Frontier is where the mouth of civilization eats wilderness.

THE NEWCOMERS -

The coming of the Russians to Alaska brought drastic changes to all the subsistence cultures they encountered---mostly along the Aleutian Chain. Natives were brutally decimated, exploited and enslaved. The Promyschenniki were the lowest of Czarist Russian society---ignorant, murderous and brutish. They weren’t especially good sailors or proficient fighters either---but they had muskets.

The Russians, however, were interested mainly in sea otter pelts. They did not penetrate the interior of Alaska---the great game herds were generally unaffected by their presence. Nor did the Russians extensively exploit the far North, leaving those Native peoples more or less free to continue living their traditional subsistence way of life.

The Anglo-American newcomers to Alaska were hardly as brutal as the Russians but they wrought more far-reaching and profound changes over the entire area of what was once “subsistence country.”

It can be said, without contradiction, that the many and varied, true subsistence lifestyles of Alaska Natives, began an inexorable decline from the moment the first Americans set foot in Alaska in any numbers.

The Americans imposed their lifestyle and money economy upon Alaska Natives without much thought or consideration for what was being lost. Furthermore, with their firearms, commercial fish traps, fish wheels and fishing fleets---and later on with their aircraft and personal motorized vehicle technology---the Americans deluded themselves into believing they were superior hunters, fishers and trappers who actually knew more about managing wildlife and wildlands than the Natives.

REVERENCE FOR THE LAND -

To the Americans, Nature existed to be exploited. The newcomers overtly sought to destroy the reverence for the land and animals that had sustained Natives in Alaska for at least the past ten-thousand years. This denial of Native values fit perfectly with the newcomers’ tendency to extract resources from the land until they ran out. This clash of attitudes continues to the present day as the newcomers seek to extract the very last riches of the lost frontier.

A TON OF “SUBSISTENCE HERITAGE“ -

The subsistence reality of the American newcomers was illustrated by the Canadian government, which took a sober view of all those greenhorns of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897---poised for trouble in a land they did not understand. Canada acted preemptively to avert a mass rescue situation by requiring miners to bring their own food. This was merely a recognition by the Northwest Mounted Police that the gold-seeking Tribe was ill-prepared to live off the land and that the Canadians lacked the resources and manpower to deal with a mass calamity.

Today’s Dawson City tourist guide lists some of the compulsory provisions which had to be hauled over the Chilkoot Pass: 200 pounds bacon, 800 pounds flour, 200 pounds corn meal, 75 pounds sugar, 150 pounds dried fruits, coffee and a case of condensed milk. This was supposed to be a year’s supply per person. Of course it was assumed the miners would also obtain wild meat and fish if they were able to do so and if it was available---but the Canadian requirement was recognition of the reality that the newcomers were ill-prepared to survive by living off the land.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE---THE IRONY OF RUGGED INDIVIDUAL “SUBSISTENCE” -

At one time, before the 1980s, a number of non-Natives lived sort of a subsistence lifestyle along the upper Yukon River. Dan O’Neil, author of “A Land Gone Lonesome,” described in a lecture replayed on TV Ch 7.3 (360 North) the fate of many of the characters described by John McPhee in his book “Coming Into The Country” and in articles McPhee did for New Yorker magazine.

O’Neil described how National Park oversight apparently viewed subsistence-living in the Yukon Charley area---trapping, fishing, hunting, etc.---as somewhat of a nuisance. The Klondike gold miners of 1897 apparently enjoyed more government support, guidance and protection than did these modern, would-be subsistence users in the Upper Yukon.

They were a true back-to-the-land movement these eccentric and self-reliant homesteaders and settlers of Yukon Charley. But the greatest impediment to their modern subsistence lifestyle was the terrible difficulty of lone individuals or very small groups of people trying to wrest a living mainly from the land. By the time some of the couples had school-age children, the necessity to leave the river was a foregone conclusion. There are, apparently, few or none left today.

O’Neil pointed out that Natives were living successfully in the same area---but not in the same manner. While the “American” subsistence users lived alone or in very small groups along the river---the Natives lived more or less as they had traditionally done, in villages.

The notion of the rugged individual and the small family group surviving alone in the wild was doomed from the start. That’s why, in the past, banishment from Native villages was such a terrible punishment---it was, and is now even more so, nearly impossible for a single individual or small groups to survive in the wild long enough to call it meaningful “subsistence.”

I know, the Alaska State Constitution sort of implies that we are all “subsistence users.” But that is merely an honorary designation---a lifestyle such as this cannot be conferred by government mandate or legislation. It would be as if the Texas State Legislature had designated all Texans as “working cowboys.”

