OPINION: Alaska’s communities must work together, not tear each other down

This year, the theme of the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention was a celebration of unity. Our survival, as Alaska Natives, as diverse peoples from every corner of the state, depends on it. Unity isn’t about falling in line when you’re told to, or homogeneity, or a single identity or position we all have to get behind. But it’s also not about zero-sum games or cutting other people out because of fear, and it’s certainly not about sacrificing one community’s livelihood for another.

This year, on the AFN convention floor, two resolutions passed that will sacrifice the livelihoods of Aleutian communities in an attempt to support salmon runs in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region. The resolutions passed last week at AFN regarding the Area M fishery were divisive, ill-informed, and harmful. They fail to address the true issues causing the fisheries challenges in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region and were factually inaccurate. State biologists have demonstrated that there have never been 2.5 million chums harvested in Area M, for example, contrary to what the resolution stated. Even the Alaska Department of Fish and Game stated its opposition to closing the Area M fishery. They did so based on data that point to poor marine smolt survival, likely linked to changing oceanic conditions and lack of available food, as the culprit — not the fisheries of Area M.

As Alaska Natives, we deeply empathize with the challenges these communities are facing and understand the urgency with which these issues must be addressed. However, as stated at AFN by Mr. Nathan McGowan, president and chief executive of the village corporation for St. George in the Bering Sea, as the resolutions came to the floor, the effort to eviscerate the Area M fishery in an attempt to restore the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim fishery is “akin to a village being on fire and setting the next village on fire because that’s where the wind is coming from.”

The runs of the past few years, and lack of subsistence fishery because of them, are emblematic of a much bigger, more existential threat than fishermen simply trying to make a living. The issues at the root of the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim crisis will not be solved by depriving other small fishing communities of their livelihoods. Both regions depend on the oceans for their livelihoods, and to feed their families. These issues — ocean acidification, climate change, ecosystem destabilization — are ones that can only be addressed if we work for solutions together, as a united front.

Unity — to be united as Alaska Natives — depends on empathy and understanding. It depends on decisions based in fact, not fear. And it depends on taking the time and effort to find solutions that work for all of us, not just one community or another. We owe it to both the Area M fishery and the communities — many of them Native — that depend on it as well as the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim communities to work to find a good-faith solution. The resolutions passed at AFN calling for the cessation of the Area M fishery are anything but.

Glen Gardner, Jr., is president of Qagan Tayagungin Tribe, George Gundersen is president of Pauloff Harbor Tribe, and John A. Foster, Jr., is president of Unga Tribal Council. Qagan Tayagungin Tribe, Pauloff Harbor Tribe, and Unga Tribal Council are all headquartered in Sand Point.

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