2016 Denakkanaaga Elders and Youth Conference
The 2016 annual Denakkanaaga Elders and Youth Conference will take place in Hughes, Alaska on June 7, 8 and 9th. Elder and youth delegates will join other participants in discussing various issues affecting their local communities and Interior Alaska. Topics include subsistence fishing and hunting, suicide prevention, preparing for increased Elder services and programs that will be needed in the future, climate change, and preservation efforts underway of Interior cultures, traditions and languages.
The theme of this year’s conference is “Building Strong Native Communities: Treating Each Other with Love and Respect”.
The 2016 annual Denakkanaaga Elders and Youth Conference will take place in Hughes, Alaska on June 7, 8 and 9th. Elder and youth delegates will join other participants in discussing various issues affecting their local communities and Interior Alaska. Topics include subsistence fishing and hunting, suicide prevention, preparing for increased Elder services and programs that will be needed in the future, climate change, and preservation efforts underway of Interior cultures, traditions and languages.
The theme of this year’s conference is “Building Strong Native Communities: Treating Each Other with Love and Respect”.
Peter Demoski
Hughes, Alaska
Presentation to Denakkanaaga Elder and Youth Conference, June 2016
This is about a time when we lived without electricity, without snow machines, without high
powered riverboats and of course, without TV and telephones. We lived in log cabins that were
chinked with moss and had mud roofs. Sometimes grass would sprout and grow on the roofs.
Most log cabins were small one room with single pane windows and heated with a homemade
barrel stove made out of 55 gallon drums. In the winter those windows would always be iced
up in the morning. Sometimes you’d wake up and it’d be colder than heck and you’d pretend
to be sleeping when your parents hollered at you to make a fire. Finally, somebody had to get
up, make a fire, get eh cabin warmed up and get the day started. That wood stove was also the
cooking stove year round, so wood was necessary year round for survival. Winter temperatures
were a lot colder than now – 40, 50 below zero for days at a time. Nowadays, it gets 20 below
zero for a few days and we think it’s cold. Each house had a honey bucket curtained off in
corner somewhere. Outhouses were our toilets and tissue paper was unheard of. Thank god
for Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs! Those pages were all glossy and stiff – you
had to crinkle those pages to get them limber enough to use.
Every village had more dogs than people. Every family had a dog team for survival – dog teams
were necessary for hunting, trapping, transportation, hauling wood and some even become
house pets. They had to be fed and watered every day. These days we take good care of our
machines because we need them for hunting, trapping, transportation and hauling wood. That
was the way with dog teams – they had to be well tended and looked after because they were
necessary for survival.
Our parents, our grandparents, together with their children lived in spring camps, summer
camps and winter camps. Some travelled to spring camps by dogsled before the ice began
breaking up the rivers. River breakups used be a roaring, churning, grinding, smashing mass of
ice that could be heard a mile away from the river. Nowadays, river ice just melts away and
drifts downriver without a sound. Spring camps were setup along lakes and sloughs. Most
camps consisted of a 10x12 canvas wall tent with the sled dogs staked out nearby. The lakes
were frozen and they were dotted with muskrat houses. Thousands of muskrats populated the
lakes and they were the main reasons our people lived in spring camps. Muskrats all but
disappeared over the past 20 years. Just as marten was the bread and butter for the trappers
in winter, muskrats were the bread and butter for the springtime hunter.
Within a few weeks, the rivers and sloughs would be free of ice. The rest of the family
members would make their way to the spring camps usually by rowboat. Boat motors were
scarce in those days. Many women spend a day or two rowing to get to their spring camp.
Once they reached spring camp, they were their glory. Life renews itself in all forms during
spring time and our parents and grandparents took advantage of what nature offered them
every year. They had muskrats, ducks, geese, beaver and lake fish. Hunters paddled canoes
day and night shooting muskrats with 22 rifles. Every day you could hear the sounds of spring
ducks quacking, loons and fish ducks hollering all night, geese honking as they fly over the camp
in formation, and a beaver slapping its tail on the water when it got to close to a camp. There
used to be so many geese, they numbered in the hundreds when they flew over. Now, we
might see a flock of 20 at a time. Good things come to an end. In late May, it becomes time to
leave the spring camps, return to the village, and prepare for summer camps. In Nulato, people
coming from spring camps all waiting for each other a few miles below the village. They tied
their boats together and proceeded to Nulato. A couple miles below the village, everyone
began shooting their guns to let the people in Nulato know that the spring campers were
returning.
School was over and for a little while, our people enjoyed each other’s company as they
prepared for summer camp. The whole family, along with the sled dogs moved to summer
camp for fishing. Fast powered boats didn’t come into the village until the 1960’s and most
families had boats with board motors – we called those putt – putt boats, slow moving but they
got you to where you had to go. Gas for these motors came in wooden boxes that held two –
five gallon cans of gas. Those wooden boxes were used as cupboards and chairs in many
homes. Those cans were cut up and made into dog pots.
