The Ahtna and the Copper River Salmon Fishery

                                                 Part II

           The Ahtna and the State of Alaska – 1960 to 1980

After World War II the population of Alaska increased.  Improved highways made the Copper River accessible to large numbers of people living in Fairbanks and Anchorage putting increased demand on the salmon fishery.  The state constitutional convention had skirted the issue of aboriginal rights leaving it up to the federal government.  The state also assumed management of wildlife resources, including the Copper River salmon fishery.  So when Alaska became a state and began managing wildlife resources the Ahtna had no treaty protecting their aboriginal rights to the fishery and would have to abide by state law and the decisions of state managers.

In 1960 state managers were faced with the problem.  Commercial salmon harvests at the mouth of the Copper River were declining but more people from Fairbanks and Anchorage were driving to the Basin to catch fresh salmon.  Without consulting the Ahtna state managers decided to restrict the upriver fishery.  In addition, the State closed all tributaries of the Copper River and the main channel of the river above the Slana River to subsistence fishing, thus eliminating traditional Ahtna fishing sites on the Tonsina, and Klutina rivers, at Mentasta, and Batzulnetas.

State managers justified these restrictions as a way to allow additional salmon to escape to the spawning grounds and protect fish from being over harvested on the spawning grounds.  Managers also believed this would limit the growth of the upriver fishery, which they thought was fast becoming a recreational fishery, as the number of people who actually depended on salmon for their livelihood dwindled (ADF&G 1966:207).

The Ahtna pointed out that the new regulations restricted their ability to harvest salmon and made it difficult to dry fish in the traditional manner.  They also emphasized their need for the salmon and asked for more input into the regulatory process.  In June of 1964, Ahtna leader Markle F. Ewan Sr. of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) told Ralph Pirtle, the state management biologist, that he did not agree with the regulations that placed seasonal limits on subsistence harvests.  Ewan wrote:

The majority of our Indian people don’t have deep freezers, therefore our main dependable storage food is dried, smoked, salted and canned fish.  Believe it or not - one person can eat as much as two fish a day whether fresh or otherwise.  So please permit us to get as much fish as we need.  As you know, we don’t take or waste any fish or game like so many sport fishermen and hunters do.  We are God abiding citizen people.  I don’t believe the whole Copper River tribe will get as much fish in a whole season in Copper River area as the commercial fishermen would get in one day (M. Ewan 1964).

Ewan invited Pirtle to a meeting of the ANB so that, as Ewan stated, “we can better understand each other and our problems and become better acquainted.”  Although Pirtle accepted the invitation, there is no record of the outcome of the meeting.  The Ahtna did not succeed in eliminating the regulations, and problems in the fishery did not go away.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the Copper River salmon fishery grew as residents of Anchorage and Fairbanks discovered how easy it was to drive to the Copper River and catch fresh fish.  Over the two decades annual upriver subsistence harvests increased over 60% (Simeone and Fall 2003:40).  To control growth in the upriver subsistence fishery state managers, in the summer of 1966, ordered that the fishery open on June 15^th instead of June 1^st.  

The Ahtna rejected the state’s assessment of the problem and the method by which the new restriction was imposed.  Harry Johns, Ahtna leader from Copper Center, and president of ANB Camp No. 31, wrote to ADF&G on May 24, 1966 stating his people’s concern over the late opening and the lack of communication between the department and local people (Johns 1966). Johns wrote:

We the following citizens of the Copper Center and Gulkana area are greatly concerned and upset by the fact that the State Fish and Game Department has seen fit to stop our people from fishing by fish wheel for subsistence fish.

Not only have we been cut down in the numbers of fish we can catch, but over the years the people of this area are not even contacted or asked their opinions.  This leads all of us to believe the state does not care what we think, or how the people of the Copper River Basin are to live if they are not allowed to catch these fish for their livelihood [sic] have in the past.

This is our means of protesting this stopping of our fishing rights, and to notify your office we the native people of this area hope you will change this before it’s too late.

This is also to notify your office that we the citizens of Copper River Area will be putting our fish wheels in on the first of June as we have in the past (Johns 1966).

                                                                                               Alaska Native Brotherhood

In the mid 20^th century a number of Ahtna leaders stood up to resist the state of Alaska as it imposed strict management on the Copper River River salmon fishery.  An important vehicle for leadership was the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) introduced in 1954.  The Ahtna at Copper Center were one of the few Native groups outside of Southeast Alaska to embrace the political activism of the ANB.  The ANB in Copper Center was the forerunner of the Copper River Native Association.

The Ahtna also appealed for statewide support, declaring that they will fish on June 1 “as they have done for centuries” and threatening that “if necessary, each Indian will catch a fish and turn it in to the Department of Fish and Game, demanding to be arrested” (The Anchorage Daily Times 1966:1).  Facing organized protest, the State retreated and opened the subsistence fishery on June 1^st.  In a letter to Harry Johns, Governor Egan wrote that the order for the June 15^th opening had been rescinded “because the good catches of salmon by commercial fishermen on the flats indicated an adequate escapement of spawners up the river.”  The Governor went on to assure Mr. Johns that the “Department will be in closer contact with you in the future” and that the State does care about the welfare of the Indian people (Egan 1966b).

