CHRIS_APASSINGOK CULLEN DANIEL_APASSINGOK EVAN_STRASSBURG INA_KOONOOKA JAMEY_JOSEPH JODY JOEL_JACKO NALU QUANNAH_CHASINGHORSE TIG TIG Jump up there, hold the rope for me, Evan. EVAN STRASSBURG Okay. TIG Ooh, coming in hot. Oh. Pull it. Good job. You gotta hold it tight now. It's moose season so today I'm heading up the Alatna River with my son Evan and my nephew Guno. Your rifle and ammo. Put it in that one spot and we'll load them after. Guno, he's about 9, 10 years old. I'm not totally sure, I think he's 9. Catch, Guno. I don't really go by the age; I go by their size and he's totally big enough to start packing around a rifle and doing this type of stuff. Just trying to toughen them up. TIG Check this out you boys. TIG Holy cow. TIG Look how long that hair is. See that? EVAN STRASSBURG Yeah. CULLEN What's that? TIG What is it? TIG That's Daa?tl'edze hair. TIG Bear hair. I would say these are bite marks. See his fangs right here. EVAN STRASSBURG Jeez. TIG We're not the only ones out here looking for moose. This time of the year, the grizzlies, you know, they're trying to put away some meat. Put on some more fat before they head to the den. They're hunting, the black bears are hunting, the wolves are hunting. Everything's out here trying to get some food, trying to get a nice fat moose. You keep an eye on these banks. Any moment this whole hunt can change. It'll go from zero to a hundred just like that. Kind of a slow day then, boom. TIG You guys gotta learn these calls. EVAN STRASSBURG Is that good? TIG Uh-huh. EVAN STRASSBURG Okay. TIG You can hear the echo back there. Evan, he knows a lot about the woods but there's always something new to learn. Good job Guno. We'll go do our thing today. It kinda spoils your luck when you say you're going out hunting. It's just not what we do in the Athabaskan culture. Instead, we would say, you know, I'm just gonna go camp with my boys. You know, see what's out there. When you guys step, pick your feet up. Don't drag your feet through out. Pick it up. You put your heal down first. Then it's quiet. These animals, they can hear you. They know what's going on. They know you're coming out and they're looking for you. TIG I'm just out here trying to show you boys. TIG How to get around in the woods. TIG Be aware of everything out here. See that moose knocked this tree down. EVAN STRASSBURG Oh, yeah? TIG Knocked this tree over. Busted this all up. There's one around here. You can see the signs. NALU Where we are is, uh, tiny little island in the Bering Sea. Weather changes in a blink of an eye, you never know what's gonna happen. DANIEL APASSINGOK Just need thirty feet of it, huh? DANIEL APASSINGOK Six, twelve. Fifteen feet right here. CHRIS APASSINGOK Gonna be going out fishing today but, uh, with my sister and girlfriend. CHRIS APASSINGOK The weather's getting nice out, so all the salmon going up right now. DANIEL APASSINGOK Yeah, that's good, right there. It's a short season for fishing so everybody gets excited. DANIEL APASSINGOK I'm not really a big fisherman myself, personally. I'm gonna tell you the truth. I don't have too much patience for it but my boys and my daughter, you know. Oh, you want to go fishing. Fine by me. NALU We eat a lot of seal and walrus on the island and it's good to be catching fish during the summertime. NALU Have something different to taste. DANIEL APASSINGOK Hope you guys catch a fish. NALU Bye you. DANIEL APASSINGOK Bye you. NALU It's a long trip to the river. CHRIS APASSINGOK We're gonna be going seventeen miles down the coast. CHRIS APASSINGOK And that lagoon is called, Naayvaghpak. CHRIS APASSINGOK And, uh, the river, we're gonna be going to is called Iqalugsik. NALU Let's set the net up. CHRIS APASSINGOK I have always, uh, set the net here. We're looking to get about, uh, fifteen, twenty fish. NALU Good? Okay. The way we do it in the river is, we grab a net and one of us goes to the other side and we pull the net through the river. NALU In English we call is Seining. NALU And in Yup'ik it's called Aghqella. Right there, Agra? CHRIS APASSINGOK Little bit more. INA KOONOOKA Right here? CHRIS APASSINGOK Okay, make a straight. Pull it in. NALU You want that wrapped to weigh it down. CHRIS APASSINGOK Yeah. NALU Heavy. We're gonna leave it here for maybe a couple hours. Maybe we'll get lucky. JODY Using the same trails our ancestors did with my kids. It's a really powerful living connection. This is where we come from. JODY Quan, look at all these green blueberries. