Katie John and Tony Knowles at Batzulnetas: a fish escaped, the ice cream was hard and a Governor listened
Sunday, June 16, 2013 at 10:14AM ;)
This is the place where Katie John made her stand - a stone's throw upstream from where Tanada Creek flows into the headwaters of the Copper River. This is what Katie fought for - her natural born right to fish for salmon to feed her family just as her ancestors had done and in the same place they had fished. This is her family fishwheel, endlessly churning in the current. Every now and then, a salmon will swim right into one of the baskets, get scooped up, drop into a chute and slide down to splash into the wooden box. From there, it will be harvested and will become dinner, perhaps immediately, cooked over a fire. It might be taken home to Mentasta, to be be cooked in the oven or on the stove. It might get smoked, bottled or frozen to be eaten in the winter when fresh salmon cannot be obtained.
Katie and her immediate family might eat the salmon themselves, or they might distribute it to others in the village, perhaps elsewhere in the Copper River valley or beyond. Or, a salmon might drop into that box, be plucked out by a governor, slip out of his hands, escape back into the river and continue on upstream to spawn, die and perhaps be eaten by a bear.
The man sitting next to Katie as she points out this feature and that feature and recalls what it was like to fish here as young girl with her "daddy" is Tony Knowles, governor of Alaska. He has a decision to make - one that will decide whether the right of Katie and her family to fish here as they traditionally have will be recognized, honored and protected, or infringed upon and fought against.
The date is July 15, 2001.
;)
“Law, law, law! They tell us, ‘Don’t do this! Don’t do that!’ They make us scared. Sometimes we’re starving, we want meat, but we can’t, we’re scared.”
May 5, 2000: Katie John with grandaughter Virginia John and baby Saphire David, 14 months before her summit with Governor Knowles at Batzulneta. She had just marched through downtown Anchorage with an estimated 2500 to 3000 Native and non-Native supporters who had gathered from across the state to "Stand Our Ground" for subsistence and for the rights of tribal self-government.
By the measure of history, only a short time had passed since Ahtna hunting and fishing had been governed solely by Ahtna law. In 1867, the US made a deal with Russia to purchase an Alaska owned and occupied by the Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut peoples and then assumed the authority to regulate and manage fish and game. Due to the distance of Alaska from the contiguous states, the remoteness and inaccessibility of the Upper Copper River, this had little practical effect upon Katie's people until World War II, when the ALCAN highway was built into interior Alaska.
Even then, by its own law, the federal government was required to protect aboriginal hunting and fishing in Alaska. In 1959, Alaska became a state and was handed responsibility for fish and wildlife management. Lacking any good evidence as to the need to do so, the State closed the Batzulnetas subsistence fishery in 1964. Federal law still required the protection of aboriginal fishing, but the State ignored the law and the feds did nothing to enforce it.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) passed in 1971 and extinguished Native hunting and fishing rights, at least under US law, but did include a clause that Congress must later take action to ensure the protection of Native subsistence rights. Congress addressed this issue in 1980 under Title VIII of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). In a compromise with State interests, Title VIII did not specifically protect Native subsistence, but established a subsistence preference for all rural residents with a history of customary and traditional use of fish and wildlife.
This applied only to the 60 percent of Alaska held under federal title, but the State could continue to manage fish and game statewide as long as it respected the subsistence priority. Alaska then passed its own subsistence priority which mandated that in times of shortage, subsistence use be given the first preference, sport second and commercial last.
In 1984, Katie John and Doris Charles petitioned the state to reopen the Batzulnetas subsistence salmon fishery. The state refused – even as it ignored the priority and allowed hundreds of thousands of Copper River salmon to be harvested by sport and commercial users downstream. Although Batzulnetas was on federal land within Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, the State claimed jurisdiction over all navigable waters in Alaska and the federal government agreed. Katie John did not.
In 1985, the Native American Rights Fund took her case and she sued. Katie John contended the federal government had jurisdiction over navigable waters. Her challenge was upheld all the way through the appellate courts to the US Supreme Court, which declined to hear it and so upheld it.
