The Community Development Quota Program in Alaska (1999) / Chapter Skim
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2 Description of the CDQ Region and Fishery
2 Description of the CDQ Region and Fishery
Pages 15-46
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This sets the stage for more detailed discussions of the CDQ program (Chapter 3) , the committee's evaluation (Chapter 4)
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. From the perspective of the CDQ program, some researchers contend that the ecosystem is very heavily exploited, and it seems extremely unlikely that the Bering Sea can sustain current rates of exploitation while also allowing the recovery of endangered species, especially large populations of marine birds and mammals (NRC, 1996~.
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(Photo by James Barker and provided courtesy of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, Contemporary Art Bank.)
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Understanding the relationship that has developed between Alaska Natives and the use of marine resources is a key component in evaluating the potential impacts of the CDQ program on these communities. This section provides background on these historical relationships, and is followed by a consideration of the ways a CDQ program could enhance these relationships.
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There are several distinct strategies of adaptation to marine resources apparent in the record of cultural development. The first strategy of human adaptation to the eastern Bering Sea coastal environment, apparent at the Anangula Island site in the Aleutian Islands on the southern boundary of the eastern Bering Sea about 8,700 years ago, is one of a mixed subsistence (Laughlin, 1980~.
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occupied the coast of Bristol Bay eastward and northward through the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region into the eastern portion of Norton Sound. These people used a variety of subsistence strategies depending on the abundance and availability of resources.
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and caribou. On the islands, Inupiaq speakers were predominantly marine mammal hunters who took walrus, bowhead whale, and seals and did some saltwater fishing for cod (Ray, 1975~.
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The culture evolved into a combination of marine mammal hunting for trade and subsistence purposes, and this strategy sustained Aleuts throughout their range until the latter part of the 19th century. In the late 19th century, two commercial fishing enterprises based in the
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The second commercial fishing development was the movement of the salmon processing industry, dominated by the canning sector, into Bristol Bay and the Alaska Peninsula in the late 1880s (Jones, 1976; and Van Stone, 1967~. This was a massive incursion brought on by huge capital investments in plants, equipment, and vessels by Euroamerican firms.
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This led to the formation of two fishermen's organizations: one headquartered in Dillingham to represent the largely Yup'ik fishermen of western Bristol Bay and a second headquartered in Naknek to represent non-native fishermen who fished primarily in eastern Bristol Bay (Patterson et al., 1984~. The commercial fishing adaptation fit well with the continuing subsistence practices of the Yup'ik villagers.
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. Despite problems associated with the sale of limited-entry fishing permits, the integration of commercial fishing activities with traditional subsistence practices continued to be a major foundation of Yup'ik society and values in western Bristol Bay into the 1980s (Langdon, 1991~.
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Many Alaska Natives feel that the Euroamerican financial power structure that has substantial influence in Nome is not supportive of their goals. A limited commercial fishery for salmon, sac roe herring, and king crab appeared in the Norton Sound area in the 1960s.
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INDUSTRY STRUCTURE AND HISTORY To evaluate the CDQ program and its effects on the participating communities, some understanding of the history and structure of the commercial fishing industry of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) is necessary.
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program and the CDQ halibut fishery. The IFQ and CDQ programs were introduced into the halibut fishery in 1995.
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Some residents of the CDQ communities have participated in the halibut, sablefish, crab, and groundfish fisheries as crew members, skippers, or vessel owners. However, there had not been any formal participation in the Bering Sea fisheries by these communities as a whole prior to the implementation of the CDQ program.
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Commercial Crab Fisheries The commercial crab fisheries covered under the council's BSAI king and Tanner crab fishery management plan target king, Tanner, and snow crabs. Targeted king crab are of the family Lithodidae: red king crab (Paralithodes camtschatica)
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aBering Sea Tanner crab season length represents 4 days as bycatch during Bristol Bay red king crab season plus 12-day directed season following closure of the red king season. SOURCE: ADF&G, 1997 Within the crab fleet prior to the license limitation, there was considerable overlap between the vessels that fished the Bristol Bay red king crab and the other crab fisheries, with the exception of the Adak brown king crab and the Norton Sound red and blue king crab fisheries.