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE Really? I was looking at these cute little raspberries. JODY Yeah, we'll probably find some. JODY My daughter, Quannah is a top international model. She's also done a lot of work as a land protector and in climate justice. She travels a lot and gets really home sick. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE This place is so magical. JODY We're here to be on our ancestral lands and harvest some really high-quality medicines. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE To be in my homelands is very special. JODY Caribou trails. This is where the fortymile caribou herd migrate through. And I think a small part of them just came through recently. You can see all their fresh tracks from a few days ago. This is, uh, part of their normal migration route except they're here early. Their migration has been changing. You know, a lot of variables. Outside hunters on four-wheelers chasing after caribou herd. Climate change. Yeah, I could smell caribou the other day. JODY Like, 'cause they were so freshly in here you know. Now I can't really smell them. This is a trail that our ancestors used and the caribou use and my family used to get us into these mountains where we trapped and hunted. It's so important for me to bring my kids home to this place. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE I definitely needed to reconnect and rejuvenate myself here. I think you can see a little moose. JODY Yeah, a little cow and a baby calf. JAMEY JOSEPH Yeah. Truckin' right along, huh? JODY I love seeing 'em. Even though it's not caribou open season, uh, there's still a lot of plant medicines we can get from here in the mountains. So, we'll pick a bag full. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE Let's go do this, then. JOEL JACKO Living out here, most people think it's probably hard when you're just trying to survive. But I thrive living out here. JOEL JACKO Summer is here. The fish are trickling in. We get all these salmon here. JOEL JACKO I'm gonna try to run across the lake and set my net cause that's usually where the fish come up first. I'm gonna try to get this thing all untangled from last year and make sure it's still somewhat intact. They kind of take a beating over the years, especially with the bears pulling them up. Then the seals pull fish outta the net, but they tear it up pretty good too when they're doing that. There's a bear sized hole. The abundance of fish brings an abundance of bears. Kind of a big problem 'cause they're eating the salmon out of your fishing nets. Well, there's a couple little holes but there's nothing really to worry about. I guess I'll, uh, I'll tie the buoy on then we'll throw it in the boat and get outta here. Pedro Bay is actually a great place for subsistence because our large salmon run and this is kinda where all the salmon end up. Salmon are really only catchable for about a month before the meat gets too white to really eat. A pretty small window to get all your shopping done for the year. I'm looking for twenty to forty fish today. The last year was actually a record run for salmon in Pedro Bay. Supposed to be even more this year. The salmon will feed you all year. And that's another goal, especially this month just put up as many fish you want for the year. It's just me and Tracker and so, you know, I kinda got to put up fish for Tracker too. There's a bear swimming across the channel right here. Coming off the island looks like. JOEL JACKO Looks like a net puller-inner. Troublemaker. Little guys the ones you gotta worry about too. They don't have any fear of people. Good dog, you showed him. Showed him who's boss. Tracker was freaking out, gonna get em'. Gonna get em'. It's probably looking for fish. It might be the bear that's pulling on people's nets, I don't know. He'll leave our net alone. I think you could have taken him, Tracker. TIG These past years, since my boys were young. I put them in a lot of work with them. I don't want them to be as a good hunter as me. I want them to be better hunter than me. TIG Be quiet. Sitting right here, being quiet. TIG This is the toughest part of moose hunting, is just patience. I remember being a kid. TIG I didn't have no patience for this type of stuff. TIG That's just something I had to work on for years. EVAN STRASSBURG Do you hear that? TIG What? EVAN STRASSBURG Thought I heard like a branch snap back that way. TIG You guys hear anything? We just head back to the boat. I know there's a good look out point about