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4

Applying Anthropology in

an Alaskan National Park

This chapter describes fieldwork conducted for the National Park Service (NPS) on the activities of commercial fishers and hunters in a rugged wilderness area that had been added to Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park. Before I (George) discuss the research, which was undertaken to help the Park Service develop a management plan, a little background is necessary. Glacier Bay is a world-famous region where tidewater glaciers spill from high mountains, filling the bay with icebergs. It has long been a favorite destination of cruise ships bringing tourists who thrill to the sound and sight of calving glacial ice. The new wilderness area being added to the park was located over the mountains on a remote stretch of southeast Alaska’s outer coast that is inaccessible except by bush plane or, with great difficulty, by boat. Called “Glacier Bay National Preserve,” the park’s new area is locally known as Dry Bay.¹

Dry Bay was used seasonally by fifty to sixty salmon fishermen, both Tlingit and non-Natives.² A few hunting guides also flew clients into the area to hunt moose, bear, and mountain goat. When this remote region was ceded to the NPS, which then took responsibility for its protection, little was known about it. Nor did managing commercial fishermen and hunters fit with the Park Service’s standard mission of protecting nature—wildlife, flora, and water resources.

Anticipating difficulties, based on an ongoing conflict between Tlingit and non-Native fishermen, the NPS had tried to swap the Dry Bay area to the state of Alaska for a different wilderness parcel. When the state declined, the NPS was forced to undertake the research for which I was awarded the contract, aided by the support of an anthropologist-friend in the Park Service. Unlike my previous fieldwork in Ireland and England, each of which had lasted over a year, this research, typical of many applied projects, was to be completed in one summer.

LEARNING THE ROPES

I first flew to the Park Service’s Alaska Headquarters in Anchorage to be briefed for a few days and outfitted for living in the bush. There I received a cram course on subsistence issues, Alaskan Native cultures, and NPS policies. My primary mentor was Ken Schoenberg, a short bespectacled archaeologist with years of experience working in the Alaskan bush. My other teacher, Kathryn Cohen, was a petite, no-nonsense resource specialist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s (ADF&G) Subsistence Division, which was cosponsoring the study.

There was much to learn in a short time. At the end of the third day, I wrote in my journal, “It is very, very interesting but I’m exhausted from trying to absorb all this new information; and I still haven’t gotten used to the long days. It’s light well after 10 PM, making it hard to sleep.” On my last day in Anchorage, I was taken to the Park Service’s warehouse to assemble gear for the field: Coleman stove, pots and pans, sleeping bag, dried foods, topographical maps, a shotgun (for protection from bears), and a bulky Zodiac inflatable boat with outboard engine, which I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to use, much less get onto an airplane.

As part of my final orientation, Schoenberg lectured me on the danger of bears and how to deal with them: wear bells, carry a whistle, and make lots of noise so they can hear you coming. “Always carry a gun outdoors and,” he warned, “keep it beside you at night. If you encounter a bear, stand tall and never run. Running provokes a chase instinct. If attacked, curl up in a ball and play dead. Whatever you do, don’t move.” Schoenberg drove home the seriousness of his lesson with a story of a young woman geologist who was attacked by a brown grizzly bear in the Brooks Range. She had played dead while the bear gnawed on her arms. “She lost both arms but she saved her life,” Schoenberg declared. I wondered if he really had needed to tell me that story.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

With four bags of gear in tow, plus a Zodiac and outboard engine, and a little unnerved by all the bear talk, I boarded an Alaskan Airlines flight for Yakutat, the only settlement on a three hundred–mile stretch of southeastern Alaskan coastline. I was to spend a week there, getting acquainted with some of the Tlingit people before being flown by bush plane fifty miles down the coast to Dry Bay. I would also meet Tlingit elders to explain my research and obtain their approval.

