The day after the season’s first drift gillnet fishing opener, salmon remained top of mind for fishers of the Kuskokwim River. At Riverview Park in Bethel, community members gathered and filled plates with dried whitefish and fresh-caught fillets of grilled king salmon.
The second annual Return of the Salmon event was put on by Mother Kuskokwim Tribal Coalition, a grassroots organization opposing the proposed Donlin Gold mine.
Supporters of the mine point to the job prospects it would bring to locals in the region. Calista Corporation, the regional Native corporation that owns the subsurface rights to the proposed mine site, says that responsible development and subsistence can coexist.
Others, like the Mother Kuskokwim organization, say it’s too risky. They argue that potential contamination from the mine could pose dire environmental impacts, namely for the region’s salmon populations.
The celebration was, at its core, an anti-Donlin Gold mine demonstration. But it had the feel of a fish camp cookout. Organizer Gloria Simeon said that it's a display of how on the Kuskokwim River, salmon is a mechanism for something bigger.
“Fish camp is not an activity,” Simeon explained. “Fish camp is the time, the single most important time of families coming together with one purpose, and that's to get prepared for the winter, catch our salmon, take care of it, to have it for the winter. And it's not just only about that, it's about sharing your genealogy, your oral traditions, our cultural values, who we are as a people, our history.”
Simeon said that in this way, the proposed Donlin Gold mine is a threat to more than just a vital ecosystem and subsistence harvest. It’s a threat to a way of life.
“We can't be having our existence threatened by outside forces that don't know how to properly manage our resources, and these are sustainable resources,” Simeon said. “Places managed properly, they can sustain us forever.”
Simeon explained how the Kuskokwim River has sustained her family and people like her granddaughter, Ashlynn Simeon, who is the deputy director of the Mother Kuskokwim organization.
“Our salmon are home now, and we're able to share, and they're able to give themselves to us, and we're able to give parts of ourselves back to the salmon,” Ashlynn said.
Ashlynn said that the moments on display in a community event like this — children playing, babies having their first bites of the season of fresh salmon — that’s what the Mother Kuskokwim advocates are trying to protect.
Local musician Mike McIntyre performed. Mother Kuskokwim concluded by raffling off fishing gear, including nets and an electric salmon stripper, to attendees.