eight, nine miles upriver. DANIEL APASSINGOK Providing out here, you have to be flexible with each season. You put, nature provides. DANIEL APASSINGOK Just one mark. DANIEL APASSINGOK We're gonna build a smoker today. My, uh, son just got back from the Iqalugsik River. Hopefully, be smoking some salmon, so we can have something over the winter. Oh. It's gonna be for the, uh, sides and top, huh? DANIEL APASSINGOK Gotta try to catch as much as possible within the few weeks of, uh, summer we have out here. DANIEL APASSINGOK Fish is hard to get out there. Even having a smoker's kinda hard. The weather is pretty harsh out there so gotta try to build them almost every year. DANIEL APASSINGOK [speaking Akuzipik] Taawa. All done. Ready to rock. I'll, uh, put a couple racks in there. All we need is fish. CHRIS APASSINGOK Gotta have a subsistence lifestyle way to live out here. We eat from the sea. From the birds. Not really other ways to, uh, get food around here. Salmon only comes once a year and, uh, gotta try and the time they come around. NALU Ugh. CHRIS APASSINGOK Argh. NALU Come on fish. You see anything? CHRIS APASSINGOK No, nothing. Absolutely nothing. NALU Set our first net and we weren't catching anything. CHRIS APASSINGOK Yeah. We'll just keep going upriver until we get the salmon. Pretty much a small window. Hopefully, we'll get some salmon. TIG I see my boys, they're gonna be another steppingstone for our culture. That's all I am and that's what I'm passing down to my sons. TIG It's a little torn up. TIG All right, you guys, keep an eye on it. EVAN STRASSBURG Okay. TIG Gotta look around when you're coming up the bank. It might be from grizzlies, you know. This is your Grandma Christine's cabin. Door is still locked. Holy cow. EVAN STRASSBURG [inaudible] TIG Damn. Squirrels came in. If it was a bear, it'd be demolished in here. Start picking stuff up, grab a trash bag. TIG We've been having some tough luck all fall. We haven't really seen very many moose. The story I was told when I was a kid is everybody's got a bag that they carry around with them. And inside that bag is your luck. And all year, you're supposed to work on that luck and add to it. Put a little bit here and there. Helping somebody out. Paying it forward. Little squirrel never hurt nobody. Well, let's get this wood stacked up. The more we do, better chance we will have. EVAN STRASSBURG It is very important to me to get better luck 'cause I love hunting and I love seeing stuff. EVAN STRASSBURG It just gives joy to me and excitement. TIG Already looking nicer, boys. EVAN STRASSBURG We should play in that place. TIG My late brother came down by himself and he built this little cache style house. It's kinda like a little tree house, the kids like it now. Yeah, that's what my late brother made right there. EVAN STRASSBURG This is called the boys club. No girls allowed. CULLEN They always get mad. CULLEN Mad, mad, mad. TIG Boys, come on. Let's go. Get your life jacket. All right boys, I feel a lot better about leaving camp. You know, we left it a little better than what we found it. So, I feel like, you know, we added some good luck to our bag. I feel, you know, we have a better chance of seeing something out there now. Let's hope and pray we see something on the way home boys. JODY Some of the best medicine is just being out on the land. Going to these places gives me strength. JODY Here's a perfect patch we can pick. JODY It is important time and opportunity for harvesting medicines and our tea's. JODY All the plants are really doing well. JODY We just got a bunch of fresh rains. Don't, um, pick anything where Tank lifts his leg. Get outta here Tank! JODY The plant we're picking is called jalaki. We make tea with it and it's really, has a good flavor. It's kinda almost minty, yeah? QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE Uh-hmm. JODY We can find it in the low lands but it's really the best quality found up in the high mountains. It's good for just overall wellness. It's like the most popular tea for our people. It has a long list of benefits. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE Smells super good. When I think of medicine, I think of plant medicines first. 