In June 1978, concerns about low salmon escapement in the Copper River led ADF&G to close the subsistence fishery during the week and allow fishing only on weekends.  The Department’s reasoning was that more fish were actually caught during the week (on Tuesdays and Thursdays) than on weekends, and it was better for the fishery if the closure occurred during the week (Roberson et al. 1978).  Four Ahtna elders were arrested for attempting to fish on a weekday and their wheels locked up (Tundra Times July 12, 1978).

The Copper River Native Association, a local non-profit organization, objected to the new closed periods saying that it favored non-Basin residents over Basin residents and made it hard for Native people to dry fish properly.  The Copper River Advisory Committee met on July 5, 1978 in Copper Center to address this issue, and 92 people attended the meeting, including three staff members of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game who said that it was important to limit the number of fish harvested.  They also said that the Alaska State Constitution stipulated that everyone must have equal access and that the BOF viewed subsistence and commercial fishing as the same (ADF&G 1978, minutes of the Copper River Advisory Committee on file, ADF&G, Glennallen).

Those attending the meeting had different views on the weekday closures.  Some thought it was the correct thing to do, while others thought the department had not handled it well.  Others thought fish wheels should be better monitored, and there were allegations of wanton waste.  Walter Charlie, an Ahtna leader living in Glennallen, presented a photograph of 50 salmon in the local garbage dump.  Another Ahtna, Pete Ewan from Copper Center, complained that the commercial fishery took many more fish than the fish wheels and that the closure during the week affected Indians more than non-Natives.  Robert Marshall, president of the Copper River Native Association, speaking for the majority of Ahtna, said that he did not like the way the new closures were implemented, in that Ahtna elders ranging in age from 79 to 94 years had their fish wheels locked up.  He further noted that

Indians need fish to survive, the older people cannot survive without fish through the winter!  Indian people (Older) did not come right out and say but they are actually begging to be able to catch fish (ADF&G 1978, minutes of the Copper River Advisory Committee on file, ADF&G, Glennallen).

An Ahtna representative, Bacille Jackson, presented a paper in which he outlined a history of situation from the Ahtna perspective.  In one life time, Jackson wrote, the Ahtna had gone from owning all of the land and resources to having to ask permission to hunt and fish in their own homeland.  The Ahtna, he said, had always shared their food and their land, but they had not given up their right to hunt and fish for their livelihood.  In fact, he said, they would be stupid to drop the lifeline “of our people throughout history.”

When our fathers and grandfathers met the first white people to come up the Copper River, there was no question in anyone’s mind that they owned all the land and resources in the area.  This included the big game in the hills as well as the fish in the river.

History shows that we were are not greedy with our resources, but shared them first with the Russians, later with the gold miners of 1898, and until this day with the white people who are our neighbors.  Furs, big game, timber, minerals and fish that originally belonged to us have been taken continuously by others with seldom a complaint on our part.

Today we all know times have changed, statehood and the native land claims bill [ANCSA] seem to bear this out that much of the land doesn’t belong to us anymore.  In the few short years since the turn of the century (which many of our old folks can remember) we have come from complete ownership of land and all its riches to what often seems to us at most as trespassers on anothers (sic) land.  Now we are told much of the land belongs to others, we are told when to hunt, where to hunt, where to mine, where to cut timbers, when to fish, where to fish, when to trap, where to trap, and on and on and on.

At no time since our fathers completely owned this land have they or we given up our right to live a subsistence life style.  We have not traded off the right to catch fish for our families from our river.  We are not about to give this right to the State of Alaska or the federal government today or at any future time at any price.

Today we are here to protest what we believe is a great in justice (sic) to our people.  We are being told that the fish of the Copper River no longer belong to us and, that we no longer have the right to take them when and how we want for our own needs. Great emphasis seems to be given to the use of the fish by the commercial fishermen in the Cordova area and by the dip-netters from the Fairbanks and Anchorage areas.  We seem to be the last people whose need and desires are being met.

A history of our people show that when fish runs are good our fathers did well, when fish runs were poor our people starved.  Truly the fish of the Copper River have been the basic necessity for the existence of our people throughout time.

Many of us here today grew up in the 1920s and 1930s when a subsistence life style was necessary.  We still hang on to some of that life style.  Certainly we would not be too intelligent to give up our right to the life line of our people throughout history, on the chance that Alaska and America will never again face depression or wars, and we won’t ever again have to depend on the salmon of the Copper River for our livelihood.  We believe that the State of Alaska doesn’t have the right to lock up our fish-wheels or our people for fishing.  We further believe the state does not have the right to keep our people from subsistence fishing (ADF&G 1978, minutes of the Copper River Advisory Committee on file, ADF&G, Glennallen).

Whether Jackson’s statement had any effect on the advisory committee is unknown, but the board moved that the department open subsistence fishing on the Copper River weekly from Saturday night to Wednesday night inclusive.  Six days later, on July 11, 1978 the Department of Fish and Game modified the original emergency order, and by August 8 the restrictions for all fishers were lifted.

The period of the 1960s and 1970s saw renewed conflict between the State of Alaska and the Ahtna over the fishery.  This conflict was embedded within the larger problem of the place of Alaska Natives within the new State.  In terms of fish and wildlife resources, the State made no provision for aboriginal hunting and fishing rights, guaranteeing equal access to all citizens of the state regardless of ethnic or cultural background.  The State also maintained its right to make unilateral management decisions about those resources.  The Ahtna claimed that because of their long standing relationship to the fishery and their need for salmon, they should be consulted in matters that affected their fishing, their livelihood, and their culture.