Now, one of two things had to happen. Either the State had to manage the Copper River fishery under subsistence preference or the feds had to take management away from the state. To complicate matters, the Alaska Outdoor Council, a powerful sportsmen's advocacy group, had challenged the State subsistence preference in State court in McDowell vs. State. McDowell contended the State Constitution gave all citizens, urban and rural, aboriginal and newly arrived, the same equal right to Alaska's wild resources.
McDowell won, but at the cost of what the AOC most wanted - State management of fish and game. AOC's victory put an end to Alaska's subsistence priority and forced the federal government to take over management of game on the 60 percent of Alaska it held title to, but, due to the navigable waters dispute, not of fish.
Now, because of Katie John's victory, the State had either to amend its Constitution by popular vote to allow a rural priority or the federal government must take over management of fish as well. Polls showed a majority of Alaskans in favor of the amendment, but the AOC friendly legislature would not budge and would not allow citizens to vote the issue.
Both the courts by delays and the US Senate, through a series of moratoriums pushed through by the late Senator Ted Stevens, delayed implementation of the federal takeover to give the State time to bring itself into compliance.
As all this was going on, Governor Knowles again appealed Katie John to the Ninth Circuit on behalf of Alaska, but lost. The next step was for him to appeal to the US Supreme Court. The pressure upon him to do so was enormous, but so was the resistance he felt from the Native community.
Knowles came up with what he thought might make a good compromise. If the legislature would agree to put a constitutional amendment before the voters, he would appeal to the Supreme Court. Knowles presented the idea to the Native Community in a series of meetings with the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, the Alaska Federation of Natives and the Rural Alaska Community Action program (RurAL CAP).
The Native community resoundingly opposed the compromise. The State had never been friendly to them in management of fish and wildlife. They did not trust the State. Their experience with federal management of game had been much better. The AOC and their supporters in the Alaska legislature also opposed the compromise.
;)
"I have here a resolution from Minto Village Council and three sheets of paper with signatures from the residents of Minto, asking you not to appeal the case," Ken Charlie of Minto told Knowles at the RurAL CAP meeting. "I’m sure that if you would look at the well being of the Native people of the State of Alaska as you had looked (on the troops) you commanded in (Vietnam), I think you would take a more close look at what the Native people are asking you to do.
“I don’t know if anybody has asked you the question, point blank, what’s your political aspirations after your term is up? If you are looking forward to going into Congress or Senate, I’m sure you would need the help of the Native people to do that...
“So I would encourage you, speaking from the Village of Minto not to appeal the case. Stand your ground.”
Arthur Lake, left, of the Association of Village Council Presidents, delivered the same message. "When matters of the heart come into play we all usually do the right thing, and that’s what we’re asking," Lake stated. Heather Kendall-Miller, Katie John's attorney, observes from the back, below the map of Alaska.
;)
Earlier on July 15, 2001, I had landed my plane on the short dirt strip behind Duffy's Bar where Heather Kendall-Miller met me with her car and then drove about ten miles down the Tok Cutoff and up the Old Nabesna Road. She parked and then we hiked a mile or so along a foot and fourwheel trail through the woods to Katie's camp, a short distance up Tanada Creek from where the fishwheel turned in the Copper River. Katie and the Governor had not yet arrived. The sun was hot. Heather took off her shoes, sat on the bank and dipped her feet into the cold waters of Tanada Creek. A bald eagle appeared high above, gliding beneath billowy white cumulus clouds rising high into the deep blue, clean, transparent sky.
It circled several times and then soared off on a course over Tanada Creek toward the Copper River. We soon heard the muffled growl of a couple of four-wheelers moving through the trees, then they emerged from the woods to join us.
“We’ve been to the fish wheel,” Katie's son-in-law Charles David announced from the seat of one of them. “There’s two fish.” Heather asked how far away the wheel was. “Just a little ways,” David answered. So, With David's assurance that he would direct Katie and Governor Knowles to the wheel before the meeting in camp, Heather and I took a nice little walk to the wheel, where we found these two salmon waiting in the box.
