AMIYA_STRASSBURG ASHER_ULROAN BOY JOEL_JACKO JOHN_PINGAYAK JOHN_SONNA_BOY_PINGAYAK_III KIDS LAWRENCE MARVIN_AGNOT SOPHIE_STRASSBURG STEVEN_TIG_STRASSBURG TERESA_PINGAYAK JOEL JACKO I formulated a plan last night. What I'm gonna do is climb up this tree, cut the top off. Make a notch for the windmill mount and then bolt it on and then I'll have to go up again with the windmill and actually set the windmill in place. The windmills gonna be a little higher than the house also so, kinda the best scenario. I think the winds gonna be pretty consistent. Basically, I'm at the stage of my house where I need more power. The days are so short in the wintertime, there's almost no way you can keep up with just solar and wind is pretty much my only other option. I'll just climb up, strap in and then I can pull the chainsaw up, cut the branches. Climb up a little more, cut the branches and just keep doing that on the way up there. Man, I don't like this. I mean I have this very thin rope holding me up and if the rope breaks, then I'm basically just falling straight to the ground. With climbing the tree, now I'm putting myself in danger. JOEL JACKO Whoa, da. JOEL JACKO Ugh. Come on! JOEL JACKO Oh. Ah. I was making sure my line didn't get nicked by the chainsaw otherwise I'll be taking the quick way down. JOEL JACKO I'm not trying to erect anything; I'm trying to build something on top of something else. It just creates a whole other set of challenges. I don't like being, uh, married to this, seems super dangerous. It's, I'm almost there now though, I'm almost to the spot where I want to cut it off. I'm just not enjoying any of this so far. Since the beginning of me building this house, it's been the goal to be self-sustainable. That's also another thing I love about living out here you know, you have to do it your way, you just have to figure it out. Woo, oh. All right. It was not fun, but it's done now and that's all that matters. Just have to still get the windmill up here. MARVIN AGNOT I'm out on a good solo day. MARVIN AGNOT Heading up to Olga Bay before the storm comes. I've been going to this spot all my life, with the high mountains there a lot of protection from the winds. MARVIN AGNOT I've had enough king crab all winter, so I want to. MARVIN AGNOT Try tanner crab, cause I don't eat them both at the same time. It's either one or the other and this time it's tanner. When I go to Olga Bay and set the crab pots it brings back a lot of memories of especially my dad. That's where we always set the crab pots growing up. My dad worked as a fisherman, and he was pretty smart. Coming right up here on to the beach and grab the crab pot. That's why we leave them up here because bringing them back and forth from our village is a lot of extra hauling. To live out here in Akhiok to make it easy for yourself, you have to be self-reliant. It's about being about being able to put food on the table. Trapping it by myself is pretty easy, pulling might be a little different. We used to pull the skiffs apart and pull the crab pot over the bow. That's twice the gas, twice the manpower. So that's why I bought a new hauler. Putting my stuff together for my skiff for becoming more self-sufficient. Okay. Up here in Olga Bay you know, I'm still using my old ways. All right. Growing up with my dad we just used landmarks to drop your crab pot, mountain or something on the beach. I'm gonna drop my pot right here. I think it might be about forty fathoms. I want it as deep as it can be around here cause that's where the crab are. If you miss that honey hole by fifty feet to a hundred feet , you end up with nothing. Let it fish for a couple days. When I come back up, I'll have a hauler and should be pretty easy to pull up, I hope. ASHER ULROAN Come on fishy, fishy. TERESA PINGAYAK Come on fish, I'm here. Teresa's here. TERESA PINGAYAK So, you better get busy, wake up and start biting. TERESA PINGAYAK Right now, we are a five-hour trip south of Chevak. TERESA PINGAYAK The Mud Volcanoes are a special place for me. TERESA PINGAYAK A beautiful place that we don't see all the time. JOHN PINGAYAK I like variety of fish, not just one black fish all the time you know? And the pike is, uh, really good to have. ASHER ULROAN Aana, can we switch now? TERESA PINGAYAK Just be patient Asher. We have our two grandsons, Sonna Boy and Asher. When I fish bites you, don't pull it up right away. You wait till they swallow it. ASHER ULROAN Okay. ASHER ULROAN What if there's no pike here? TERESA PINGAYAK Well, you gotta talk to them. ASHER ULROAN I don't speak their language. TERESA PINGAYAK John and I truly believe that doing things together as a family is so much more rewarding than doing things by ourselves. This trip, that's what makes it special. Where are you fish? TERESA PINGAYAK [speaking Cup'ik language] Ala! Ala! Ala! Ala! TERESA PINGAYAK [speaking Cup'ik language] Ala ala ala wanigga! JOHN PINGAYAK All right! TERESA PINGAYAK [speaking Cup'ik language] Aalii! TERESA PINGAYAK [speaking Cup'ik language] Yay, quyana ampi cali! Cali! [speaking English] See Asher, they're here. The fish are here. It's a perfect size. There's something about getting fish from the Mud Volcanoes. They seem to be bigger than the normal pike we catch from other places. Okay, here it comes. JOHN PINGAYAK All right! TERESA PINGAYAK Yay! If we get extra fish, it's usually for you know some other households too, other families and our girls. JOHN PINGAYAK Got a bite, Teresa. TERESA PINGAYAK [speaking Cup'ik language] Oh, aalii ala quyana. [speaking English] Now to catch some more. Come on fish. