EPA to review Pebble Mine (highlights from Mudflats)

Mudflats had an excellent post about the EPA's involvement in Pebble Mine, and the federal government's involvement with Alaska in general.

It's always amazed me how much Alaskans (and especially Alaskan politicians) can rail against the federal government, yet many, MANY times the involvement of the federal government was neccessary to stop the overreaching of the state and state politicians. In any case, Ms. Muckraker says it much better than I:

In towns with no indoor plumbing, fuel at more than $10 a gallon, and communities where schools can be hundreds of miles apart, it’s understandable that Alaskans find it difficult sometimes to “go with the flow” and let those bureaucrats in DC legislate what we do on the tundra from an office in a white marble building thousands of miles away... What would make us frontier-minded, libertarian, get off my lawn Alaskans actually thank a federal agency?

If the relationship between Alaska and the federal government can be described as misunderstood, the relationship between Alaska Native people and the federal government can only be summed up as, "It's complicated."

Where federal intervention in Native issues was the Big Bad Wolf only a few decades ago, federal intervention is coming to the point of being the best option for some Native issues - like subsistence.

As Muckraker says, we can only wait on what happens with the science, but here's hoping...

Time for another talk on subsistence

From Alaska Indigenous:

Early this morning I picked up a piece of news from the Anchorage Daily Newspaper that Sen. Al Kookesh will fight a fishing citation issued by an Alaska State Trooper wildlife officer, on Admiralty Island, Alaska...

Kookesh stated the citation and fine is beside the point of the issue. If Sen. Kookesh follows through with the fight against the citation, then a possible court case might result in a contemporary judicial interpretation or opinion regarding the “rural preference” for subsistence law in the state of Alaska.

From the Anchorage Daily News article:

Megan Peters, a troopers spokeswoman, told the Juneau Empire the party was in possession of 148 sockeye salmon taken with a beach seine net. Each man had a valid subsistence permit allowing them to collectively take a total of 75 sockeye, she said...

Kookesh has a different take. Nine people were at the fishing site, he said. Only four were cited. A 10th person with a permit for an additional 100 fish was delayed.

The net belonged to him, Kookesh said, but it takes seven or eight people to work it. Thirty-eight fish went to the Angoon senior center, he said, and the rest went to 12 different families.

"Every time it goes out it feeds 10 to 15 families," Kookesh said of his net.

I wish the article had a little bit more detail on what is meant between the state and federal management difference. It is an incredibly complicated issue that got reduced to a paragraph or two - though really this needs to be played out in a statewide discussion. A REAL discussion, not the sort of commercial, flier blitz that tends to happen with big issues like this.

Ironic that the fish was going to the same place whether it was the people getting it in the first place, or the fish cops bringing it to them - the Angoon Senior Center. I know of many subsistence nets like this, and fished on them myself this summer, and most of the fish went to elders first, and then various families.

The most frustrating part of all of it is the lopsided management that prevents fish getting to many, many elders and families, for the sake of...? what? Too many trials and studies in which subsistence rights were given up or taken away because that "must be" a big reason fisheries or environmental problems were happening find that is probably not the case. When subsistence was gone, the fisheries or environmental problems got worse or stayed the same. The beluga whale problem right here in Southcentral is a good example of that.

On the new fishery panel

From the Dutch Harbor Fisherman: New fishery panel aims to hear rural voices

From the article:

The seven-member committee will meet with Native and tribal leaders, including in rural areas of the state that have traditionally had little involvement in federally managed fisheries, said Duncan Fields. The group is planning an initial meeting in Anchorage this summer, though no date had been set last week.

"The committee isn’t so much about advocacy for rural Alaska as it is for outreach to rural Alaska,” he said.

URGENT REQUEST - Update

This is a special request from Dennis Zaki of the Alaska Report. The coverage is neccessary, and Dennis is one of the few - usually the ONLY - person reporting it. Not only is he getting the story, what I've seen of his work is more accurate and at the heart of the situation than anything else. Dennis' coverage has ended up on major news outlets, including CNN, and his work has gone a long way to getting this story out to people who don't have any other way of finding out about it.

Take a moment to look at the information, including this article from the Tundra Drums, and please, if you can, support his work!

