Bering Sea

“There is very little attempt to preserve our marine heritage.”

The decade of the 1970’s saw a reversal of public policy from the United States Government, and the Alaska State Government, in the way land ownership was to be defined for our Alaska Native People. Land ownership based upon historic use and cultural importance, together with possible commercial values was addressed in light of the huge oil fields found on Alaska’s North Slope. The oil industry and therefore the federal and state governments needed a way of getting that oil to the markets and chose the route of building a pipeline across Alaska’s vast wilderness with land ownership in question. Thus the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1973 was signed into law by then President Richard M. Nixon.

Now we need the Alaska Native Marine Cultural Heritage Zone (MCHZ). As we have done with our land based cultural and traditional hunting zones, to protect our traditional foods, so we must begin to protect our marine reserves for our customary and traditional needs. Demands for marine resources are at an all time high, especially depleting the once abundant resources of the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. Foreign owned and operated processing companies have been given ownership to many of our once public resources, such as the crab of the Bering Sea. Large factory trawlers, many with co-ops fishing for these companies are dragging our ocean floors destroying our source of life. The results of this destructive fishing practice are numerous. Of great importance to our people living on the coastline of Alaska especially is the destruction and depletion of our traditional foods. We would not stand by and watch a person using a bull-dozer to hunt for a deer in a forest and not do anything, and yet this is happening to our oceans. We must not be quiet about what is happening to our forest, the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. The destruction to our traditional hunting grounds is much easier to see, but what we must understand is that this same kind of destruction is happening to our waters as well. We all understand that without a place to grow and thrive, our food will not return.

Several of our coastal and island communities are facing serious risks of endangerment. Our people are quickly running out of our traditional foods, or are finding that harvesting these foods are becoming more and more difficult as we face climate changes and localized depletions. And yet the large commercial fishing companies are encroaching closer and closer to our villages with their destructive fishing practices. We need a way to collectively stop that destruction. We are not talking about the need to stop our small boat commercial fishers from making a living, for our small commercial harvesting practices are done in such a way as to protect our environment and resources. What we are talking about is putting into practice, determining precautionary limits on the areas and amounts of fish being destroyed within our heritage zones. Establishing marine protected zones within reasonable areas around our villages where these destructive practices are not allowed to encroach on our ways of living. These zones are our heritage zones, there to protect who and what we are. These heritage zones were used, are used to this day to allow the survival of our people. These heritage zones are as, or in many cases more, important than our land based protected hunting areas. They provide the necessary lifeline for many of our other foods to survive and thrive.

George Pletnikoff

Greenpeace

Alaska Oceans Campaign

(907) 277-8234

george.pletnikoff@wdc.greenpeace.org