'Cause this is what nurtures me. This is what's healing into me. It's overall wellness. JODY This is our pharmacy and, you know, the healing begins by coming here to this place. How much better does it get in the world? I mean look at this. JOEL JACKO My family is originally from this area. They've been here thousands of years. I'm very grateful to still be able to do the traditional subsistence out here. JOEL JACKO Ho. JOEL JACKO So this is, uh, Durants Cove. JOEL JACKO We're kinda on the edge of the lake so the salmon have to swim up the side usually and they gotta go right around this point. So, it's usually a good spot to get them when they're first getting in. The way the wind is right now, it's pretty good for catching fish 'cause it hides the net. If it's flat calm the fish can see the net and they'll just swim around it but. I think this'll be pretty good today. Setting the net by yourself when it's blowing makes this, um, a little interesting usually. I'm all by myself this year. Usually, I have a couple people helping me. Tracker, you coming? Oh, good dog. Tracker's gonna help throw the net. Well, he would if he had thumbs. So, he'll just watch. He's just gonna watch. So, the most difficult part is usually setting the net when you're by yourself. 'Cause you're trying to, like, back the boat up and then, like, throw the net out at the same time. And, uh, you know, and the mesh on the net is really fragile so if it gets caught on something it'll rip and so it's, it's a little bit of a struggle trying to do it by yourself. Get in the back. Not ideal, I'd have to say. I don't want to catch a whole bunch of fish. Twenty to forty, I think. Forty would definitely be my max. 'Cause it's a number I can handle. Once I catch fish, you're on a timeline for sure. You gotta get the fish processed, you gotta get 'em hung. Can be a long day once I start catching fish. Oh, they're hitting. JOEL JACKO Hey, there's, like, a whole school just went in there. That's gotta be 20 right there, at least. I just dropped the net in like a minute ago. That was, uh, a little bit unexpected. Might even pull the net in. Okay, ah. Hey. Ah, ah, ah. Yeah. Usually, I have to set the net overnight to get 20 fish this early. They're saying it's a record year, and I think I, uh, I believe them now. That took 10 minutes to do all my fishing. Thanks for the help, Tracker. We have a lot of work to do. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE We have everything we could possibly need out here. Take care of the land and the land will take care of you. JODY Well, we have this last little bit. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE This is always the hardest part. JODY On the top of these mountains we have these ancient rock piles as a sighting point to stay on the trail. We're gonna go honor our ancestors by visiting there. JAMEY JOSEPH Huh, pointed right towards Eagle, huh? JODY You could tell this was not a native hunter. They sawed the antlers off, out here. Left the skull. We would take the skull for the meat. I'm gonna move this down. I like to honor our ancestors and this place and our traditional lands by adding a rock to the pile. To signify to our ancestors that we're still here. Everything they fought for, for future generations, we're still here. Pretty powerful, huh? Our ancestors touched these rocks down here when they made this. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE I was just literally thinking that. JODY Yeah. Yep. JAMEY JOSEPH Special. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE This place is very untouched by the world. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE Being in the city. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE There's not anything to connect to. But when here, I don't have to feel like I'm searching for some kind of connection. But I know I really needed this 'cause I've been really grieving the land and being separated from it. It's really hard. JODY A really healing feeling to be here with my daughter at a place where your ancestors are so strong. We're so lucky to be born H�n Gwich'in and have this connection to place because it really improved my quality of life. It really gives me a strong sense of belonging and connectiveness. Even though we are small in numbers compared to what we used to be as H�n people. We're still here and these places, these animals, this way of life is still important to us. TIG We're not gonna have luck all the time. You can plan, prepare for it but not everything's gonna work out the way you want it. TIG You boys ready? EVAN STRASSBURG Yeah. CULLEN Yeah. TIG You boys outta be looking around. TIG Gotta watch behind the willows. TIG All you'll see is their tops of their antlers. We're traveling down the river. TIG Moose, they like islands, they're usually around