THE “URBAN SUBSISTENCE” TRADITION -

We all live off the land---everything comes from the land. Except that most of us live on the industrial grid---a system of industrial agriculture, industrial production and fossil-fueled transport systems to distribute the food and goods. There is little direct connection to the land. We depend on mostly distant lands. There is no subsistence. Read part one of this series if there is any doubt in your mind.

A lady from Wasilla recently wrote a letter to the Anchorage Daily News saying that her family has a “subsistence tradition,” “culture” and “heritage” of hunting moose, catching fish and gathering berries to fill their freezer. Just like the Natives, she claimed.

What she described is quite an achievement---requiring lots of hard work and good hunting and fishing skills. [I’m assuming this lady’s family butchers their own meat rather than hauling the moose carcasses down to the local meat processing plant.]

However, what she describes cannot be subsistence. It is urban, motorized, intensive, recreational sports hunting with an Alaska-sized payoff of great wads of meat and berries. I know a number of families who accomplish this same feat and they work really hard at it. And these days it isn’t so easy to shoot a moose anymore because there aren’t that many left. Fish numbers are declining here in the Mat-Su as well.

But you will pardon me for pointing out the obvious: that in order to purchase all the necessary motor vehicles and equipment, including the freezer to store the meat and berries and the electricity to run it, this family---while claiming to belong to a “subsistence culture”--- actually depends on “job subsistence.”

There is not much actual subsistence left in the Alaska Bush---but there is absolutely none along the road network. It just requires too much money to live in the money economy. Besides, there isn’t enough fish and game to “subsist” in any meaningful manner in heavily “harvested“ areas under any circumstances---including many areas of Bush Alaska.

We live in a cash economy and I don’t know anyone who can pay the bills by hunting moose, catching fish and gathering berries. The word “subsistence” is misused in the above-mentioned letter to the editor. The “tradition” and “heritage” referred to is an urban “culture“ of motorized, intensive, industrial-strength killing of wildlife using expensive modern tools and technology in one‘s spare time.

I can understand this Wasilla lady’s resentment that Natives have a subsistence “tradition” when they now also use modern tools and technology. I can understand why she wants to have a “culture” of her own. However, simply eating some wild foods does not a subsistence lifestyle, culture, heritage or tradition make---Natives are not called “the first people” for nothing.

COPPER RIVER SUBSISTENCE?

There is no way that modern Alaskans can take a few weeks off from their jobs to go hunting and still call it “subsistence.” Nor does a long weekend drive to Copper River to dip net salmon qualify.

I have no problem allowing dip netters a more generous share of Copper River red salmon over the interests of commercial fishing. What I don’t like is an “arm of the Alaska Outdoor Council” filing suit to “reclassify Chitina dip netting as subsistence use rather than personal use” (“Fish Board ordered to revisit dip netting personal-use issue - Subsistence fishing in Copper River at question” - Anchorage Daily News, 1-9-10.)

“Personal use” is an adequate description to differentiate this fishery from commercial use---to call it “subsistence” would be inaccurate and pretentious. It is just another example of using the word “subsistence” in order to grab more of the resource in the name of a lifestyle which simply does not exist along the road networks.

THE SPIRIT OF SUBSISTENCE -

Let’s review the recent actions of the Alaska Outdoor Council and it’s recreational, commercial, political, in-state and out-of-state allies regarding “subsistence“---and their shameful unwillingness to admit the reality that “rural preference“ (for game in times of shortages) obviously takes precedence over the recreational and sporting needs of relatively wealthy urban economies and wealthy outside sporting types.

The nasty “debate” over the imperfect but sensible subsistence compromise of “rural preference” brought out many claims that road network Alaskans---who live a Lower 48 lifestyle and "subsist" mainly on industrial agriculture---have an "inalienable right" to claim the mantle of "subsistence" hunter-gatherer on weekends.

Even a well-to-do car dealer-politician, Ralph Seekins, actually had the gall to claim a subsistence "heritage" because his father once shot moose (Anchorage Daily News, Forum, 10-9-97). But Seekins’ "aircraft and car culture" had already virtually destroyed subsistence along the Alaska road network and caused great damage to that lifestyle in even the most remote areas of the state.

At their worst, those urban-style Alaskans, lobbying for oxymoronic “urban subsistence,” descended to stroking deep-seated racial fears. Rural preference will cause "an elitist caste system dividing Alaskans against themselves," they said.