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Compared to the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery, all of the other crab fisheries in the BSAI are relatively recent. Despite later development, most of the other crab fisheries have shared the "boom and bust" pattern of the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery.
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, the domestic groundfish fisheries were virtually non-existent when the Fishery Conservation and Management Act was passed in 1976 (Rigby, 1984~. Domestic harvests in the BSAI in the late 1970s primarily consisted of a bait fishery supplying the then soaring king crab fishery (BSAI FMP, p.
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~7~. Domestic harvesting capacity responded to the emphasis on displacing foreign harvesting fleets by utilizing foreign processing fleets during the rapid buildup of capacity that occurred during the so-called "joint-venture era." Development of the groundfish fisheries was accelerated further by additional Congressional attention to the processing sector as reflected in subsequent amendments to the Act, including the processor preference amendment and the American Fishenes Promotion Act.
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The history of the groundfish fisheries is a history of development pursued through the allocation of economic opportunities. The EEZ, the Processor Preference Amendment, the American Fisheries Promotion Act, the creation and subsequent closure of joint ventures, the individual fishing quota (IFQ)
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These social problems, in addition to poor sanitation and immunization rates, and the limited availability of health care, education, and employment opportunities have been well-documented (Alaska Natives Commission, 1994~. In many cases, Alaska Natives have among the lowest levels of income, employment, and life expectancy of all ethnic groups in the United States yet have among one of the highest birth rates (Hensel, 1996; Alaska Natives Commission, 1994~.
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(Photo of Charles Hanson by James Barker and provided courtesy of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, Contemporary Art Bank.) indigenous culture of the so-called traditional societies.
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The NRC Committee to Review the Community Development Quota found this concept of development particularly appropriate to its investigation. It is useful and appropriate because a working relation between the modern market economy and the existing cultural traditions is already in effect in western Alaskan communities, the market now providing important monetary means for the realization of the cultural traditions.
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Native communities attach very strong values to indigenous foods, a diet of which is considered indispensable to human strength and health. Also associated are certain valued traits of human character, of the kind necessary to undertake an often difficult "subsistence" existence: a very considerable knowledge of nature and a high degree of technical competence (including competence in dealing with modern technologies)
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For many years it was believed that money destroys the traditional community, because money becomes the community, the effective nexus of relationships between people. But decades of academic studies in western Alaskan communities by a variety of anthropologists and sociologists have repeatedly testified to the contrary; the Alaska Native communities have proven open to technological innovation and adaptable to market economy as well as to government bureaucracy, while all the time integrating these external influences in their own cultural purposes (Hensel, 1996; Nowack, 1975; Van Stone, 1960, 1962~.
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. 41 Finally, a study of two Yup'ik communities, Togiak and Quinhagak, in the Bristol Bay and Kuskokwim regions makes a telling observation about the positive relationship between success in the commercial and traditional economiesa finding that has been replicated in a number of Alaska Native villages: It is .
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Family size, solidarity, and stage of development are also critical in determining whether outside employment and educational opportunities can be exploited such as the opportunities expected from CDQ programs. Another unusual empirical finding deserves emphasis, namely that adults in rural villages who have the greatest "outside" experience in terms of education and employment, which is to say the more "acculturated" or "Westernized" individuals, usually have greater interest and output in the subsistence economy than people who have not had such backgrounds (Kruse, 1986~.
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, in the CDQ program as well as a third, Wainwright, on the North Slope (Jorgensen, 1990~. The influx of money and increase of employment opportunities in these communities came from activities of native corporations, government projects, and the North Slope oil development, as well as enhanced commercial fishing and craft production.
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What will happen if the CDQ program is economically successful, if it brings increased employment opportunities and moneys to western Alaskan communities, is not entirely unpredictable. The predictions are not the same as might have been made by social scientists (and others)
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More than any previous welfare or development initiative, more even than the native corporations, the CDQ program seems to offer a viable way for local people to gain control over the means by which they are articulated to the larger economy and society. This would not only be true of the development councils set up by the CDQ groups but also of the educational training grants they provide.
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Such distinctive control by and for members of local communities has thus become a crucial condition of development. Many of the hopes for the CDQ program that NRC committee members encountered in their site visits came from this promise of self-determination by invidious contrast to welfare handouts and other projects that wind up confirming people in their dependency without relieving their despondency.
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