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Where we going today, baby? SOPHIE STRASSBURG We're gonna go beaver trapping. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Beaver snaring. Yeah. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG There's a difference between trapping and snaring. A trap, goes like that. A snare slides around the neck. Since we didn't get any moose, we're gonna try for some beaver. Beaver sound good, nice fat meat. We gonna have fun baby? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Yeah. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG All right. Have fun and learn something. All right, load up. Let's get outta here. Pretty darn windy today baby. You all set there, baby? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Yeah. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG All right, let's go. Woo. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Where I'm bringing Sophie, it's a trap line I haven't really used before, I know it's there. I'm just finally starting to learn it. I'm excited to go out there and see what's in store for us. This is a beaver house right here, see? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Yeah. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG This little mound. This one is a pretty good size. They probably worked on this one for a good ten, fifteen years you know. A house this size they might have ten beavers in there. SOPHIE STRASSBURG I like eating beaver meat. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Uh-hmm. You see these tracks baby? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Yeah. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG See something was dragging these spruce bows down there. I've never seen anything drag spruce bows. It's kinda got me stumped. I've seen a lot of stuff in these woods, but I've never seen this. The only thing I can think is a wolverine killed something and he's cutting these spruce bows to hide it. But I have no idea, I've never seen a wolverine, or any animal do nothing like this. Let's go see if we can get out there, investigate. I'm curious now. Deep snow baby. Be careful, we don't know what that is. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Okay. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Oh! SOPHIE STRASSBURG That's a hole! [COMMERCIAL BREAK] SOPHIE STRASSBURG Dad? STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Huh? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Why is there a hole? STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG It looked like it was a muskrat house. See all this moss? That's from the muskrats. That's where the beaver had to come out and get his food. So, this is telling me that the beaver is pretty darn hungry, and the spring is gonna be long. I heard elders tell me about it before, I've never actually seen it first-hand where a beaver did come out and get more food. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Dad look, blood. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Where? Hey, no kidding. He must have hurt his mouth when he was chewing through ice in there. This beaver, he knows stuff that we don't know. He knows that you know, it's gonna be another maybe month before he can get out. These lakes open up and he can get out and get some more food. And obviously his food supply isn't enough to last him another month, so he has to come out and get himself some more food and that's what they're doing right here. Come on baby. Watch your foot, there might be another hole in here. But, that's a good sign, beavers are out here baby. By no means am I a master beaver trapper. It's probably one of my favorite animals to eat but it's a lot of hard work and I've never ever really gotten very good at it. Some seasons, I don't even catch a beaver. Even though you know, it's a struggle for me I gotta continue on and do it for my children. But you know, they all seem a lot smarter than I was at their age and so on. She was already gonna pick it up a lot faster than me. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Hey dad, I see water. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG I got through the first layer of ice which was the over flow ice. Now there's another layer underneath it. Just trying to get down to the main ice. Woo, heavy stuff. It's a hard animal to trap. You gotta be skilled in doing it and you gotta know how to set the snares properly, set the bait properly. Twist this around real good, make sure that beaver don't go nowhere if we catch one. This is the type of food beaver really like, they like this white birch. All right, let me see that one. SOPHIE STRASSBURG How long are you gonna set it for? STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Let's try overnight. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Okay. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Usually if I am gonna catch beaver it's gonna take about a week. But you gotta check it every day. Now I'm gonna wire that on so that way just in case he doesn't pull it underneath the ice. Sound good? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Yeah. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG All right. MARVIN AGNOT Today's a beautiful day. MARVIN AGNOT Here's my engine I was waiting for. Here I have my hydraulic tank which hooks up to my hydraulics and my hauler. I'm making it a little more easier for when I pull the crab pots. MARVIN AGNOT You can't pull it up by hand because it gets so heavy. Now with this, I can pretty much do this by myself. Well, what I should do before I get way ahead is mount my tanks down. I used parts from my old hauler to put this together. And I just had to make sure that the bolt holes line up. Tank is secure now, I'm gonna fire it up. Out here, you learn to improvise to make things work, otherwise you'll be stuck because you can't run to any store. Pretty fast, I'm pretty happy. Deadly. This new engine compared to my old one, it's already an improvement. Now that I got my hauler working, I'm pretty anxious to go up and test it out. And I'm very excited to go and try pulling the crab pot with the weight on it and see how it preforms. Real easy. Well, it seems nice and easy, until we do it, right? JOEL JACKO All right. JOEL JACKO Well, I got the tree ready for the pole. Windmills got to rotate all the way around the tree. JOEL JACKO And that's what I'm concerned about is it hitting the tree 'cause it's so thick 'cause it's supposed to be just be on a little pole. JOEL JACKO I got the tree limbed up, so it's somewhat easy to climb up and down. And now I basically have to create a flat surface to mount the new pole for the windmill. I'm gonna have to whittle the top of the tree down or something, I'm not sure. But I can't whittle too much down otherwise the tree's not gonna be strong enough to support the windmill. Super exciting to me 'cause it's actually like one of the biggest steps I feel like is just having your own power. One step closer to being self-sustainable out here. Man, I don't like that. I don't like to be reliant on this rope to keep me alive basically. And then you throw power tools in on top of that and it makes it worse. It's like death deifying to me, 'cause like all your faith is in this little rope like you have no control basically over this string holding you to the side of this tree. So, what I think I'll do is I'll put the, the pole just gonna get bolted just right onto this. That's why I needed a flat surface kinda. I'm gonna have to whittle this down some more so that the windmill can rotate, and the blades won't hit the tree. Oh, ! [COMMERCIAL BREAK] JOEL JACKO Almost unclipped myself there. My chainsaw handle was inside of my carabiner, it wasn't locked. And if I would have pulled it back out without looking my harness would have came unhooked. Feel like everything is getting sketchier and sketchier now. I am very scared up here; I don't want to be up here. I got the top of the tree kinda whittled down to where I kinda want it. Other than the fact that I'm afraid that I'm gonna fall to my death, the rest of it's actually going pretty well. Pretty plump surface to mount the pole to. Almost, almost there. Holy crap! It's blowing like a mother up here. Everything is difficult because I'm working at the top of a tree basically. If I was on the ground this obviously wouldn't be a problem. All right, I got the pole it's like super secure. It's actually better than I thought it was gonna be but, uh, I have no idea how I'm gonna get the windmill up there yet 'cause it's above my head. So, right now, I just want to get outta the tree. Perfect. And the windmill going up is the very last step of the puzzle. I think the hardest part is yet to come. ASHER ULROAN Got anything yet? TERESA PINGAYAK No, maybe that orange will give flavor to the water and all the fish will come. TERESA PINGAYAK The only fishing hole with an orange peel. TERESA PINGAYAK When there's no more food in the stores, you know where to get your food to eat. TERESA PINGAYAK And to survive. ASHER ULROAN When the stores are going to be nothing. ASHER ULROAN You could get fish right here. TERESA PINGAYAK Talk to the fish. ASHER ULROAN Come on fishy. ASHER ULROAN Fishy, fishy. TERESA PINGAYAK Oh, look at the fox. ASHER ULROAN I wanna go see. TERESA PINGAYAK No, you can't go near it. JOHN PINGAYAK You let it come. TERESA PINGAYAK Hi fox! When we leave our fishing holes to go home, we leave some of our bait for the foxes or the birds. We come to the land and take the fish and we gonna leave a little something for them too. It wasn't gonna hurt us, it was just curious. Hey, Sonna Boy. TERESA PINGAYAK I want you to go out and get some ptarmigan, so we can have a change of food and have that fresh meat in our house. Okay? Now go hunt. JOHN SONNA BOY PINGAYAK III Sounds good. TERESA PINGAYAK Thank you Sonna Boy. Good hunting. Food keeps the family together, 'cause we always share. Come on fish. And we help each other. JOHN SONNA BOY PINGAYAK III There's moose. Two cows and three calves. I certainly wasn't expecting to see moose, they just surprised me. Momma mooses are real dangerous and over protective of their calves. Think I'm just gonna turn around. I got work to do hunting for ptarmigan. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG That beaver house is right up here. SOPHIE STRASSBURG I hope we catch the beaver. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Just see if anything moved our poles, huh? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Yeah. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG There's two signs we gotta look for. If we see bubbles or movement on the pole. We'll pull it up make sure we didn't lose our bait. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Okay. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG A lot of times they come in and they steal my bait, so it's good to check it and make sure. The beaver goes a long ways you know. It goes from feeding my family to, you know we share some of the meat with the elders. It's really fat and heathy, rich food source, it tastes really good. The kids love it. During the winter they start asking me when we're gonna trap beaver. SOPHIE STRASSBURG It wiggled a bit. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG You think so? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Mm-hmm. There. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Oh, yeah, it does look like it. All right, I'll get the axe, chop him out. Sophie, she's getting a little older, a little bigger and able to withstand the climate out here. Be able to stay out in the woods a lot longer. And so, it's her chance, her turn to come up and start getting a little one-on-one time with dad. Okay I need a shovel, baby. Yup, scoop that snow out, throw it over on this side. It's gonna be heavy, don't try to get too much. It is very important I think for my children to start out right now at a young age. So later on, in life when they do go out and try this on their own, they're not gonna be blindsided by the amount of work it is. Be careful. When I was your big as I was scared of the beaver hole. Looks so dark and deep all the time. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Hey look, I see some fur. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Fur? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Mm-hmm. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG I don't know, I think that's grass baby. Hold them over there. All right, let's have a peak. Nope, didn't get our bait. [COMMERCIAL BREAK] STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG What? SOPHIE STRASSBURG A beaver! STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Holy cow you're right, baby! SOPHIE STRASSBURG Told you I saw fur. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Ha, you did see fur. I've never ever caught one overnight like that. Wow. We did it, baby. It's gotta be your luck, yeah. Sure, ain't my luck. You are my lucky charm. This is pretty damn exciting to me; I've never ever went out and set a beaver house one night and caught a beaver. Thirty-seven years I've been on this earth, and I haven't done this ever. SOPHIE STRASSBURG I know I saw fur. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG I didn't believe you I thought that was just grass off of the bottom. Now I know. Sophie knows what she sees. SOPHIE STRASSBURG I love my dad because. SOPHIE STRASSBURG He teaches me lots of stuff. SOPHIE STRASSBURG And he raised me to be a smart kid. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG All right, baby. Come over here, roll him around like this, baby. Slide him around. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Why are you doing that dad? STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG See look it's getting dry already. The snow rubs the water off. Just like paper towels. If you don't do that it'll freeze solid and it'll end up taking forever to be able to skin it. Yup, rub some on the belly. Sophie's first try out and she's done something that I've never ever been able to accomplish. So, she's done something right, she's done something good, she's filled her little lucky pouch with some good luck. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Hey, dry. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Yeah. Oh, boy. Mama's gonna be happy she's been asking for beaver meat. SOPHIE STRASSBURG I like beaver meat. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Yeah. Throw right there. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG [speaking Central Denaakk'e] Enaa baasee'. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG One last rub. Okay, baby. Let's go, go home and let mama know you caught a beaver. One night, baby. JOHN SONNA BOY PINGAYAK III There's a flock of ptarmigan. JOHN SONNA BOY PINGAYAK III Think I got one. JOHN SONNA BOY PINGAYAK III I just, uh, shot a male. I've been hunting ptarmigan since, I was, uh, little boy. JOHN SONNA BOY PINGAYAK III About nine, ten years old. Every time I'd go out pike fishing, I'd follow behind my aana and aata and get ptarmigan that way. But out here you always gotta be alert and ready for anything. I got it. The easiest way to spot these is just not facing the sun. The sun reflects off of the snow and hit's your eyes and you can't even see them but if you go against the sun, it's easy to spot them 'cause I see one over there. All right this is a female. I can tell because the males have darker necks. This is gonna bring my aana and aata pure joy