A series of court rulings Tuesday in the southwest Alaska community of Bethel offers a blueprint of how a highly emotional stand against perceived injustice will likely end for two dozen salmon fishermen cited for illegal fishing this summer.
In a trio of back-to-back cases, Alaska State Court Judge Bruce Ward ruled against three Alaska Native fishermen who argued they never meant to break the law. Even though their intent didn’t matter in the end, Ward didn’t believe the men were as naive as they claimed to be. With so many ways to get information — by phone, fax, email and radio, and by looking at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s website — it took “reckless ignorance” to remain naive about the day-to-day rules on the river, Ward ruled.
The three fisherman found guilty of fishing violations received fines ranging from $350 to $500, although the judge cut the larger fines in half in exchange for a year’s probation attached to the sentences. Where before they had faced misdemeanor criminal charges, the state chose to reduce the charges to simple violations, which are more similar to traffic fines and not a part of the criminal system. Doing so also made the men ineligible for jury trials, making a judge the sole decider of guilt or innocence.
Increasingly, the families of Alaska’s western river corridors have dealt with dwindling king salmon runs. Fewer fish in the river means fewer fish to go around, and the mission of the state’s fishery managers is to make sure fish come back year after year. When king salmon runs are so poor, as happened this year across Alaska — with an especially low return on the Kuskokwim River — getting fish to their spawning grounds takes priority over putting fish on the table.
‘Food security panic’
The result are river closures and restrictions that triggered, according to Myron Naneng, president of the Association of Village Council Presidents, a “mass state of food security panic.” Naneng used the phrase in a letter seeking clemency for the fisherman. Alaska Governor Sean Parnell rejected the request and declined to intervene, saying the legal system must run its course.
Naneng was tapping into the emotional, cultural, spiritual and traditional pull Alaska Natives have for generations felt about their rivers and the salmon that swim in them. And he was tapping into the financial reality that the region where law enforcement chose to monitor the fishing ban is one of the poorest in the state, with few jobs and high living costs. Many families still hunt and fish as the primary way to put food on the table.
Judge Ward held the line at holding everyone accountable for following state regulations.
Meanwhile, the fisherman cited on the Kuskokwim River may symbolize a long-running injustice many Alaska Natives and Outside tribal groups feel is long overdue for correction: restoring the aboriginal hunting and fishing rights of Alaska’s first people. In months that followed the summer period during which fish and nets were seized and tickets written, cries for state and federal constitutional amendments restoring restoring those rights grew louder.
However, Naneng explained to the governor that the fishermen weren’t out on the river to make a political statement, but were there due to a “frantic search for food.”
“People in the region were genuinely frightened of facing a winter without sufficient food,” Alaska Federation of Natives president Julie Kitka wrote in her own letter to the governor, seeking clemency for the fishermen.
It was a difficult time, according to Mike Williams, a member of the Akiak Native Community, where some of the fishermen who ran afoul of the law live. A week of closures had already been in place, and villagers along the river system had reluctantly agreed to abide by it. But when a second closure came just as people were ready to wet their nets, it was too much. “Everybody was just kind of desperate to get those fish,” he said.
2012 Alaska Dispatch