The Copper River is made from the melt-water of glaciers flowing out of the Wrangell Mountains as the ice has scoured the earth for thousands of years. Hence the silt.
;)
Soon, we heard more machines coming - three four wheelers led by an eight-wheeled Argo driven by Will Mayo. Katie sat to Mayo's left and Governor Knowles behind her. Mayo's daughter Angela sat on to his right, his wife Yvonne Mayo behind her with Alaska's Alaska's First Lady, Susan Knowles behind her in the yellow jacket. Ice cream also traveled in the Argo, packed in dry ice to keep it frozen.
;)
Soon after the group arrived at the wheel, Governor Knowles and Karl Martin helped Katie descend the steep, rocky, crumbling bank down to the fish wheel. As they carefully edged their way to the upstream end of the wheel, they suddenly heard the sound of a third salmon slide out of the ever-rotating basket and splash into the shallow water of the box. “This must be a good omen,” the Governor chuckled.
At Katie's invitation, Governor Knowles reached into the box. After a bit of a struggle and a fair amount of splashing, he pulled this salmon out as Katie John smiled big. Then, an instant after I lowered my camera to shift my precarious position, the fish escaped the Governor's grip, slipped out of his hands into the silrty water and instantly disappeared. “Must be a different kind of omen,” someone standing on the bank mused. Everybody chuckled.
When Katie died, Tony Knowles was traveling and was unable to attend her services. He did send a letter of condolence and remembrance, which was read at the Anchorage memorial.
In it, he recalled how Katie looked at him after the fish escaped and then asked if he had just granted the fish "a gubernatorial pardon."
;)
The entourage then left the fishwheel behind and drove the quarter-mile or so up the trail back to Katie's camp. Before joining Katie at the fishwheel for what would become one of the most important historical meetings between an Alaska Governor and a Native leader or anyone else, Knowles stood for awhile. He let his eyes study all that was around him. He saw the poles of a smokehouse, fish drying racks, the framework for the steam bath, tent sites and a small log cabin, the shallow clear waters of Tanada Creek.
;)
Governor Knowles then joined Katie at table. Someone retrieved the ice cream from the dry ice.
“Do you like chocolate, or do you like sweet cream?” the Governor asked his host.
“Sweet,” Katie John answered. “I don’t like chocolate.” The Governor then presented Katie with a pint carton of Sweet Cream ice cream, made in Fairbanks, and transported by plane, car and Argo to Batzulnetas, and a plastic spoon to eat it with. The dry ice had done its job a little too well. The Sweet Cream was frozen so solid Katie's spoon could not penetrate it. The Governor tried, but it was like trying to shove a plastic spoon into cement. The ice cream stopped his spoon cold.
A Knowles staffer appeared with a knife and then, with great effort, cut the ice cream into small pieces.
Katie John took a small bite, and then pointed a short distance upstream on the Tanada. “My Daddy used to have a bridge, right there,” she told the Governor.
“Oh, really, a bridge?” Knowles responded.
“Yeah, and they had a fish trap.”
“Oh, really? Are there fish in this stream?” Knowles asked.
“Yeah, salmon,” Katie answered. She then told Knowles how her father, Chief Charlie Sanford, built a house in this place, “a good one,” and built the bridge that supported the fish trap and how, in those days, no one from the outside world came in to tell the family when and where they could fish, or how many fish they could catch.
They fished according to the dictates of nature and Indian law, which mandated that they share with relatives and friends throughout the country. In this way, Katie described how her father, with her mother Sarah, kept the family and two teams of about 30 dogs fed and healthy. She recalled the times of her childhood spent here as good and happy. She expressed her sorrow that the children of today could not experience the same today.
She told Governor Knowles how many years later a game warden "come in here and tell my Dad that they close down the fish, and they don’t allow fishing here. "My Daddy don’t understand. He feel bad. My Daddy left Batzulnetas.”
;)
Katie John then shared some oral history with Knowles. She told him about the Caet'aen, creatures covered with red hair, long tails that had started and lost a small war at Batzulneta. After the battle, the Ahtna observed that this was a good place, rich with salmon. Here, they established the village of Batzulnetas - The Roasted Salmon Place.