But the movement for rural preference didn't cause racial divisions, religious bigotry or excite the infinite covetousness of the urban tribe---it merely flushed these prejudices back out into the open. 

In true subsistence cultures, meat and gathered food is shared, often anonymously, with those who have need. However, the Alaska Outdoor Council and their commercial, in-state and outside allies united to mightily resist any hint of a “need” basis to determine anyone’s eligibility for any “subsistence” qualification for any so-called “subsistence hunt.” They disparagingly called it “welfare.” But then they turned right around and scraped the bottom of the pity barrel to unleash a barrage of slogans to justify predator control to squeeze a few more moose out of the land for themselves with such subsistence-sounding variants as “depend on” (as in, we “depend on” wild meat), “traditional use” (we have always been doing this) and the sentimental standby, “feeding my family.”

The Alaska Outdoor Council and it’s allies fought tooth and nail to deny anyone who actually needs wild meat. These recreational sporting types expended and applied the full weight of their emotional, commercial, economic and political power against giving special subsistence consideration to anyone else who might more clearly require the extra food---while at the same time invoking the sacred spirit of selfless subsistence in order to qualify themselves as thoroughly “equal.” Those who didn’t really “need” the meat to survive, in the name of “equal access,” sought to justify their own motorized taking of too much wildlife by making themselves “equal“ to those few people living in the Bush who definitely do “need“ the meat.

As a result of this highly-organized, well-funded, urban political pressure, wildlife in Alaska is now managed in the unofficial name of “subsistence” and “need” and “depend on.” But the actual spirit of subsistence sharing is deader than a roadside moose on opening day. The mindless application of emotional slogans has become the politically-imposed operating credo of Alaska Division of Fish & Game---not “science.” That’s why Alaskans are squabbling about calling a personal use dip net fishery a “subsistence” fishery when it hasn’t got a darned thing to do with real subsistence. That’s why we are losing our fish and wildlife---because too many takers of Alaska‘s wildlife and fish are pretending, against all evidence, to be true-blue “subsistence users“ when clearly they are not.

THE REAL TRADITION -

There is only one culture with a true subsistence tradition---Native. The indigenous peoples. The people that were here living a subsistence lifestyle when the Americans arrived. There is no doubt, no question, no legitimate disputation of that fact. And there is no way---except by artificial means of legislation and the exaggeration of history---that anyone can confer a true “subsistence” tradition” or “culture” upon the new arrivals with their industrial-based lifestyle. Subsistence is a lifestyle that must be earned by living it.

Perhaps this impossibility to ever legitimately claim a true subsistence tradition accounts for some of the unfortunate antagonism against Natives by the urban-style hunting establishment, such as the crude behavior and pre-rigged electioneering at the recent Anchorage Game Advisory elections.

There is, of course, a history of racism in Alaska---and it still exists right beneath the surface. It is sometimes difficult to sort out whether urban, road network hunters are simply envious of Native subsistence traditions, just plain racist or both. Not for me to say---those things are lodged in the Human heart and the Human mind.

So why don’t real “true” subsistence users go back to ivory and bone-tipped spears and kayaks? Because the cartridge rifle, aircraft and the personal motorized vehicle give a greater advantage---especially when nearby wildlife has already been completely wiped out and greater distances needed to be covered to get at the survivors. Natives can’t go back to the “old ways” because they must now compete with hunters using rifles, aircraft, snow machines and a variety of motorized vehicles. And again, I must point out that fish and wildlife numbers have been diminished across Alaska---while populations of Humans have greatly increased.

But when it comes to “tradition” there is one undisputed candidate---the “first people.” Their tradition goes back ten-thousand years in Alaska and even further back in an unbroken, undeniable sequence. Now that is a “tradition!“ The modern motorized “tradition” barely goes back ten decades. And it is hardly a “subsistence tradition.”

HOW TO HONOR AN ANCIENT TRADITION UNDER THE MODERN TYRANNY OF ABSOLUTE EQUALITY -

How do we, as a multicultural society, grant everyone “equal rights”---while at the same time graciously recognizing and preserving unique cultural traditions?

For me, it’s simple enough---let the Native people have their subsistence tradition.

However, recognizing a subsistence tradition in principle is one thing---working it out in the regulations is another. Except for such things as potlatch moose, I don’t believe that we can have Native hunters being given any special subsistence rights in most areas where the urbanized-Alaskans also hunt, fish and trap. The reason is that my Tribe will use “equality” to deny those rights---and they will get downright belligerent about it. They will either deny the subsistence rights of others---or falsely claim subsistence rights for themselves.