Before the gathering took place, I began to wonder what was happening. People in Yakutat were decidedly cool. Few passersby returned my greetings. In one case, while walking along the dirt road from the village to the pier, a man walking toward me swung over to the other side of the road about thirty yards before we passed. When I passed, he turned his head and looked off into the distance. When I entered Flo’s, the local café, the patrons lowered their voices. And when new customers came in, they took the tables farthest from mine. “Damn,” I thought, “what have I done?” Mentally, I reviewed my first few days in the village, searching for anything that might explain this icy reception. I remembered jotting down some notes to myself while sitting in the café a couple of days before, mainly a list of things I needed to do. Perhaps that had aroused suspicion. I thought about how it might have been perceived: an unknown man walking around the village at all times of the day, then taking notes in the café.

I was no stranger to this situation. I’d been the object of suspicion before, first as a graduate student in the Mexican highlands in an anthropology field-training program. Sharon and I had arrived in the village of San Antonio Acuamanala in the middle of a fiesta, and a crowd had gathered, watching curiously as we unloaded our gear. During the next few days, we were asked many questions about our religion. It seemed to take a long time before people warmed up to us and talked willingly. Later, we learned from Cecilia Sanchez, the village nurse, that a week before our arrival a small plane had flown over the village, dropping leaflets promoting Seventh Day Adventism. In this remote Catholic village, we had been mistaken for Protestant missionaries. It is common for locals, especially in remote places, to slot strangers into one of the few cognitive categories they have for outsiders, such as missionary or government official.

Who was I being mistaken for? The next morning I went to the U.S. Forest Service office to get some aerial photographs of Dry Bay. As soon as I explained who I was and what I wanted, the woman at the desk burst out laughing. “Everyone thinks you’re with the IRS,” she explained. “They think you’re here looking for unreported fishing income!”

MEETING THE VILLAGE COUNCIL

When the village council meeting took place, John Chapman, the head of Glacier Bay National Park, was there to introduce me. Park Service officials had already had one meeting with the council, but the Tlingit elders had not yet met “the researcher.” I explained to them how I would go about doing the assignment. Like most anthropologists, I would live among the people in Dry Bay and observe and participate in the activities that took place there; I would write up my observations and the things people told me in field notes that would later be used to write a “report.” In addition to participant observation, I said, I planned to survey and complete an inventory of all summer fish camps. A Tlingit elder spoke and suggested that Native fishermen might be less than eager to participate in the study. I had already been told about the tension and a few nasty incidents between non-Native and Tlingit fishermen, and I could appreciate his skepticism that an outsider (and a non-Native) could understand the Tlingit point of view.

The Tlingit, the largest and best-known of the southeastern Alaska Native cultures, have traditionally been a maritime people, living by fishing, hunting, and gathering shellfish in the tidal zone. By the time the Russians first made contact with them in 1741, they were one of the most sophisticated of foraging societies in the world, with an elaborate material culture, social organization, and cosmology. To the outside world, the Tlingit are perhaps best known for the “potlatch” and for elaborately carved commemorative and funerary poles (popularly called “totem poles”). Today, they live in twenty-five villages and towns scattered along four hundred miles of Alaskan coast from Yakutat to Ketchikan. Many still fish and hunt for subsistence, and some are commercial fishermen as well. Others hold wage jobs, and some are college-educated professionals.

Although the village elders seemed cool toward the research, they did give us their approval. Perhaps naïvely, I remained enthusiastic. I was excited by the prospect of working in the Alaskan wilderness and comparing how different people—the Tlingit and non-Natives—fished and used resources. Before leaving Yakutat for my field site, I thought it would be a good idea to try out the Zodiac, especially since two experienced Alaskans were available—Kathryn Cohen, the ADF&G resource specialist, who was in Yakutat to finalize my research plans, and Judy Ramos, a young Tlingit woman who had been hired as my research assistant. Perfect companions for an exploratory trip on the nearby Situk River.

We set off in the early afternoon on a bright and sunny day. But we hadn’t gotten far downstream when the Zodiac’s engine struck a gravel bar, breaking its shear pin and leaving us without propulsion. At first we tried to paddle back upstream, but the current was too swift, so we beached the boat and tried bushwhacking our way upriver through the dense undergrowth, which included thickets of heavily spined Devil’s Club. This didn’t work, forcing us to turn back. Our only alternative then seemed to be to float down the river to the ocean and find a fisherman who could take us back to Yakutat. We had no idea of how long this would take, and not having anticipated any of this misfortune, I had neglected to bring along food or warm clothing. Nor had Kathryn or Judy come prepared, as we had planned to be on the river for only an hour or so. All through that afternoon and evening we floated down the Situk. By midnight—now twelve hours on the river—all of us were hungry and cold, and there was still no sign of the ocean.