She noted how in the 1790's, Russian soldiers traveled up the Copper River invaded an Ahtna village, captured and tortured the chief, robbed the men of their belongings, drove them into the cold to freeze. kidnapped the women and occupied Batzulnetas. The Ahtna men who had been driven away regrouped. They attacked and killed the Russians, freed their women and reclaimed the village of Batzulnetas as their own.
Katie told Knowles how frustrated she felt that she still had to continue to fight to protect Batzulnetas. She stressed that Batzulnetas was only one small part of what was once her family's much larger home territory.
“We lost our land, we don’t have our land. This Batzulnetas is just a piece.” She then explained about her children and grandchildren, then numbering over 150 - perhaps 200 when the children she adopted and their descendants were added in. “Where they going to stay?”
She told the Governor of her efforts to claim more of her land, including 10 acres in an area where she had once had a trapline. Bureaucrats living other places turned down her claim.
“I lost that muskrat camp.” she said. She told of another ten acres she lost after it filled with water and became a lake. "Batzulnetas is only place I have, I got 80 acres around here. If I get this village back, I be happy, so my grandchildren can come and move in, they gonna build a house and they got home on our land. Too many, too many grandchildren I got.”
She delivered her treatise on Indian law.
“This subsistence business, I tell you. You know, we used to have Indian law. In those days, we don’t see white man, or white people, around. Alaska is just Native. All different Natives in Alaska. They got their own law for their game, for their village, all got their own different law. People always going around, people never leave each other alone - people always help each other, don’t matter who. Right now, this village, we used to stay here, my father, my mother, and my grandma used to stay this village. People from Tanacross, Northway, Tetlin, all different places, people coming. They got no salmon over other side. (My parents) share with them what fish they work on all summer, they give to all, share with them. That’s what Native used to do. They kill one moose, they got to share whole thing. No one going to be without. They got to share that one moose.
"Right now, they (State game regulations) say 'you kill moose, you keep it yourself.' That’s the kind of law they got. But I don’t get used to that way. I’m different. I don’t want to keep by myself one moose, and eat by myself. Don’t makes me feel good, that way. I like to share with somebody. Right now in Mentasta, I got lot of kids, lot of grandkids, lots of niece - all my relative there. When I got something, I want to share with everybody. I don’t want to keep my own.
“If I get moose, I share with everybody. I never keep it myself, whole thing. That’s what Natives used to be doing. They share all the time, they don’t leave each other alone. That’s where people might do it.
"And now, people get moose, they keep it by himself and the rest then don’t have nothing. It don’t looks too good to me. I got used to the other way. When my Dad get something, they share with everybody. And I got used to that way and I can’t take that other side, law, what they have, you keep it to yourself. I don’t think any good to me that way."
;)
After the discussion had continued for awhile, Gov. Knowles looked off toward Tanada Creek. He dug into the chopped ice cream, put a spoonful in his mouth and then looked away again, as if searching for something. Then he turned to Katie, leaned close toward her and speaking softly, softer than he has spoken all day, said, “Katie John, I wanted to come and give a message to you from me, and from my wife, that to Alaskans you’re a very brave person and a very good person. And for too long the State of Alaska has been fighting you about your subsistence way of life.”
He promised to bring this fight to an end.
;)
Afterward, they left Batzulnetas and drove to Katie's house in Mentasta, where they had a good visit. Then the time neared for the Governor and his wife to leave. He stood, and spoke again.
"Susan and I want to say maybe two things to Katie John, one from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you for being such a generous friend and neighbor to invite us down to share an afternoon with you, to come to your home and share a dinner with you. There is nothing that has more meaning for a long lasting friendship than that kind of generosity, and thank you.
“Also, as we talked about, I consider every day that you learn something a good day. Well, this has been a very good day. I’ve learned about you and your family in a way that (I could never do) by second-hand opinions, but by having a chance to be with you. I’ve also learned from people that surround you, and who love you dearly, how important the issues that you have faced in bringing them up and providing for them are, to not only them but to their community and to the Alaska Native people and to all Alaskans.