Dear readers,

It is a matter of great urgency that I be in Emmonak ASAP. The Federal Subsistence Board has called a meeting with the Emmonak tribal leaders and residents to discuss the Yukon's king salmon subsistence and commercial fishing crisis. At the State meeting last January, I was not allowed to film. Residents later told me the State did not want that meeting on film.

The people of Emmonak have been prohibited from commercially fishing for early run King Salmon. Alaska, the feds, and the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council have chosen the marginal benefit of a few commercial pollock fishermen from Seattle over the livelihood of the villagers of Emmonak, and others of Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The fact is indisputable that the salmon bycatch of Seattle's pollock fishermen is the direct cause of the steep and devastating decline of king salmon in the waters of Western Alaska. However, few, if any, of our state's government officials have the courage to bring up this topic on the record, presumably due to the fact that they would be championing the "hapless" Natives (not a new concept in our history) over the strong, wealthy, lobbyist-backed (non-Alaskan) pollock industry.

What this intolerable situation needs is to be brought to the attention of the American people, even as it is being swept under Alaska's political rug. A few months ago, when the heating fuel/food crisis in Emmonak first surfaced, I flew there with my camera and interviewed the victims of the crisis. My filming gave their plight national exposure on CNN and other national outlets. I want to follow up the story and do it again.

We cannot let this problem just fade away as if our fellow Alaskans mean nothing. This is not just the problem of the villagers of Emmonak. As Alaskans, this is our problem just as much as it is theirs. (See: Lack of King salmon in the Deshka River, Ship Creek, Bird Creek, Kenai River, etc., etc.) Help me get to Emmonak to do something about it. The trip will cost $1080. That is $720 airfair and 4 nights in the Emmonak hotel.

Dennis Zaki

AlaskaReport.com
http://www.alaskareport.com/

UPDATE: You did it! Dennis got all the donations he needed for the trip!

WAR is over, I can now enjoy my weekend

Palin enjoyed a triple smack-down Thursday, and I must say two of those was something of a relief.

One, in particular, was a great relief, and that of course, was the vote by the Alaska legislature to reject the confirmation of the Palin AG appointmee Wayne Anthony Ross. Anti-subsistence, anti-Native sovereignty, anti-gay Ross was shot down in a 35-23 vote. All democrats and many republicans voted against Ross, and many cited his strange statement recently that lawmakers shouldn't be worrying about "legal or illegal" when confirming Palin's senatorial appointment and just do it as a reason for their final vote.

Palin's reaction was fairly predictable about disappointment, and lawmakers doing it for "petty" reasons - like not wanting a guy who thinks gay people are degenerates and aligns with the governor no matter what being petty, I suppose. But she also called the nay voters hypocrites.

She cites the hypocrisy based off the of positive citation the legislature voted to give Ross on his 65th birthday, then voting him down now, as the hypocrisy.

Uh... two things here guv.

First - annointing someone as attorney general of the state and essentially giving him a birthday card are two pretty different things. I would HOPE there would be much more scrutination here.

Second - that's VERY pot calling the kettle black. Palin publicly praised Walt Monegan for his service and efforts just a few months before firing him.

The other two events also involve rejection of Palin appointees. The first is Palin's second (and fourth?) "appointment" to the open senate seat, Joe Nelson. He withdrew his name for the job, and was not too happy about it in his letter.

The final was the rejection of Palin's board of fisheries appointment Brent Johnson. I was gratified to see that it was not only the imbalance of the commercial fishing to sport fishing board members that made the legislators vote it down, but they also cited the lack of Alaska Native representation.

This lack has been an issue since Palin began, and I'm glad to see the legislative body recognizing it, and doing something about it.

Another Palin appointment criticism

Palin is drawing criticism for yet another appointment. Her appointment of Brent Johnson to the state Board of Fisheries goes against the norm of what governors have been doing since Hickel:

From the Juneau Empire article:

John Blair of Sitka... said Johnson's appointment raises two important concerns: It would leave Interior Alaska without representation, and it does not correct the current lack of Alaska Native representation on the board.

The "Alaska Native representation" part has been a concern for quite a while.