The Gwich'in grandmother who lived to be perhaps the oldest person in the world; the grandson she taught with his fish wheel and King Salmon

After thinking about it for a bit, I decided that before I start posting my various little photo stories from the Gwich'in Gathering, I needed to set the context, to run a photo spread that says something about the traditional way of life for the Gwich'in as it has evolved into modern times. Although the term most frequently used to describe this way of life is "subsistence," that word has always struck me as very wrong, for in most American minds it denotes poverty, ways of living that people suffer through only because circumstance has forced them; ways of living that they would flee to join the masses who live the suburban lifestyle if only they but had the chance.

I believe that the word "subsistence" has helped to create the justification that exists in the minds of many Alaskans, Alaskan politicians and writers of Alaska law, most of them urban residents of Fairbanks and Anchorage, that, as citizens of the State of Alaska, they have every bit as much right to harvest the wild animals and fish that live with the Native people in the rural areas as do the rural, Native residents themselves, even if their doing so badly impacts the lives of those who have lived by these animals and fish for thousands of years.

So I decided to begin with a series of photos of Paul Herbert harvesting the salmon that have helped to sustain his Gwich'in people since time immemorial. However, it became clear to me that if I were to do it this way, I would not succeed at getting the essay up until maybe four in the afternoon. I feel a need to post something sooner than that.

So I went searching through my computer and found a photo that I took of Paul's grandmother, Belle Herbert, at an athletic event in Fairbanks in the winter of 1982.

When he was a child, Paul spent much of his life living in the woods with his Grandmother Belle. She is the one who taught him how to catch and cut fish, how to live off the land. She gave him a rich education and a rich life the likes of which cannot be found in any city or university anywhere.

This was the first and only time that I ever saw Belle Herbert, for she died not long afterward. She was said to be 129 years old.

During my first years in Alaska, it seemed that I would find a centenarian or two in just about every Interior Athabascan Indian village that I would visit. There are still a few to be found out there, such as Fort Yukon matriarch Hannah Solomon, now living in Fairbanks, who will turn 102 in October, but I don't find them everywhere the way I did back then.

I think it is because the traditional diet of wild animals and fish, supplemented with wild berries and greens as nature provides, is much healthier than the diet most of us eat today. I sometimes hear vegetarians claim that a vegetarian diet is much healthier than a meat diet but, no, I don't think so. If this were true, then these centenarians that I have met in Alaska Indian country, where a vegetarian would literally have died of starvation, would not have lived such long lives.

I think it's just that so much junk and so much unhealthy stuff has worked its way into our modern diet. It is not the meat, but the junk and the overindulgence that kills us.

This is he, the grandson, Paul Herbert still living from the foods and according to the knowledge that his Grandmother Belle taught him. It's a little tough right now because so far this summer the numbers of harvested salmon have been low.

Still, they have been coming and people such as Herbert have been harvesting them. On the day that I took this picture, this King Salmon was one of 15 that swam into the fishwheel that he had built two months earlier, out of the resources that surround him.

Tomorrow, I will post a series that will show a bit more of the process.

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Comments

[twain12]

truer words were never spoken (written)

[Kat]

Great post Bill. I think genes must have a huge affect on longevity too, although good clean living certainly helps. My Aunt is currently a healthy 102. She's sharp as a tack & quite healthy. She never led a physically active life and while they ate a relatively balanced diet, it was heavy on the starchy carbs with lots of ice cream sundaes & desserts thrown in for good luck. :)

Thanks again for your wonderful Blog. I visit every day. Especially loved the green baby Jobe picture yesterday. What a gorgeous baby he is - give him a cuddle from me please.