In a surprise decision, the Federal Subsistence Board on Wednesday reclassified Ketchikan as rural for the purpose of federally regulated subsistence activities. The change means Ketchikan residents will be able to hunt and fish in many areas that were once closed to them.
Residents of nonrural communities in Alaska can’t hunt, fish, and gather under federal subsistence rules. That right is reserved for people who live in rural areas who need to practice traditional hunting and fishing to survive.
For years, the Ketchikan Indian Community has argued that Ketchikan’s nonrural designation prevented tribal citizens from practicing their traditional subsistence way of life. And they argued that Ketchikan is not urban in the same way that a larger community like Anchorage or Fairbanks is.
“This is life changing,” Ketchikan Indian Community President Gloria Burns said in a phone call. “Before, we couldn’t think about co-management, we couldn’t think about the ways that we could help support and bolster up these resources and really take care of the land the way that we wanted to. This is going to open like a million acres of land in our own area that we can go ahead and now subsist off of.”
The decision, which went against a regional council’s recommendation, came as a surprise to many. And some subsistence users in the region say they are worried about the pressures the change could place on fish and game populations.
‘I just started crying’
The Federal Subsistence Management Program is different from state hunting and fishing regulations. Ketchikan residents have always been able to harvest under state guidelines. But they’ve been restricted from participating in federally managed subsistence harvests since 1992, when the federal subsistence program was first put in place.
That means people from Ketchikan couldn’t subsistence hunt or fish anywhere near their homes, on the large stretches of federal lands covering the island, or on nearby Prince of Wales Island or the Unuk River.
The Ketchikan Indian Community’s original proposal received the support of Ketchikan’s municipal government, the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, and the City of Saxman in 2022. Then, the federal Office of Subsistence Management conducted a formal two-year study into the idea. The results of that report were presented to the Southeast Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council last year.
According to the report, Ketchikan residents being able to harvest more wildlife would have the most “significant anticipated effects” on deer on Prince of Wales Island, hooligan in the Unuk River, and southern Southeast Alaska’s salmon populations. The report stated that the Office of Subsistence Management was neutral on the proposal, saying that the analysis of Ketchikan’s rural-ness was “inconclusive” and that there was reasonable evidence to support the area being both rural and nonrural.
After lengthy and tense deliberations, the regional advisory council formally recommended that the Federal Subsistence Board oppose the tribe’s request. Usually, the federal board upholds the recommendations of the regional advisory councils.
For Burns, things looked grim for the Ketchikan Indian Community going into this week’s final decision. She said she was shocked when the board decided in Ketchikan’s favor.
“I just started crying,” she said. “This is a fight that has been going on for years. You know, Ketchikan Indian communities fought this fight two other times and lost.”
Limited Resources
This decision doesn’t just mean that Ketchikan’s tribal members are now federally qualified subsistence users. It means that all residents of the Ketchikan area and nearby Pennock and Gravina islands can now hunt and fish for food on federally managed lands and waters.
Many Prince of Wales Island residents spoke out against the proposed change before the Southeast Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council voted against the proposal last year. They said new subsistence users from Ketchikan would put a strain on the island’s already limited deer population.
“I’m here to help protect my homeland. That’s what I’m here to do,” Ketchikan Indian Community member Clarence Peele testified at the time. Peele lived in Ketchikan but grew up on Prince of Wales Island. He said that communities on Prince of Wales didn’t have many affordable grocery options, while Ketchikan had nine gas stations, six convenience stores, and four grocery stores.
“I don’t have anything against Ketchikan, but 13,000 people going over to Prince of Wales Island? If we are going to put stress on our smaller entities, I can’t live with that,” he said.
At the time, most of the council members said they supported the Ketchikan Indian Community reclaiming their subsistence rights in principle, but they still couldn’t support the proposal.
“When somebody is hurting in the state, I’m hurting. I know Ketchikan is hurting – the Indian Community – and I feel for them,” council member Ted Sandhofer said during deliberations at the October meeting. “It was said many times that it’s not their fault that the city of Ketchikan grew up around them.”
In the end, Sandhofer voted against the proposal. Like other board members, he said the change would also mean that thousands of Ketchikan’s non-Native residents would get those hunting and fishing opportunities, too, and he couldn’t reconcile that impact.
“I’m very happy for [the Ketchikan Indian Community] themselves and their tribal members, because they have been fighting to be able to have their rights back,” said W’ally Sthaathi Ta Tazia Wagner. Wagner manages tribal relations and fisheries data for the nearby Metlakatla Indian Community. Her family has fished hooligan from the Unuk River for generations. “But this is more than just several hundred or so tribal members. This is thousands of people that could overwhelm the places that already have that rural designation.”
According to Wagner, smaller communities like hers are already having to compete for the area’s resources.
“With the pressure that’s going to be out there now, it’s going to make it very difficult to get what we need,” said Tazia’s grandfather Louie Wagner Jr., who also serves on the regional advisory council. For him, the federal board’s decision was a slap in the face.
“The regional advisory councils were put in for a reason,” he said. “The board has taken away what we were trying to protect, and I just don’t understand it. It was given a lot of thought.”
A possible precedent
There are eight other nonrural areas in Alaska, which include the state’s big population centers along with smaller towns like Homer, Seward, and Valdez. The Federal Subsistence Board’s decision could set a precedent for the regulatory body to take up similar proposals in the future from other communities that are currently nonrural.
“We have this responsibility now – particularly to our neighbors and to ourselves – to get this right,” said Burns, adding that the next step for the Ketchikan tribe is to learn subsistence best practices again. “We don’t have the statistics in the way the other places have, because we haven’t been designated as a subsistence area for such a long time. So we need to start collecting that data.”
Burns said she hoped Ketchikan’s non-Native residents would also learn to act as responsible stewards of subsistence resources.
“We would really hope that our neighbors who are not [Ketchikan Indian Community] members take up the traditional aspects of going into other people’s land,” she said. “I would never go to Klawock myself and hunt something from Klawock unless I was with somebody from Klawock who had asked me to be there.”
Before the federal board made its decision, Ketchikan residents and tribal citizens testified at the meeting. The study from the Office of Subsistence Management was also presented to the board. The study notes that Ketchikan has increasing poverty and declining growth rates consistent with other rural communities, like Kodiak and Sitka.
But in the end, Burns said the federal board’s decision focused not on resource concerns, but on whether or not Ketchikan fits the definition of a rural place.
The Federal Subsistence Board approved the decision 7-3.
