Floating oyster growing system by Erik O’Brien at Larsen Bay, Kodiak. Photo courtesy of Erik O’Brien
A new report compiled by the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust (ASFT) in Sitka finds that Southeast Alaska communities are losing access to fisheries, but also identifies opportunities for implementing new ways to restore such access for the region.
“Based on what we heard from the dozens of community members who participated in our survey, it is clear that Southeast’s communities, particularly Indigenous communities, are losing access to fisheries and their future access remains uncertain,” said Linda Behnken, ASFT board president. “However, it is also clear that we have some real opportunities when it comes to designing and implementing new tools to help restore this access and ensure that local needs are being factored into larger discussions and decisions concerning Southeast’s economy.”
The report, released June 18, compiles findings of a regional survey ASFT distributed to area residents this spring in collaboration with the Sustainable Southeast Partnership (SSP) — proposing ways to address issues. The report was funded by the Southeast Conference through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy initiative.
ASFT said the goal is to assist local communities by providing data and information for future dialogues and community development planning, increasing awareness and encouraging more funds for fishery access-related projects. Participating communities included Angoon, Craig, Haines, Kake, Ketchikan, Klawock, Klukwan, Juneau, Sitka, Wrangell, and Yakutat.
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Responses from these communities universally identified the fisheries as a crucial element of Southeast Alaska’s culture and economy moving forward. Respondents expressed concern about their ability to access and have a sustainable livelihood from local fisheries through traditional harvesting, commercial or recreational fishing.
Respondents’ key concerns included the changing climate and environment of Southeast Alaska and a sense of unpredictability for the future of marine resources. They expressed a lack of confidence that current scientific approaches to fishery management will be adequate in light of significant changes affecting the region and its resources due to climate change.
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The report also discussed existing systems of governance that challenge access to fishery resources, challenges with limited access management at the state and federal levels and loss of community infrastructure such as processors, fish buyers, cold storage, marine services and/or transportation often initiated with the trend in outmigration of fishery access in remote communities.
Many participating area residents said the utmost priority is protection and perpetuation of a traditional way of life, with commercial fishing considered secondary, as a tool to bridge the traditional and cash economies.
They discussed the rapid growth of tourism in Southeast Alaska as something feeding competition and tensions between local-commercial and traditional-use harvesters and non-local harvesters in the sportfish sector.
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The report included recommendations for building more equitable and accessible fisheries in Southeast Alaska, including incorporating climate change variability and unpredictability into fishery management tools to facilitate fishery access and to ensure that other industries, including tourism and mariculture, do not further limit fishery access.
Recommendations also included establishing regional entities to hold quota/permits (such as regional Community Quota Entities and regional fisheries trusts) and more investment in community infrastructure. Behnken said that ASFT was grateful to everyone who shared their thoughts on this complex topic.
“We hope that this report will uplift their voices and be a chance for the public, policy makers, and others to better understand some of the challenges that many Southeast residents are facing so that we can collectively find solutions and build a resilient and vibrant future for Southeast’s fisheries and communities,” she said.
The first Jesuit missionaries in Alaska sailed up the Yukon River in 1887. By the turn of the 20th century, the religious order of the Catholic Church had as many as 50 Jesuits in the state.
Now, only two remain. And by the end of June, there will be none.
The Jesuits’ nearly 140 years in the state was honored at an event at Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church on June 16. A procession of priests wearing long white gowns with red hems walked down the aisle to open the event. The Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Stephen Maekawa, thumped the ground with a shimmering silver staff known as a clozier as he approached the altar.
Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Steven Maekawa, walks toward the altar at the Immaculate Conception Church in Bethel.
“My brothers and sisters, we gather together to celebrate this wonderful and blessed occasion to acknowledge the love of God and the work of God through the 139 year mission of the Society of Jesus of the Jesuit fathers,” Maekawa said to open the event.
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A traditional Catholic mass followed, with readings in both English and Yup’ik. During the sermon, Maekawa acknowledged the vastness of the Fairbanks diocese, and the tremendous amount of work done by the Jesuits to establish it.
“All of the 46 churches of the Diocese of Fairbanks that we currently have were established by either the Jesuit fathers or by direction of a Jesuit bishop,” Maekawa said. “We have a long history of the Society of Jesus’ presence and ministry here in all of Alaska.”
