We were up there with this old wooden boat, and we went into the war zones of Igiugig and Ugashik and the Naknek River. Igiugig was the worst. People were ramming boats and setting nets 15 feet apart, just lacing each other. The fish would come so hot and heavy it would take only five minutes and your net would be full. It'd be sinking. I've never seen so much chaos in my whole life as fishing on the Igiugig line.
That was a fun part of my life. You'd get to see 10,000 pounds of fish hit your net all at once and you'd have to pull that net in by hand, picking the fish out -- 150 fathoms, and you'd do this seven to 10 times a day. I did that for a few years, and I got tired of leaving home all the time to feed my family. I had to leave home most of my kids' lives until I got custody, and then I moved to Klukwan and raised them by myself.
Back in the '60s I started dancing. A bunch of guys that had been in the Army went in together and bought Fort Seward. One of the guys, Carl Heinmiller, had started reviving part of our culture. The cruise ships started coming to town, so the guys built a tribal house on the Fort Seward parade grounds and other stuff for the tourists. They started this dance group. They'd pay us to dance in front of these tourists. I wanted to earn money, so that's how I started my dancing career. I danced every summer for a lot of years.
Carl did a good thing. Because of him, I learned how to carve and helped carve on the biggest totem pole ever made at that time. It went over to Japan. Chevron had it made and gave it to the Japanese. The Japanese decided to donate it to the tribe in Wrangell, so now it's in Wrangell.
We had several producers from time to time come to town and film us. I've been on Australian TV and National Geographic magazine a couple of times. I've been on Japanese national TV several times. They filmed me putting up fish.
WORLD STAGE
In 1990, I danced in the Goodwill Games in Seattle. I met Arnold Schwarzenegger, Reba McIntyre, all the big stars. I met a lot of people. There were hundreds of different clans and tribes from all over the United States who danced at the games.
I went to the Goodwill Games because of an elderly woman in Juneau, Agnus Bellinger. She had come to Klukwan and asked all us boys, because she'd seen us dance at potlatches with all our regalia. The government had called her and wanted her to put together a group for the games. They were inviting Natives from all over the United States. There were several groups from Alaska that went down and danced. There were Eskimos, Athabascans and Tlingits.
We Tlingits were more pushy, so we got to lead everybody into the stadium for the opening of the games. The first three guys were the Chilkat blanket bearers from the Chilkat Valley. I was honored to be one of the three to lead all the Natives in front of 80,000 people.
It was hot, and we were wearing this regalia that's heavy. Chilkat blankets are real heavy, and I was wearing this big headdress and I couldn't see because I didn't have contact lenses and couldn't wear my glasses. It was great fun to met all those people from all different parts of the world. They gave me a hotel room and $165 dollars a day.
In 1994, I got into a car wreck. It was in the winter during the Alcan 500 snowmachine race between Haines Junction and Haines. I busted my legs and shoulder blades and hurt my back, which got worse, because I went back to work too soon.
I went back to driving truck, and it really messed me up. I should have had therapy, but I didn't. I was a single parent and had to feed my kids and couldn't do that sitting at home. I knew my back was getting messed up because I'd be driving down the road and my eyes would cross. I couldn't tell anyone because then they wouldn't let me work. It wouldn't of hurt so bad if I was driving truck on pavement, but we were building logging roads and I'd get pounded on those roads. Eventually, I did get disability.
UNWELCOME CHANGES
The people have really changed over the years in the valley. Everybody's so privatized now -- no hunting, no fishing, keep out, private property. You used to be able to hunt anywhere. You could walk along the road and carry your rifle. People come up from down south and think this is mine and I don't want you on it. They want to keep it all to themselves. They don't want you going on their property and shooting their rabbit or picking their berries. Everybody used to share.
There's a lot of people that sell their subsistence. I see it going on. I trade for mine. A lot of times I won't get a moose, but I'll have moose in my freezer because I trade for it. People like my dry fish, so I'll trade them for their moose meat. I do it in the Yukon all the time. That's our traditional way. I trade my eulachon oil and black seaweed for moose, caribou and buffalo. That's been our aboriginal right for centuries.
We were supposed to be able to get our dual citizenship because we had traded extensively in the Yukon. Our ancestors went up into the Yukon and spent summers there, years there. My uncle can tell you the name of every creek the whole way up.
Our village is really doing good now because they're starting to get into the tourism business. They built the longhouse and are going to put in the cultural center and museum.
Now that my kids are raised up, I'd like to travel and see parts of the United States that I haven't seen, like the Grand Canyon. At this point in my life, when winter comes, the nights are long and cold, so I'd like to go south where it's warmer.
I'd really like to see this gas pipeline go so the price of things would get cheaper. We could heat our homes with natural gas a lot cheaper, and it's a lot cleaner to burn. They should have done the natural gas way before the oil. I'd like to see the state of Alaska get cheaper to live. It's so darn expensive to live up here.
Ed and Milinda May are owners of Insight Passage Productions. They have produced two audio CDs, "Stories From the Last Frontier" and "Fishing Tales." Their latest audio work is featured in the movie "Baked Alaska," a documentary on the changing environmental landscape of Alaska now out on DVD. Their Web site is www.alaskanlifeportraits.com.