In the semidarkness (at 59° north latitude the sky does not get really dark in midsummer), we startled a moose and her calf. They came crashing through the brush along the riverbank, scaring us witless. Not long after that we came to the first of several logjams and, while trying to pull the Zodiac over it, I fell into the river. Not wanting to risk hypothermia, we stopped to make a fire, using gasoline from the outboard engine in order to dry my clothes. All night long we wondered, “Where in the world is the ocean?”

Privately, I beat myself up for having been so ill-prepared. After all, as a Boy Scout, indeed an Eagle Scout, hadn’t I internalized the mantra “Be Prepared”? During the night I also wondered what Judy Ramos’s Tlingit relatives were thinking back in Yakutat when she didn’t return home from going on the river with her new white male supervisor. And I thought often of the warning that Clarence Summers, the Yakutat-based ranger, had given me about being careful and prudent. He liked to say, “Small mistakes that are inconsequential in the lower 48 can be fatal in the north.” Tougher than myself, Kathryn tried to keep up our spirits by making light of our situation. It was hard for me to see any humor in our predicament. Judy sat silent, seemingly unable to make conversation. This being the first time I had met her, and still not knowing much about Tlingit culture, I wasn’t sure if her reticence was personal or cultural. Later, I learned it was both.

Around daybreak we finally reached the camp of two fishermen, who built a fire and shared their breakfast, a large can of beans and some granola bars. We collapsed on the riverbank and slept until midmorning. Judy found a logging road that led back to Yakutat, about ten miles away. While they stayed with the Zodiac, I set out on foot, unfortunately outfitted in heavy rubber boots designed more for wading than walking. By the end of the day we were all safely back in Yakutat. Judy returned home to the great relief of her family; Kathryn Cohen flew to Juneau, and I never saw her again. I set to work finishing my preparations for my field research in Dry Bay and resting my blistered feet.

The night before my departure for Dry Bay, Clarence told me a harrowing story about a missing kayaker he had once been dispatched to find. The young man had just passed the Massachusetts bar exam and was a wilderness enthusiast. His parents had given him a trip to Alaska as a graduation present. He wanted to camp and explore Glacier Bay by kayak. When he failed to return home, the Park Service was alerted and a search undertaken. Clarence found his empty camp on a small gravel island at the far end of the bay. Some distance away, he spotted two boots with feet and leg bones but no body. Lying on the gravel nearby was a camera. Clarence removed the film and had it processed. The cause of death was pretty clear from the prints that came back. The last six frames on the roll showed a bear swimming toward the island, then emerging from the water and making its way up the gravel bar in the direction of the photographer. Clarence told the story in graphic detail, and by the end I wasn’t sure whether his intent was to educate me after my “adventure” on the Situk River or to scare me off altogether.

DRY BAY

I chartered a small plane to Dry Bay. Sitting in the copilot’s seat on the flight, I got a good look at the terrain as we left Yakutat. I could see the edge of the Malaspina Glacier, the world’s largest, which covers an area the size of Rhode Island. Our route followed a flat coastal foreland latticed with rivers and small streams flowing to the ocean through muskeg and spruce forests. From their milky appearance, it was apparent they were fed by glacial runoff. I counted three brown bears and four moose. In no hurry to return to Yakutat and proud of the dazzling scenery, the young pilot turned inland toward the mountains and over the pass where a small plane, loaded with rafters, would crash later that summer. Within a few minutes we were above the snow-covered peaks of the Brabazon Range where glaciers descended from U-shaped valleys, their ice and snow streaked black with dirt and rock debris.

Figure 4-1. The Alsek River and glacier viewed from a bush plane window.