islands. TIG But we can't know exactly where they're gonna be. TIG Any bend in the river, the whole outlook of our trip can change. I'm thinking of the bag of luck I got. TIG Cow moose. TIG She's right there. When there's a cow like that, there's usually a bull around. TIG Give 'em a second until they run to the other side. TIG We gotta go around this island. TIG Shoot those trees, Evan. Try and scare 'em back over to the other side. We'll go around this island again. TIG Get ready to land. TIG Just hold on for a second, all right? TIG You see him? EVAN STRASSBURG Yes. TIG Shoot him! TIG Call him. EVAN STRASSBURG Come on! TIG Come on. Good job, my boy. TIG [speaking Denaakk'e] Baasee'. EVAN STRASSBURG [speaking Denaakk'e] Baasee'. TIG All right. We're gonna have to figure this out, boys. We sure couldn't have gotten in a tighter spot then this. It's late right now, once we get those guts out and head off, it's gonna be perfectly find for the night. We'll come back up in the morning, pack him out, easy peasy. Good job, my boy, proud of you. EVAN STRASSBURG Thank you. TIG Come here Guno, good job. EVAN STRASSBURG It felt pretty good. Really excited that I seen the bull drop one shot. TIG Seeing my son drop it with one shot in his first try is a good feeling but I am a little jealous. It took me years and years and many moose before I finally dropped it with one shot. That darn guy. EVAN STRASSBURG What's that smell? TIG This time of the year, they start. TIG Making a strong smell. If you don't open the guts and spill them that night, cooling the moose off. They will spoil. I'm gonna have to hustle and get these guts out, try and make it back to camp before it gets too dark on us. Push it. TIG Come on, boys. TIG Come on, Guno. TIG Now we split him. Inside the guts, you know, there's the kidneys. There's the viable fat. There's the heart. There's the fat intestine. There's lots of good parts inside the guts that we keep and bring home and eat. EVAN STRASSBURG Jeez, what's that? CULLEN The heart. EVAN STRASSBURG Whoa. Okay, that's a big heart. TIG Uh-hmm. CULLEN We have a much smaller heart. TIG For myself, there's not a whole lot of excitement anymore taking down a moose. I've done it year after year. Where I do get the excitement is seeing my son and my nephew, they're super excited. This is huge for them; it brings that excitement back to me. I remember how excited I used to be when I was their age and how amazing it was. All right got the hardest part done. So, let's grab our stuff and vamoose. And we'll be back tomorrow and get the meat. JOEL JACKO Poor fish, swam 10,000 miles , dodged all the commercial fisherman in Bristol Bay. Dodged the whales, the seals, the bears. Only to get caught in my net at the very end. Almost made it. JOEL JACKO All right, I think I got like 25 fish or something, which is just like perfect. JOEL JACKO I'm gonna make a little pen right here, so I can get them in the water and so they don't float way. Perfect. Bunch of these are not even for me, they're for my dad and my mom. They kept me alive, fed me for 18 years. I can toss them some fish. I will salt eggs for this winter, for ice fishing. Then I'll keep the bones for the dog so we're pretty much using the whole fish, except the guts. All right left the tail on, we're gonna smoke this. That's for me, that's for the bear, that's for the dog. You know, this big salmon run that we get, it's one of the few self-sustaining food sources. And a lot of the, the salmon fishing around Alaska's been restricted 'cause the, you know, the runs weren't big enough. I mean it's definitely global warming. The overfishing, it's messing up the salmon runs process. Subsistence salmon fishing in Alaska is super important. A lot of places wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the salmon. Just cultural wise, it'd be a big shock just to not be able to put up salmon. It's gonna change a lot of people's lives. You know, respecting the land, respecting the fish is a big thing out here. It's good to take what you need and not just to take to take. Twenty-five fish was the good number to start with. I'm definitely done, I don't want to cut any more fish today. Yeah, I still got quite a few things to do. Not really all the way there yet. Too many fish is, you know is a good problem to have. Especially this early in the year. It's great. CHRIS APASSINGOK Kinda cool to be going out there without my parents. Keeping the tradition alive. CHRIS APASSINGOK You gotta go that way. NALU We decided