“So I thank you for your courage and we will find a way to work together. So thank you for a day that I have learned a lot and have enjoyed and will never forget. And I’m sorry I lost that fish!”
Everybody laughed.
“Thank you also for your book about the Headwaters people country. I will read it and I will treasure it. Thank you for being very deservedly, in many people’s opinion, an Alaskan hero. And I’m very jealous of Kathryn and Nora and all the people who can call you grandmother, or mother...
“So we will be off now.”
;)
Then Katie spoke. She again reiterated her concern that she did not have enough land to leave to all her many descendants.
“Now we got all kinds of different law, real hard law, and we can’t do this and we can’t do this and this. We got our own law. We are Natives. We got our own law, and we used to be take care of everything. Keep animals - caribou, moose, sheep - everything. We never try to clean out in my day, my mothers day, way back, grandma’s day. Far as I know the story from my grandma, great grandma, get all what they like, and my grandma what he like and my mother and my Daddy what they like. I know all the law they had, I know everything. From there, there’s three grandma I got to go through, just by story, I never see them, but I hear what their story."
She apologized for not being able to speak, "high English."
Yet, she had communicated things to the governor that no lawyer, historian, professor or anthropologist who used "high English" ever could. I have always wondered how much more she could have communicated to Knowles and all of us had we been able to understand, "High Ahtna."
"Thank you, very much," Katie John concluded.
After the summit between Katie John and the Governor, and another "Leadership Summit" the Governor sponsored in mid-August in Anchorage in an effort to ease tension between Native subsistence and other users of Alaska game and to seek Native ideas on comanagement, optism increased in the Native community. Still nobody could be absolutely certain what the governor would decide until he made his announcement. To keep the pressure on and to be certain Governor Knowles understood how deeply important Katie John and her subsistence rights were to the larger Alaska Native community, another We the People... Standing Our Ground march and rally was held in Anchorage on August 21.
It proved to be the largest protest March and rally in Alaska's history, with an estimated 4000 t0 5000 participants.
Larry Merculief, an Unangan (Aleut) raised on the Pribilof Island village of St. Paul and a leading organizer of the event, said this to those who marched:
“This gathering is about Katie John, our grandmothers, our elders, our young people, our families, our communities, and our way of life. Our spiritual, physical, nutritional, economic,communal, and individual well-being is defined by this way of life. It is who and what we are. We cannot compromise and negotiate away a part of ourselves. It would be like negotiating away a part of our own bodies. Which part will it be? Our heart, our head? Our legs? If we are asked to compromise our subsistence way of life, that is what is being asked of us. We must stand our ground no matter how strong the wind! And we must protect our ways on behalf of the next seven generations, until our dying breath.”
Katie can't be seen in this picture, but she is there, hidden behind the banner.
;)
She came in a wheelchair, pushed by her son Harry, with granddaugther Kathryn Martin and other relatives close behind. I was walking backwards and moving all around fast and I missed the top of the green protest sign to the right. The cut off words say, "Don't mess..."
"Don't Mess With Katie."
;)
Some demonstrated their support for Katie through song and dance. Among them, the Kicaput Singers and Dancers.
;)
Wes Studi, the Cherokee who had starred in movies such as The Last of the Mohicans and Geronimo, came to Alaska to stand in support of Katie John.
A letter of support was signed by over 200 indviduals and organizations. It stated:
Dear Governor Knowles:
On August 21 thousands of Alaskans participated in the We The People March to demonstrate their support for Katie John. They also marched to send this message to you as Governor of Alaska: “We want you to drop the State’s appeal of the Katie John case.”
Since May 6, Alaska’s leaders, Native and non-Native alike, have consistently urged you to take this course of action. Through letters to the editor, compass pieces, position papers, tribal resolutions, citizens’ petitions, and the written outcome of your Leadership Summit, the clear consensus of public opinion is that further litigation will not resolve the subsistence dilemma, it will only serve to further divide Alaskans.