Back on course, we soon landed in a clearing near the small Park Service cabin where Clarence had recommended I stay. Within minutes I had unloaded my gear and stood watching the plane disappear over the horizon. The only sound was the distant and receding hum of its engine. I never felt more alone. As I lugged my gear toward the cabin, my shotgun perched atop each load, I noticed large bear tracks in the sandy soil, and then claw marks on the cabin door and window frame. That night, and each night thereafter, I put the gun next to my sleeping bag. “Put the buckshot in first and then the slugs,” Ken Schoenberg had instructed, “because if you have a bear inside your tent at night, you won’t be able to see him well, and you’ll want a wider pattern of shot to make sure you hit something.”

While I had dutifully recorded all of Ken’s advice in my notebook, privately I had thought that he was overdoing it. Now, I wasn’t so sure. That evening I wrote in my journal, “For the first time this trip, I feel a little lonely for home and wonder if it was really wise to accept an opportunity like this just because it offered a new experience.” I stayed in bed the next day until 1:00 p.m., unable to face the uncertainties of my situation. Adding to my woes, my Coleman stove would not light even after I took it apart and reassembled it, so I could not boil water or make a hot meal.

When I finally did get up, I attached the noisemaking bells to my shirt, put my whistle around my neck and my shotgun over my shoulder, and set out downriver, hoping to meet a few of the local fishermen. I walked several miles before reaching the first fish camp; the next one was another mile away. It was immediately apparent that Clarence, by recommending that I live at the cabin, either didn’t understand that anthropologists need to live among the people they study or didn’t want the study to succeed. Though the cabin was cozy, staying there would mean that I would get little work done. The only feasible alternative, which turned out to be a good one, was to move all my gear six miles away to a small fish-processing station that was little more than a few WWII-style Quonset huts where the fishermen came to unload and sell their fish. A small work crew gutted the salmon, iced them, and packed them to be flown to Yakutat in an ancient DC-3. It was only here that the fishermen met, some lingering to relax and socialize.

A TALE OF TWO RIVERS

The fishermen worked on two rivers. Monitoring the salmon that returned to both, while also keeping an eye on the fishermen, was an ADF&G fisheries biologist named Alex Brogel. Raised in Germany, Alex had been drawn to Alaska as a young man by its wilderness. Now middle-aged, Alex became my teacher. The Alsek and the nearby East River “are as different as rivers can be,” he explained to me as we sat on a riverbank the morning we met. Despite being only a few miles apart, the Alsek River is huge and flows through some of the most remote land in North America. It’s the only river along five hundred miles of coastline to have muscled its way through the high Alaskan coastal ranges. Over two hundred miles long, it has a volume greater than any river along the entire Pacific Coast other than the great Columbia. The East River, in contrast, springs from an artesian source and runs just seven miles to the sea. The following day, Alex invited me out in a small boat to illustrate their differences, which I dutifully recorded in my notes.

The Alsek’s current is swift, averaging six knots; while the East River is a gentle two knots. The Alsek is extremely cold (38 to 42 degrees) since most of its volume is glacial melt water; while the East River is shallow, warm (55–65 degrees) and non-glacial. The Alsek is turbid; its milky gray color gives it the appearance of watery cement; while the East River is crystal clear. Yet both rivers have large salmon runs, and spawn all five species of Pacific salmon: sockeye, king, coho or silver, pink, and chum.

In both rivers, salmon are caught with gill nets, which are staked from the riverbank and then stretched across the current by small boats and anchored. The nets hang vertically in the water so that salmon migrating upstream to spawn run into them and become entangled, usually around the gills (hence the name gill nets). The trapped fish are then “picked” from the nets by the fishermen, who pull themselves along the nets in their boats, and taken to the fish processor once or twice a day where they are weighed, gutted, and iced until they can be flown out for further processing and distribution to West Coast markets.

