April 8, 2024 — It’s been three years since a crash in king salmon populations forced an outright ban on fishing for them in the Yukon River. And barring an unexpected recovery, residents along the river won’t be allowed to fish for them again for at least seven more years, under a new international management scheme recently signed by Alaska and Canadian managers.
Earlier this spring, Maurice McGinty, a tribal leader from the village of Nulato, pulled out his last Mason jar of smoked Yukon king.
“We have no more now,” said McGinty, 80. He added: “They are pushing us, and our traditional way of life, into a hole.”
Imagine hearing and reading versions of McGinty’s story dozens of times, told by Indigenous people who live along the Yukon and another iconic subsistence river in Southwest Alaska, the Kuskokwim.