knowing I can catch some ptarmigan and birds. TERESA PINGAYAK Asher, roll up the line. Roll it up. Don't bother the fish anymore. Hey, Sonna Boy how'd you do? JOHN SONNA BOY PINGAYAK III I got three! JOHN PINGAYAK Thank you, Sonna Boy. Good job. TERESA PINGAYAK We all had a good day today. We got ptarmigan, we got pike. JOHN PINGAYAK Let's start heading back. TERESA PINGAYAK We accomplished what we came out to do. MARVIN AGNOT Today is tanner day. I got my hauler and my new engine put together and I'm so excited to go out and try it out. MARVIN AGNOT See how it preforms. MARVIN AGNOT Just like a kid with his candy, MARVIN AGNOT I see something new, and I get to go try it out. Yeah, I'm searching for tanner crab. At this time of year, the king crab start molting, and the shell get really soft, and we don't mess with them till later on in the season. I've learned at this age and time I love to do things by myself. If I can do it by myself well then, I can share some crab with my family and the community. There it is. I'm ready to fire the engine right up and see if it's ready to do what I set it up to do. Okay. So, here's the real test to see if it works from home to here. Woah. [COMMERCIAL BREAK] MARVIN AGNOT All right. Power works. Here's all the excitement. The last part here I'm ready to start. Very good works like a champ. I don't even hear her struggling. There it is. Yeah! No king crab, all tanners. Just what I set out to get, very successful. I'm happy for this, it's gonna serve its purpose. With this hauler I eliminated a second skiff which that alone was twice the gas, twice the manpower. Now that I got work meat in order, I'm very stoked that I can do all this all by myself. That's where it is, it becomes self-sufficient. What I'm doing I can say is making my life easier, that it can be accomplished if you just set your mind to go and doing it. Phew. I just build on making your life a lot easier. Build as you go. Good success. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG All right look what Sophie got. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG How do we say in Denaakk'e? How do we say beaver? KIDS Noye'e. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Noye'e. KIDS Noye'e. AMIYA STRASSBURG Dad, noye'e? STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Noye'e, yup good job baby. Takes a little bit of getting used to. It's good to introduce this type of stuff to the kids young, at a young age. BOY Uncle? STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Huh? BOY How come you guys have to start with the legs and hands? STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Oh, that's the way I was taught. That's delicacy to our elders right there so the elders they really like cooking up the hands and the feet and eat what's inside there. Also, inside the tail. See you can see it's all fat inside there. The person that taught me how to trap beaver was my late grandma Hazel. And so, you know that that shows all of these little girls that they're perfectly capable of to go out in the woods and get their own beaver. Just like Sophie did. Yeah Sophie? SOPHIE STRASSBURG Uh-hmm! STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Showed you the process, I showed you how to get bait. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Yeah. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG I showed you how to connect the snares and chipped a hole. SOPHIE STRASSBURG And I learned how to put the snow in the water. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Yup, so it don't freeze to thick and the beaver don't come out. You guys don't know it, you don't see it, but all you got a bag right here and inside that bag is your good luck. And all your life you do good stuff, you help people, that's putting a little bit of luck inside your lucky bag right there. You get your first animal; you're supposed to share it with some elders and that's the best type of good luck to put in your bag is the elders� good luck. There's two different schools' you guys gotta go to growing up in the village. There's the school from teachers like myself, there's the teachers back at the school that teach you the stuff that's gonna get you through life you know. So, I'm a teacher, in a sort and this is my classroom. JOEL JACKO Well, I'm ready to put the windmill up. JOEL JACKO We'll just try to get it up there and hopefully it just pops on. JOEL JACKO This is the last step. I got everything wired in, everything's ready to go. It's the part I've really been dreading, you know, hauling the windmill up there. It's so heavy and awkward. It'll be an uphill battle, literally. If the blades start spinning or something, I'm gonna abort mission but I'm gonna go for it. Doesn't seem that high when you're on the ground. Once you're up there it seems like you're like three times as high as you actually are so not looking forward to any of this really. The fear running through me is toppled by my want for electricity out here. Phew. It's blowing pretty good up here. Like not, not good. I probably should've had a better plan, uh, right here. [COMMERCIAL BREAK] JOEL JACKO Oh! JOEL JACKO Oh my gosh, that's heavy. Victory! All right! I got it on. Dang, spinning really fast. That's impressive. I got my voltmeter I'm gonna