In three quarters of the roughly 200 “native census places” in Alaska greater than 50% of the people have no work at all. Think about that for a second. No work at all. Over half the people in three quarters of the areas where native populations are counted.
Under welfare reform when a Native Alaskan community has more than 50% unemployment they are not restricted to the five year welfare cap. A heck of alot of rural people in Alaska, Alaskan Natives no less, some of the most vulnerable populations imaginable, are largely dependent on government largess.
Now my fellow Democrats want to reduce the very food these people harvest from the land as they have been doing for millenia uncounted. It simply defies belief.
Today there are maybe 140,000 rural Alaskan Natives. Most all of them depend to a greater or lesser extent on meat from caribou and moose they harvest to eat. Studies show up to 90% of Alaskan Native populations depend on wild meat for food.
Aldo Leopold gave us the scientific tools to manage wildlife populations, and he advocated us doing so. Leopold also advocated predator management, in fact he wrote a whole chapter on the very subject in which he called those who demand no predator management to be just as unscientific as those who would have us eradicate all predators.
Wolves have long been known to require roughly 20 large ungulates per year per wolf, less well known but recently quantified is that grizzly bears in Alaska kill an average of 34 moose or caribou calves during the period when the animals are most vulnerable. Reducing predator numbers increases the populations of edible wildlife exponentially, and reducing predator populations is exactly what Alaskan Natives have done for thousands of years.
For “the indigenous Athabascan Indians – the Koyukun, Ingalik, Tanana, Kutchin, Tanaina, Ahtena and Han people,” the National Research Council’s Committee on Management of Wolf and Bear Populations in Alaska observed in a 1997 report, “the overriding objective of wildlife management…was to reduce predator populations to allow for growth or maintenance of strong prey populations.”
Says Alaskan writer Craig Medred in an article on the very subject called Natural Born Killers which first alerted me to this issue.
The wildlife of Alaska belongs to the people of the state of Alaska, not to you or I. Alaska under agreement with the US government at statehood manages the wildlife on it’s vast wildlife refuges where so many subsistence hunters get their meat. All that changed recently under pressure from well meaning but uninformed bunny hugging groups here in the lower 48. The senate recently voted along party lines to restore management authority to the state of Alaska.
I understand how a Democratic senator would look at the issue. A yes vote would lose them the support of bunny huggers, a no vote would lose them none, as there are no Alaskan subsistence hunters in the lower 48. A small minority of wealthy hunting tourists might be affected though I’d guess they would want more grizzlies not less.
I’ve recently read 3 angst filled uninformed diaries here at DK on this very subject, and to what end, to regurgitate what are often untrue “facts” about why the senate felt a need to right a wrong. To me the issue epitomizes what is wrong with the Democratic Party of late, voting to appease the feelings of an uninformed small subset of voters who have nothing better to do with themselves than to inject their opinions on something they know nothing about. Are you an Alaskan Native Subsistence hunter? No? Well neither am I, how about we let them decide what is best for themselves.
And what of the vote of Alaskan Natives? They still need welfare to survive yet we take the food from their mouths and denigrate their culture. Tough call. I’d say it doesn’t do our Democratic Party any good.