Fish camps were labor intensive as thousands of fish had to caught and preserved for both
humans and dogs for sustenance through the coming winter. Empty out the fish wheel and set
nets early in the morning, cut fish all day, gather fire wood for the cooking fires, gather smoke
wood for the drying racks and smokehouse. When we slept, we slept like we were dead. We
could not do this labor intensive work day after day, and occasionally, we took a break. Our fish
camps was 120 miles below Nulato and there were other fish camps above us and below us.
We visited other fish camps during our breaks. Or we went hunting for moose and molting
geese. It was a riot – chasing molting geese once they got out of the water – those suckers
would run like heck. Nowadays, it is illegal to hunt molting geese.
Fish camps were always plagued with camp raiders – the black bear. Sled dogs were tied up
and the bear seemed to sense this, and would make its way to the smoke house. You could kill
one and the next day, another one would appear. They were a constant pain in the butt.
We returned to our villages during the month of august. This was a time for relaxation. Visiting
relatives in nearby villages kept our communities linked through culture and heritage.
Travelling with putt – putt boats would take all day to Galena (50 miles). Nowadays, it only
takes an hour or so. When the miners and Air Force used to be in Ruby, my elders used to putt
– putt all that way to dance and have a good time. They danced to fiddle music – square dance,
two-step, jitterbug etc. A couple of my relatives married Air Force servicemen stationed in
Ruby, and that was another reason they travelled so far – to fool around. During this period
was also moose hunting season. In Nulato, we are descendants of the Caribou Clan. Moose
only entered our hunting grounds during the 1930’s and they replaced the caribou. There are
no more caribou in our hunting grounds.
Families went to wood cutting camps to gather fire wood for the coming winter. A few days
cutting up wood, building a wood raft for the wood, and floating the raft home. Most wood
rafts held four to five cords of wood. People tell me that my dad used to travel to Yuki – below
Ruby – and float a raft home for there – 100 to 120 miles. My wife and I were still going to the
wood yards during the 1980’s. We were among the last of the families in Nulato to do this. We
didn’t float wood rafts home from 100 miles away though. We went to the wood yards 40 to
45 miles above Nulato.
Winter Camps! I never lived in Nulato during the winters to experience living for months in a
camp for one purpose – trapping. I was of a generation who left the village for schooling, I
went into the U.S. Navy. I stayed in the cities for more schooling, then I took jobs in the cities,
etc. When I decided to live in Nulato, I listened to the stories from my elders and people of my
age who never left the village – stories about life in these winter camps. Winter camps
consisted of a very small cabin quickly thrown together if you had time, but for many, camps
was living in a canvas wall tent. It was a rough, tough and hard life – up before daylight, snow
shoeing all day, returning to camp after dark, skinning your catch before you went to bed.
Every day was the same and that was the only life our ancestors knew – every winter. Trappers
didn’t use flashlights. They used a gallon can punched through with holes with a candle in the
can. That was their flashlight. Their tents were lit with kerosene lanterns. You had to pump
the lanterns every hour or so.
A trapper couldn’t trap in one area year after year. Every few years, they would have to trap in
a new area – sometimes a hundred miles apart. That way the animals in the old trapping are
could have time to replenish themselves. This is an example of our ancestors knowing about
the preservation and conservation of the wildlife – long before the white man came around.
I listened to elders who trapped with my dad and from what they told me, he was the trapper,
among trappers. Everybody wanted to go into the woods with him. I heard so many stories
about him that I just had to experience a winter camp, trapping, and live like he and his
ancestors lived year after year. In 1980 I and a relative of mine about my age who never left
the village as I did and who lived in winter camps before decided to go trapping 120 miles
below Nulato where his parents and my parents trapped before. We had an elder make up a
list of food we would need for a couple months or so. Crackers, flour, sugar, coffee, tea, eating
fish, potatoes and a moose hind quarter. Just the basics for survival – no junk food! We
chartered a plane, loaded up and took off. The pilot dropped us off on the river, said he’d pick
us up in a couple of months on a certain da and he left us. We put on our snow-shoes, packed
our supplies up the bank, shoveled out an area of snow large enough to put up the 10x12
canvas wall tent.
Like our ancestors before us, we were up before daylight, snow-shoed all day on the trail, and
returned to camp many times after dark. Fifteen to twenty miles snow-shoeing every day! We
used headlights to light our way – not the gallon cans with a candle. Our meals were really
Spartan – pancakes in the morning, dried fish and crackers on the trail, then moose meat and
potato soup for dinner. Day after day! Nowadays you could travel 50 miles on a trapping trail
with a snow machine and still return home in daylight to a warm house and dinner. Believe it
or not I was enjoying myself!