We stand at a crossroad and wait for you, as Alaska’s Chief Executive, to choose the direction that our State’s government will follow: You can choose to affirm your own commitment to protect rural subsistence fishing rights – or decide to continue to fight rural residents and Alaska Natives in the courts.
We call on you to protect the Alaska Native way of life; to work with Alaskans to achieve legal protections in state law for Native and non-Native Alaskans who rely upon subsistence; and to make peace with us by making a decision to drop the State’s appeal in the Katie John case.
The raven atop the staff of the Bering Sea Council of Elders is the symbol of The Creator in many cultural stories in Alaska.
;)
On the afternoon of August 27, 2001, Governor Tony Knowles entered a conference room on the 17th floor of the Atwood building, stood up before a small battery of cameras, recorders and video cameras, made a short statement to set the historical context for what he was about to say and then said it.
"I have concluded that further litigation in the Katie John case would not be in the best interest of Alaska.”
Katie John had won her case.
A victory celebration was soon scheduled to be held in Mentasta on September 22. Kathryn Martin, Katie John's granddaughter, served Copper River salmon.
After the feast, Kathryn Martin was the first to speak. She began with a happy smile, but before she could finish her first sentence emotion got the better of her. Fighting off tears as daughter Sarah tugged on the fringe of her moose-skin dress, Martin thanked Governor Knowles for making a decision that outraged those legislators and their allies whose unyielding opposition to allowing the Alaska public to vote on a constitutional amendment led to the federal takeover in the first place.
“This decision was from his heart,” Martin said through her tears. “He came and he visited grandma before he made the decision. Then he saw who she was, what kind of lady she was, what kind of life she had... this is very emotional because what this means for us is we’re able to fish, we’re able to feed our children, and thank you for that.”
Martin was interrupted by loud applause. “This is the reason my grandma was fighting for this case,” she continued, “for her family to be able to fish and to be able to have a place, that they would be able to provide food.”
Katie John spoke many “thank you’s” to all who had come, to her children, her grandchildren and all her many descendants. “I’m real happy that everybody eat with them,” she said. “I’m so thankful for what is happening. Me and Tony, we used to fight, fight, fight.”
This sentence brought on a round of loud laughter and applause.
“Today we are good friends, no more fight,” she smiled.
“I will always remember the privilege and opportunity that I have had to make the right decision,” Governor Knowles said after thanking Katie and her family for the gift he wears around his neck. “To Katie John, thank you... History has smiled on Alaska by giving it people of great character who have made a difference - Ernest Gruening, Elizabeth Peratrovich, Bill Egan, Eben Hobson, and tonight we are celebrating a woman who, with great quiet dignity and steely determination, has made a difference for her family, for thousands of families across Alaska.
"For time into the future, for generations and generations, she will have made a wonderful contribution to the history of this state. By her determination, it is my hope, and all of our hopes, that the State of Alaska never again will fight the subsistence rights of Alaskans. Thank you.” *
;)
Among those honored with gifts and recognition by Katie’s family were the three NARF attornies who had represented Katie during her 16-year fight with the State. They include Heather Kendall-Miller, Lare Aschenbrenner and Bob Anderson.
“I can tell you that our work sometimes can be very taxing, and it makes you just angry all the time," said "Kendall-Miller. "But when you sit down with Katie or Kathryn and talk, it all makes sense and you understand the importance of the work you’re doing.”
;)
Another honored guest was Howard EchoHawk of Delta Johnson, here with Katie and his wife, Yvonne. When EchoHawk learned how the State had shut down Katie’s fishwheel, her put her contact with his uncle, John EchoHawk of NARF in Boulder, Colorado, and that led to the suit she filed against the State.
Yvonne is is the pastor who 12 years later would conduct funeral services for her adoptive mother, Katie John.
;)
Ray Ramirez, editor of the NARF newsletter, came from Colorado to present this Pendleton blanket to Katie. He also brought a letter from John EchoHawk, Executive Director of NARF. “NARF has always strived to address the most precious issues facing indian country, and assist native people in meeting these challenges,” EchoHawk wrote.