The Jesuits are an order within the Catholic Church, akin to the Dominicans or Franciscans. They have a reputation for taking on some of the Catholic Church’s most remote assignments.
That missionary spirit brought the Jesuits to the Yukon River in 1887, where they built churches, schools, and ministries. Without their work, Catholicism may not have taken root in huge swaths of Alaska, particularly among Alaska Native communities.
The Immaculate Conception Church in Bethel.
But the Jesuits leave a complicated legacy. Their methods of converting Native people to the religion, particularly in the first half of the 20th century, created generational traumas still felt to this day.
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Fr. Sean Carroll is the provincial of the Jesuits West Province, which oversees Alaska and nine other states.
Fr. Sean Carroll, provincial of the Jesuits West Province, speaks at an event recognizing nearly 140 years of Jesuit service in Alaska.
“Thank you for all that you have taught us about who Jesus is and how to love and serve Him wholeheartedly,” Carroll said. “I also thank you for your patience with us. For there have been times when we have sinned and when we have hurt you.”
Missionaries, including the Jesuits, forcefully converted and assimilated Alaska Native people into Western culture and religion. Students at Jesuit-run boarding schools were forced to abandon their Native languages and physically punished when caught speaking languages other than English. Native dancing and drumming were also banned.
The Jesuits West Province maintains a list of 150 Jesuits with credible claims of sexual abuse against minors or vulnerable adults. A quarter of the accused Jesuits served in Alaska at some point in time.
“I ask for your forgiveness for all that we have done that was not rooted in Christ and love for Him, and for when we did not value your culture nor recognize the presence of God in you,” Carroll said.
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Carroll gave the order to withdraw from the state last spring. A big issue was the recruitment of Jesuits willing to travel and serve in remote villages. He told the congregation that the Jesuits’ work would continue, just without a permanent presence.
Fr. Rich Magner, one of the two remaining Jesuit priests in Alaska, attends a ceremony in Bethel.
Fr. Rich Magner is one of the two remaining Jesuit priests in Alaska. His last day serving Chevak, Hooper Bay, and Scammon Bay is June 30.
“We all always knew coming in, or should have known, that we’re not going to be here forever. It’s going to be mission accomplished at some point,” Magner said. “And then we hand it off to the diocese that we’ve helped create, and so that’s a good feeling.”
Magner’s next stop is a Clinical Pastoral Education residency in Tacoma, Washington.
The other remaining priest, Fr. Tom Provinsal, first came to Alaska in 1968 to teach. A fond memory, he said, was meeting Elders that practiced traditional subsistence lifestyles.
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“Some of the grandmothers, their fingers were just all bent with arthritis and stuff like that, you know, their whole lives they’ve been working out in the cold and the wet, doing food, sewing, all that kind of stuff,” Provinsal said. “I’d say I just feel very privileged to have come when I did come and to see that.”
Provinsal returned in 1975 as a priest and has served in the region ever since. After moving away, he plans to take a five month sabbatical. What happens next, he said, is in God’s hands.
Two lines formed in the aisle for communion at the end of the mass. After taking communion, Bethel’s Parish Administrator Susan Murphy gave a final thank you.
“It’s difficult to say goodbye to people who have been a part of our lives for so long,” Murphy said. “We know that you have done what was yours to do, and have taught us to do what is ours to do. We are grateful.”
Jesuit priests form a row along the altar of Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church as members of the congregation lift their arms and pray.
Dominic Hunt, a Yup’ik deacon that flew in from Emmonak for the event, led the congregation through a final prayer.
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“Bless them with your wisdom, that they may be a word of hope, a world in need. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen,” Hunt said.
About 70 people posed for a photo on the altar – priests, deacons, parishioners, Elders and children — many of them smiling, some standing quietly.
The photo doesn’t tell the whole story. But it’s a moment when gratitude, grief, and memory all shared the same room.
Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Steven Maekawa, stands in the middle of a crowd waiting to take a photo at Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church.
JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) – The Supreme Court of Alaska will be taking up the case of the State of Alaska, Division of Elections v. Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.
The oral arguments will be held Monday at 10 a.m. via Zoom, according to an order and opening notice.
The document also specifies that a decision is expected to be made before noon on Tuesday.
According to documents from the Division of Elections, the state must start printing ballots at noon on the same day.
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This comes after an Anchorage Superior Court Judge ordered Dan J. Sullivan on to the ballot Friday.
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