see what it's putting out. Kinda up and down right now but I'd like to know what it's putting out right at the source. Yeah, they're putting out like six hundred volts right now. That's a lot, I mean my solar panels are putting like two hundred volts. With my solar panels I pretty much have to run the generator on non-sunny days, and you know the days are shorter you have to run it every day no matter what almost. I mean, with this I probably won't have to run the generator at all I'm guessing. Pretty excited about the whole just you know, being self-sustainable and off the grid. I really like being off the grid. I mean, now I'm getting free power. I love the world I'm creating right now. You know I just think it's cool that I can do all this, and you know I'm doing it myself figuring out stuff on my own. Every project I do you know is another step closer to just me being free being your own person, I don't have to worry about you know other people or rely on anything else. Now I have a windmill creating electricity. MARVIN AGNOT We want to start this water, so it'll have time to heat up. Now that I got the crab pot put away my last thing to do is clean them, cook them, and have myself a treat. I got this nice tanner crab now I'm just going to gut him. Usually, I crush them on the skiff. I think a lot about my dad and my uncle Steve of when they use to go out and get this for our family and I was here to see how things evolve in the time from when we use to do it to what I'm doing now and cooking them put together. Technology's moved us quite a bit and so it makes our life a lot easier but still we gotta practice our old ways and I'm very happy to still be doing it. I'm just um, picking the gills off right now with um, the knife and cleaning out the innards a little bit. Couple more. Woah, still pretty lively. Woah. I got bit by a king crab and boy that's no fun. They don't let go. Very happy to be doing things on my own and that's all it comes down to you know, me just living by myself being happy with what I do but also helping the community. Being able to still provide for my family, If I can make their life a little easier, might not be much but that's what I want. If this is going to help them, I'm more than willing to contribute to the cause. I see the waters steaming, boiling. Now you put them on the cooker. That's it. Yeah, this is gonna be pretty tasty I better get done. JOHN PINGAYAK It's always a blessing to bring home a pike and ptarmigans. We have to be sharing with, uh, those that have a hard time going out. That's the way our elders teach us, the more you give away the more the creator will bless you with and my legacy right now is to pass on what I know to Sonna Boy and all my children. LAWRENCE Beaver meat. SOPHIE STRASSBURG Beaver meat and beaver tail. LAWRENCE Beaver tail, great. LAWRENCE My first beaver meat this year. SOPHIE STRASSBURG I'm gonna give the meat to Grandpa Lawrence because. SOPHIE STRASSBURG He's the chief and he does like, lots of stuff. SOPHIE STRASSBURG It was my first beaver. LAWRENCE You're lucky then. LAWRENCE Because when you start catching things young LAWRENCE You'll always be lucky. SOPHIE STRASSBURG I think I got a lot of luck because I like to help a lot. MARVIN AGNOT Yeah! Survival to me means learning and adapting to how we live out here. I am at the next level of the elders you know I ain't got time to fail anymore. This is food from labor. Mmm. STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG Good job baby. What I learned in passing down to my daughter she's using to catch and procure some food and that food is going back to the elders. As long as that cycle keeps going our people are gonna stay strong our culture and traditions is gonna stay strong and we should be able to stick around, survive. [SNAP-IN] STEVEN TIG STRASSBURG All right baby, we gotta shovel some snow and get a spot cleared out. We're cut some nice, white spruce as bait. Definitely in the right area, can see where the beavers been chewing trees off. So that's a good sign, I can see where they've been chewing down a lot more over here. So that's just another positive and good signs seeing that there's actually beaver in this house. You can tell he likes this food, so we can get him some of this birch back here. Ugh. Deep snow and I didn't bring my snow shoes. The style of beaver snare that I'm doing right now ends up being more work but this style of snares that I've been setting, I have been having some success with it. More success than the last style I've been trying. Beavers they're an herbivore, they don't eat meat or anything like that. So, when I say bait you know, I'm not sticking a T-bone steak down into the water for bait or anything like that. Not like the wolves or other animals where we use meat. Beavers are herbivores and most of the time they prefer birch trees. Whoa, deep snow. They don't usually eat the evergreens, the spruce and what not. But it just depends on what's around the lake that they're living in. Might not look like much but beaver really like it. This birch, the sap inside of it's really sweet and full of sugar. So, I'm sure beaver get pretty fat from this birch. This looks like a good piece of bait so I gotta get this back over, look like my baby's done shoveling. [END]