to move upriver where it was more narrow and. NALU A little bit more shallow. CHRIS APASSINGOK I need to grab a rock for you. Just keep going. INA KOONOOKA Which deep part? CHRIS APASSINGOK Yeah, the deep part is right along right there. CHRIS APASSINGOK Now Ina, straighten it. CHRIS APASSINGOK On one of those rocks. I gonna be walking upriver, trying to get the fish towards the net. They're already here hiding under the. NALU Grass? CHRIS APASSINGOK Grass. NALU Hook right there, right there. CHRIS APASSINGOK Oh, right there. INA KOONOOKA Look there they are. CHRIS APASSINGOK Oh, NALU Oh, INA KOONOOKA There were super lots. King salmon! CHRIS APASSINGOK Yeah. You can pull it up on that side. NALU They're here, they're running. We're gonna bring the net upriver and see if maybe one more time. And then we'll be good to go. You know, we catch some fish for ourselves but we're also providing for other family members. So, a lot of its gonna go in the smoker and some of its gonna go to our family, our grandparents. They're too old to be fishing themselves. We're the young generation and when we go out fishing it's fun and we're keeping tradition alive and it's something we love to do. Oh, that one's pretty. CHRIS APASSINGOK All right. NALU One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Just like that. What you gonna do, you gonna filet them right now? CHRIS APASSINGOK There's eggs in here. NALU Oh. CHRIS APASSINGOK Yeah. Look at all that eggs, man. NALU Oh, beautiful. We found Nemo. Pretty meat. CHRIS APASSINGOK Whoa. We got a full smoker. NALU Yeah. Today's been a good day. CHRIS APASSINGOK Fresh meat. NALU Ready to go home? CHRIS APASSINGOK Yeah. NALU [speaking Akuzipik] Aatakqun! JODY My secret recipe, on the trail chicken soup. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE It's nostalgic for me every time I have it 'cause I only have it on the trail. JODY Uh-hmm. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE I've had it since I was little, so I always think about like the fun times that you had me and the boys. JODY It sure hit's the spot when you're hiking all day. Yeah, it's just really, refuels ya. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE While I'm out here one thing that my mom really instilled in me was really recognizing how powerful we are as women. If we approach a lot of these issues that we have today with indigenous sovereignty with that matriarchal mindset of never taking more than is needed and always giving back. We wouldn't have a lot of issues that we have today. We wouldn't have to fight so hard for environmental justice. Us as women deserve a voice. While I was drinking this tea, I was saying my little prayer to myself. Just appreciating being here. This is the exact type of medicine I need, you know, for me to be able to do the things I need to do for work. I really needed it. JODY There's never any place like home. CHRIS APASSINGOK Yeah, you do the salmon we got and, uh, we're gonna be fileting 'em. NALU Not many people around the world can do what we do. A lot of people go to the store and pick up what they need. Here we make it ourselves. We know where our food is coming from and it's not factory food and it's not processed. It's all from land and sea. It's our traditional lifestyle. We have been doing this for many years and it's passed down to us from our parents, and from their parents, and one day we'll pass it on to our own. Our kids, their kids, gotta keep it alive. CHRIS APASSINGOK Your brothers, sisters, cousins. Former roommate. NALU Going fishing with my brother keeps us close and as family but he's still annoying as hell. JOEL JACKO So, this is the cache I built this last fall. It started out as a cache and I kinda modified it to make it a smokehouse. Cause I didn't want to worry about the bears eating my fish. So, I'll get these in there and we'll get the fire lit and call it a night, it's been a long day. Even Tracker's tired. Ingenious. This is my pulley system I put in when I built the cache, just for this purpose. So I didn't have to pull these buckets up by hand on the ladder. This is kinda of like the final step cause after I get them in here all I have to do is keep the fire going. Today, I've just been going nonstop, working my butt of to get all these fish in there and once they're in there, they just sit there for like two weeks. Weird little system we got but you know, it's worked for hundreds of years so, we'll keep doing it. I'm gonna get this fire lit and we'll start