Regulatory impacts on a Yup'ik fish camp in Southwest Alaska ...

• Main Author: Stariwat, Jory
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2016
• Subjects: Yup'ik; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0313407; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0313407

Yup’ik fishers on the Nushagak River of Southwest Alaska harvest salmon for both subsistence and commercial purposes, however their cultural protocol and formal resource management principles are unrecognized by the State of Alaska. Drawing from two summers of ethnographic research and experience as an Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) anthropologist, I examine one state regulation preventing drift gillnetting for subsistence purposes. The analysis reveals that the Alaska Department of Fish & Game is currently preventing cultural adaptation on the Nushagak River despite Yup’ik communities maintaining sustainable harvest levels for millennia. Changes in river conditions, namely the location of sandbars and channels, in addition to warming water temperatures, necessitate the application of the traditional harvest method, drift gillnetting, to meet the harvest goals of Yup’ik fishers at the Lewis Point fish camp on the Nushagak River. The Alaska Board of Fisheries has maintained that drifting ...