In the succeeding days, sometimes while sharing a meal on the riverbank, Alex showed me how differences between the two rivers pose unique challenges to the fishermen. Since the East River is clear, salmon can see the gill nets. For this reason, fishing was traditionally done at night when the nets were less visible. The turbidity of the Alsek River, in contrast, means that the time of day has little effect on fishing success. One benefit of the East River’s clear water, however, is that fishermen can see the migratory fish and know exactly where to set their nets.³ They can also chase visible schools of fish into their nets by driving their boats back and forth across the shallow pools where the fish pause to renew their energy before continuing upstream. The warmth of the East River also produces lots of underwater vegetation or “moss” that clogs the nets, forcing fishermen to shake them regularly. It is exhausting work and means that East River fishermen spend far more time at their nets than those who fish on the Alsek.

Figure 4-2. A Tlingit fisherman watches for salmon striking his gill net on the Alsek River.

While the Alsek lacks moss, it has drifting logs and chunks of ice flowing down it from calving glaciers upstream. Both can foul or destroy nets. I watched one fisherman lose two nets to an iceberg the size of a car. Harbor seals are another headache. They are clever, understand how gillnets work, and feed on the salmon trapped in them. After a severe storm once caused fishermen to abandon their nets temporarily, they returned to find a seal behind each one, driving fish into the net and then eating them.

Another animal predator that competes with the fishermen is the brown or grizzly bear, which is attracted to the caught fish. Bears will wade into the water or haul the nets onto the bank to get at them. Not only are fish lost, but the nets’ webbing is damaged as the bears tear at it to remove the fish. Consequently, fishermen on both rivers pack guns. Over the summer I heard a lot of local lore about bear encounters and the behavior and movements of individual bears. To protect their nets, fishermen use different strategies. One man spread his dirty laundry on the bushes near his nets to give the area a strong human scent; another used a noisemaking cannon, like those used to scare birds from cornfields. When fishing at night, some men kept a lantern or fire burning on the riverbank. And some fishermen shoot bears illegally. One Alsek fisherman claimed to have killed more than twenty bears in his twenty summers on the river.

STRUGGLING TO GAIN RAPPORT

In Dry Bay, like Yakutat, I was again met with suspicion, although of a different sort. The NPS had informed all the fishermen about the research and who I was—an anthropology professor from New York. In this case, I might have gotten a better reception had I been an IRS inspector. The fishermen had been opposed to Dry Bay’s becoming part of the National Park Service. The land had previously been under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service which, in large measure, had let the fishermen and hunters do as they pleased. Now they feared new regulations would restrict their activities. And they did not want anyone, least of all the federal government, telling them what they could or could not do. As one non-Native fisherman pointedly told me, “I came here to get away from Big Brother.”

Yet my job was to document the very activities—fishing and hunting—they feared might be restricted, or taken away altogether. That I was a college professor didn’t help, and worse, I was from “back East.” “A pointy-headed intellectual,” I overheard one fisherman say. Had I been from the University of Idaho, I might have been more acceptable. I told the fishermen that I was really from the West, having grown up in California, but that seemed to make little difference. During my first week camped at the fish processor, a young, grizzled fisherman named Virgil, high on drugs or alcohol or both, came up to me on his three-wheeler, pistol visibly at his side. “Keep your fuckin’ nose out of my business or there’ll be trouble,” he threatened, looking down at his pistol. I wrote in my journal that night, “Very tense situation. . . . I hate the feeling that people think I’m prying into their personal lives, even though I’m not.” Apparently, Virgil had seen me talking with the backcountry ranger and assumed I was giving out information on them. I had tried to explain to him what anthropologists do and why the Park Service had to conduct this study, but he sped off before I could finish.

A few days later, another unfriendly fisherman asked how much I was being paid by the Park Service. I told him, thinking, “Jeez, I’m asking them all kinds of questions—I can’t not answer theirs.” But it really wasn’t any of his business, and later I regretted having been so forthright. The other white fishermen were not overtly threatening, but they, too, made it clear that they were opposed to the research. It was “unnecessary.” some said, and “a waste of taxpayer’s money.” Some also said I could not possibly learn enough in one summer to make it worthwhile. During the first few weeks in the field, the difficulty of getting a good night’s sleep in the short nights of an Alaskan summer didn’t help my mood. And if that wasn’t enough, I was caught in the middle, between two groups who didn’t like or trust one another.

INDIAN-WHITE CONFLICT