smoking. Well, that's pretty good for a day of ten minutes of fishing, I guess. I mean it's pretty impressive you can go out in one day, couple hours later you're hopping in the smokehouse. This is like one of the few places in the world you can even do this. All right for the next, uh, basically for the next two weeks, this things gotta keep burning and the smoke pumping in there. First batch of fishes, smoking, it's good. It's been a long fourteen-hour day, it's totally worth it to get those fish in there. CHRIS APASSINGOK Agh. Gonna eat a sandy fish. INA KOONOOKA Dinner dinner. NALU Winner winner, chicken dinner. CHRIS APASSINGOK My girlfriend and, uh, sister makes the trip a lot funner. Ah, put it on the wood. NALU Mm. Real good over the fire, huh? CHRIS APASSINGOK It's not always about the fishing and hunting you know. It's always a good time to spend, uh with your friends and family out in the tundra. NALU Guys, smile. INA KOONOOKA Forever. TIG He was good through the night. TIG Nothing got to him. CULLEN But we got to him. TIG You're right my nephew. Something did get to him, Evan. Evan got to him. It does feel real good to see my boys grow up and being able to do a lot of this. I do miss them being little boys, but that's just the way life is. EVAN STRASSBURG I'm ready to eat this boy already. TIG We're gonna eat good. Just have to go home now. Feels real good to finally have some luck this season. The whole family is gonna be happy. It's not enough to feed all of us throughout the winter but you know, we gonna have a little more than what we had yesterday. All right my boy, see if you can pick that bad boy up. Use your legs. All right you got him, bring him to the four-wheeler now. Go. EVAN STRASSBURG I can't. TIG So good. EVAN STRASSBURG Jeez. TIG You gotta raise these kids to be the best people that they can. I feel that Evan, he has a good start, he's gonna be a real good person. EVAN STRASSBURG It feels pretty good to get the first moose for the season for our family because I get to feed them. TIG Hello uncle. DANIEL APASSINGOK Hey. TIG My boy shot moose. You got him? EVAN STRASSBURG Yeah. TIG All right go ahead, go in first. Watch your foot. EVAN STRASSBURG My dad is teaching me about our culture. Respect nature, respect elders, respect the land. CHRIS APASSINGOK I feel our responsibility it has to be carried on. NALU I don't know what the future holds but it up to us, the younger generation to keep our culture alive. QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE Seeing younger generations practice their culture. Bring back practices that were almost completely erased through colonization is what keeps me hopeful. Our people have been not listened to, not heard, not seen. But we're changing that. [SNAP-IN] JOEL JACKO Almost a little typical for, for Pedro Bay. More fish than you want. Faster than you want 'em. Hopefully I can get all these fish in the smokehouse, by myself, before it gets dark. Salt gives it a nice little salty flavor. It also keeps the flies from laying eggs in there. Back in the day they didn't have salt. They didn't even salt it. There was no salt. Where would you get salt from? So their fish was super plain. This is a little more contemporary, I mean for the last hundred years at least. Seems to work out pretty good, so I'll keep on doing it. There's my last guy. We'll let this sit for about 25-30 minutes then we'll hang it on the racks. So, the racks are for letting the slime drip off the fish before you put it in the smokehouse. Greatly improves the flavor of the fish. Agh, Tracker. I was kinda self-taught putting up fish. I didn't pay enough attention I think when I was a child, when my parents were doing fish. I actually did put up fish with my older brother one time. We put up a bunch of fish in the smokehouse. The bear got in there a couple days later and the fish were so bad that the bear wouldn't eat it. You know, obviously I couldn't learn uh, from him. I moved back here, and I then I wanted to do fish. But I had figured out 'cause I had no idea what to do and so I kinda had to go and talk to all the elders in town and figure out how everyone did it. And then you know I kinda adapted it to my own little technique. And it's actually worked really good and I feel like I have some of the best fish around, too. All right that's it. I'm gonna give them a couple hours, let the slime drip off. Then we'll throw them in the smokehouse and that'll be it. We'll be definitely working into the dark tonight, with all this.