“We knew that one of the most pressing issues facing Alaskans was protecting subsistence rights. When we filed suit against the state of Alaska on your behalf in 1985, we hoped that it would resolve the subsistence issue, and it finally did in 2001. During that time we never lost hope, because you never wavered in your commitment to your people and your way of life.”
;)
Three years later, Tony Knowles, out of office now, came to Katie's 90th birthday party, held in Anchorage. He brought a gift and gave it to her without ceremony. It was smoked salmon, to replace the fish he had lost.
“I learned more that day than is written in all the boxes of legal briefs in this long lasting court battle. I understand the strength, care and values that subsistence gives to Katie John’s family, and to the thousands of similar families from Metlakatla to Bethel, from Norvik to Ft. Yukon to Barrow. I know – we all know – that what Katie John does is not wrong. It is right – right for her, right for the village.” Governor Tony Knowles
*Despite the Governor's stated intent, the fight was not over. Others in the State were determined to continue to fight against Katie's inherent right to feed her family free of State interference. Katie John had barely had time to take a short rest after the celebration before the Alaska Legislative Council, chaired by Representative Joe Green of Anchorage, sought to override the Governor and filed a request to the Supreme Court to allow it to appeal Katie John’s case.
That request was denied, but the opposition has continued to seek ways to undo the victory Katie won on behalf of her family, tribe and all Alaska Natives and subsistence users.
Index to full series. * Designates the main, story-telling, posts:
Dr. Katie John, Ahtna Athabascan champion of Native rights before the Supreme Court of the United States: October 15, 1915 - May 31, 2013
July, 2001: Enroute to Batzulnetas to cover historic meeting between Katie John and Governor Tony Knowles; In a couple of hours I will go to Katie John's Anchorage memorial
*Katie John's Anchorage visitation: the void, the continuation
*In 1999, Katie John gathered a host of young people together, most of them descendants, and took them camping at Batzulnetas
I pause this series until after the funeral, but here is Katie John with Governor Tony Knowles and the fish that made the difference
This morning at 4:00 AM - leaving Mentasta after Katie John's funeral and potlatch
*Katie John's funeral and potlatch: on the night before burial, dance wiped away the tears
*Katie John finished well - her descendants mourn, celebrate her life, bury her, eat, dance give gifts and prepare to carry on
One image from Katie John's victory celebration - the story of how she won her victory will soon follow
*Katie John and Tony Knowles at Batzulnetas: a fish escaped, the ice cream was hard and a Governor listened
*When Katie John became Dr. Katie John - closing post
Reader Comments (6)
Thank you for telling the story of Katie John and for telling of Governor Knowles visit to her home. Tony has always impressed me as an honorable man, a man who really cared about the state and all her people. Whatever decisions he made, and i certainly didn't agree with them all, were made honestly, after much thought. The decisions were made based on what would best serve all the people, native and non-native. Unfortunately the three most recent governors have not followed in these footsteps.
What a deeply moving photo-essay. Thank you for taking the time it took to tell Katie John's story and the story of Batzulnetas.
An excellent recounting of history, and fine images! Not just determination, but it must have taken so so much patience to hang in there all those years. I think the point is that people have to get out there and lead, and then their government will have to follow.
What an incredible write up of what transpired. Well done! The birthday gift of salmon at the end made me tear up.
The life of Katie John is worthy of a full biography.
THe NY Times on Wednesday, June 19, 2013 has a story on the "Spoils of the Sea Elude Many in an Alaska Antipoverty Plan"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/us/spoils-of-the-sea-elude-many-in-an-alaska-antipoverty-plan.html?hp
To provide endless fishsticks to the fastfood industry, led to creation of Native corporations that produced plenty of pollack, lots of profits for a few, and "a lopsided division of spoils among the groups has festered into a conflict that some Alaskans fear could unravel the catch-share project itself, which has done much good, they say, despite its flaws. In 2011, according to the most recent figures, one group with a small population got nearly 22 times more revenue per resident than another, larger group, based on allocation formulas locked in by Congress in 2006. "
It seems like Katie John's fight was only the beginning of long campaign.
Very good article all the pictures are beautiful they tell a story themselves! Tsin'aen