In other words, I just don’t think it is realistic to expect Natives to be given special subsistence rights in any shoulder-to-shoulder hunting area or fishery with members of my own Tribe. Natives living in urban, road network settings are also bound by the constraints of the money economy---but it is more than just a matter of economic reality, cultural antagonism or Constitutional absolutism. It is a contradiction in terms to allow an “equal access” hunt or fishery in the name of “subsistence.” Simply because the recreational users will take advantage of the “equal access” designation to overwhelm the subsistence users---just as they have been “traditionally” doing all along. This is why subsistence is pretty much nonexistent in Alaska today.

Subsistence is a lifestyle that is fragile and unique. And, in some ways, our modern wildlands philosophy of “multiple-use” is more a form of “multiple-abuse“ of both wildlife and wildlands.

Therefore, two things must happen. First, the meaning of the term “subsistence” must be legally, realistically and uniformly determined. We cannot simply call everyone a “subsistence user”---mainly because most of us are not. I believe that the reason the State has not adequately defined this crucial word is precisely so that politically-organized, non-subsistence users can continue to claim that rare and exalted status simply in order to continue extracting wildlife at their whim and justify it to a public enchanted by the romance of “living off the land.”

Second---I realize that we already have Native lands for their subsistence use. However, if we are to designate any further hunts and fisheries as “subsistence,“ these lands and waters must be set aside for the exclusive use of true subsistence users. And, of course, there must be some means of designating just who these “subsistence users” might be. My suggestion is that true “need” and manner of living must be invoked, otherwise the term “subsistence” slips right back into true meaninglessness. And, yes, that would have to include income. Subsistence is an exclusive club because of the reality of one‘s lifestyle and true need---not because of the desire to kill wildlife for sport or supplemental meat.

To be perfectly clear: if it ain’t subsistence then don’t call it subsistence. Right now, the way the State of Alaska keeps using or implying the term subsistence is simply a political, public relations expedient to give up our wildlife to non-subsistence users---and to make urban-type users feel like rural users.

Giving subsistence a definite, clear and legal meaning will be a challenge to the Alaska State Legislature and the Governor. We cannot have the situation we did under Governor Palin when she carelessly used the term “living off the land” to describe an Outdoor Council member she had appointed to the Game Board. All these terms are meaningless unless we actually, legally, tell the public exactly what they mean. And if this means to no longer using these suggestive but empty terms at all, then so be it.

SCIENCE AND SUBSISTENCE -

Alaska Fish & Game and Alaska State politicians and the Governor are supposed to be, claim to be, managing our commonly-owned wildlife with “science”---not “emotion.”

How in blazes can Fish & Game, the State Legislature and the Governor possibly claim to be managing wildlife based on “science” when they can’t even come up with a decent, meaningful, workable definition of the fundamental premise of all this predator-killing---namely “subsistence” and it’s many variants.

If Fish & Game, the State Legislature and the Governor can’t tell us what “subsistence” means in their system of management---then their claim of “science-based management” is illogical on the face of it.

I realize that many Alaskans can’t seem to grasp the concept of science---especially when scientific findings conclude that what they are doing is harmful to the environment.

What we have in Alaska is a wildlife and wildlands management system based on two falsehoods right from the start: “subsistence” and “science.” If you can’t give the people one simple, clear, legal definition of what subsistence and its variants mean then you can’t claim to be “scientific” either. Fish & Game is loaded with people who have been trained as scientists but are now being used mainly as “Yes-Men” for a politicized system based on the narrow, recreational and commercial exploitation of wildlife allegedly owned by all the people in common.

Unlike politics and business, the meaning and implementation of science is always the same---and it is based on clear, simple, uniform definitions for basic terminology. The true beauty and value of science lies in the fact that it constantly strives to be precise, uniform and factual. All it takes to lose the scientific process (and the scientific label) is to apply loose, variable, politically-expedient meanings to basic terms and principles. You cannot simply slap the label of “science” on a politically-based wildlife management system and expect it to actually become “scientific.“

For a guide to the real meaning of the term subsistence, I suggest that Alaska Fish & Game, the State Legislature and the Governor read part one of this series and the pertinent sections above.

For anyone who still thinks they are actually “living off the land” in a true, “subsistence lifestyle“---or thinks they have some kind of a “subsistence heritage” or “tradition“---go back and read part one of this series.

- Rudy Wittshirk

[Next: part three - How Did All Those Great Moose And Caribou Herds “Manage” To Get Gone? A discussion of the Oil Pipeline Culture and the vast “Hunting-Equipment Cult” it fostered and bankrolled.]