Salmon Life

Among the largest rivers in Alaska, the Copper sustains healthy runs of sockeye, chinook and coho salmon. The reds are famed for their bright red meat and high oil content. I’ve seen Copper River salmon on the menu in cafés in Washington D.C.

The fish are pulled from the mouth of the river by commercial fishermen, by dip-netters in the canyon upriver in Chitina, from the holding tanks of fish wheels along the middle to upper river, and by sports fishermen at tributaries that feed into the great river.

Of these groups, the Ahtna Athabaskans have been here the longest. That’s what Tursy is doing here and this morning she is telling me about her specialty: smoked salmon oil. “It was made two years ago,” she tells me, “from salmon heads. The longer it sits, the better it tastes,” she explains. “This is my gold!” Together we dip dried salmon into the bronze richness and savor the feeling of a connection to the salmon, of nothing wasted, of a land that provides.

A mother of four and a grandmother, Tursy lives alone not far from the river that characterizes her summer. When she tells me that no one helps her put up all this salmon every season, at first I have to wonder, but as I spend more time with her, I begin to notice that she doesn’t stop moving. Of course she is doing this all herself, her energy knows no limits.

Tursy prepares a specialty she learned from her grandmother. “She loved dried salmon skin! She kept it under padlock and key. Everyone knew what was in there and that’s why. My grandma used to take that out at midnight with pickles and pilot bread and we’d have it with smoked salmon too. Old traditional. That was like treats to us. I can’t imagine living without it!” She holds a salmon skin over the flames. “You can burn the skin till it’s crisp and it’s just like popcorn, crunchy! Add a little salt, oh yum! The elders love it.”

The cottonwood smoke starts stinging my eyes as I photograph, and I head back out into the light to sample the dried skin by the cutting table. The sun brightens the landscape eighty percent of the day this time of year. If the holding tank on your fish wheel is full after dinner, you still have until around midnight under a lit sky to do something about it.

The previous evening, after a relatively short four-hour drive from Alaska’s metropolis to get to town, I connected with local, Eric Stevens, down near the river at a baseball field. We bounced along the root-filled back road until we got to his fish wheel, the last one in this particular cluster. “This is the best spot on the river,” he tells me. “I like to hang out at here, especially during sunset, and watch the fish wheel catch salmon.”

The water is high during my visit, so the catching has slowed at Eric’s spot. As the sun hits the eroding bank on the far side of the river, we watch giant trees float just beyond the fish wheel. The river’s flow keeps them out in the main channel where they can’t jam the wheel’s perpetual movement. That is why it’s the best spot on the river.

I ask Eric what he does with all his salmon. “I help out the other people in the village with fish, making deliveries to elders and family.” Another friend had introduced me to Eric. “He’s a really good guy,” the friend had said. I can see why now. “I love the feeling of cutting up fish to provide the community,” Eric tells me.

In the morning, I’m at Paul White’s house. Paul was born and raised in Glennallen but lives in Copper Center now. He’s more than willing to share his salmon sequestering processes with me as he’s in the middle of a multi-day canning operation and welcomes the break. “We kippered 40 reds and 4 kings this year. We can about 120 jars a year or so between Tim and I. It’s a 10-day process from catching to cleaning to smoking to canning.”

Tim Sundlov is a local friend of Paul’s. They share a smokehouse and fish wheel, as well as the labor surrounding the salmon life. Tim is a fish biologist based here in town. He loves the life cycle of salmon and all the ways that Alaskans catch them. “Harvesting gets you outside and connects you to the land and seasons. This lifestyle has kept me in Alaska. You just can’t do this in the lower-48.”

I couldn’t agree more. Paul feels the same way. Like many other Alaskans, he looks forward to what every season provides. “I love how salmon season feels like the beginning of the harvesting cycle. First the fish, then you go into berry harvest, moose, firewood, and on and on, year after year.”

Faye Ewan, an elder of Kluti Kaah village (the native name for Copper Center), has strong feelings about her rights here. “Our people are the ‘fish tail people.’ We go way back. We never had a limit for fish when we were younger. When we had extra we could give it away. Now we only have 500 fish per family of two. It doesn’t go that far. We exercise our sovereignty on our land, as a people. Part of our right is to fish here. It’s how we survive and it’s been a sustainable way of life.”

Her sixty-plus years have been spent living along this river. “When you’re a small baby, big enough to walk, you could start to clean and wash the fish. All the women would work. In the springtime, my dad and uncle would set up the fish wheel but the women ran the fish wheel while the men would work construction or whatever kind of job they could get to provide for the winter.”

“Fishing is a part of our circle. It’s part of our food chain, it’s part of our family time, it’s part of what we make in our traditional potlatches and dinners, our ceremonies, everything is related to salmon—it’s what we eat to sustain us and bring us up. We can’t sustain on white man food. We get so hungry for our food. Our leaders fought for what we have today. Fishing is our right, not a privilege.”