I had relatives who lived 15 miles below us – they lived there year round. One day we took a
break and snow-shoed on down to visit them. Seven hours by snow-shoes so we had to spend
the night with them. Early the next day, we put on our snow-shoes to head back upriver to our
camp. Along the way, we ran into a moose trying to get up the steep cut bank along the river
edge. Fresh meat is always welcome in winter camp and my partner loaded up the 30-30 and
he tells me he only brought four bullets. That didn’t worry me – who misses a moose only a
couple hundred feet away. My partner was 20 feet or so to the side of me and he starts
shooting – once, twice, three times. That moose became enraged, turned around and charged
us. And it was running at me – not my partner with the gun. I’m standing there with only an ax
and I’m hollering – “shoot that S.O.B.!” He shot and that moose dropped about 15 feet in front
of me. I was so shook up I just wanted to club my partner for bringing only four bullets.
Winter conditions went to all extremes while we were out there. It could be 10 to 20 above, it
could be 30 to 40 below zero, and a couple times it rained on us. Sometimes, it was so windy,
you leaned in the wind. Whatever the weather, we show-shoed every day to check our traps,
except when it rained.
The day was coming to be picked up. We were out of food anyway. The weather turned ugly
and began snowing like hell and no plane was coming. That storm lasted three days and we
were forced to dig up marten carcasses, gutted them, and put them in the pot for boiling. We
lived on marten for three days and you can eat them all day and you’re still hungry.
From my presentations to you, I wanted you to know that your ancestors survived for
thousands of years in the most extreme weather conditions on earth. They were strong,
persevering dedicated survivalist. They preserved their families, their cultures and traditions.
You are the results of their heritage. You don’t have to live like they did anymore but you can
still be strong and persevering. By being so, you will do honor to your ancestors and the
Athabascan people will not disappear. We will life on forever!
Hughes, Alaska
Presentation to Denakkanaaga Elder and Youth Conference, June 2016
This is about a time when we lived without electricity, without snow machines, without high
powered riverboats and of course, without TV and telephones. We lived in log cabins that were
chinked with moss and had mud roofs. Sometimes grass would sprout and grow on the roofs.
Most log cabins were small one room with single pane windows and heated with a homemade
barrel stove made out of 55 gallon drums. In the winter those windows would always be iced
up in the morning. Sometimes you’d wake up and it’d be colder than heck and you’d pretend
to be sleeping when your parents hollered at you to make a fire. Finally, somebody had to get
up, make a fire, get eh cabin warmed up and get the day started. That wood stove was also the
cooking stove year round, so wood was necessary year round for survival. Winter temperatures
were a lot colder than now – 40, 50 below zero for days at a time. Nowadays, it gets 20 below
zero for a few days and we think it’s cold. Each house had a honey bucket curtained off in
corner somewhere. Outhouses were our toilets and tissue paper was unheard of. Thank god
for Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs! Those pages were all glossy and stiff – you
had to crinkle those pages to get them limber enough to use.
Every village had more dogs than people. Every family had a dog team for survival – dog teams
were necessary for hunting, trapping, transportation, hauling wood and some even become
house pets. They had to be fed and watered every day. These days we take good care of our
machines because we need them for hunting, trapping, transportation and hauling wood. That
was the way with dog teams – they had to be well tended and looked after because they were
necessary for survival.
Our parents, our grandparents, together with their children lived in spring camps, summer
camps and winter camps. Some travelled to spring camps by dogsled before the ice began
breaking up the rivers. River breakups used be a roaring, churning, grinding, smashing mass of
ice that could be heard a mile away from the river. Nowadays, river ice just melts away and
drifts downriver without a sound. Spring camps were setup along lakes and sloughs. Most
camps consisted of a 10x12 canvas wall tent with the sled dogs staked out nearby. The lakes
were frozen and they were dotted with muskrat houses. Thousands of muskrats populated the
lakes and they were the main reasons our people lived in spring camps. Muskrats all but
disappeared over the past 20 years. Just as marten was the bread and butter for the trappers
in winter, muskrats were the bread and butter for the springtime hunter.
Within a few weeks, the rivers and sloughs would be free of ice. The rest of the family
members would make their way to the spring camps usually by rowboat. Boat motors were
scarce in those days. Many women spend a day or two rowing to get to their spring camp.
Once they reached spring camp, they were their glory. Life renews itself in all forms during
spring time and our parents and grandparents took advantage of what nature offered them
every year. They had muskrats, ducks, geese, beaver and lake fish. Hunters paddled canoes
day and night shooting muskrats with 22 rifles. Every day you could hear the sounds of spring
ducks quacking, loons and fish ducks hollering all night, geese honking as they fly over the camp
in formation, and a beaver slapping its tail on the water when it got to close to a camp. There
used to be so many geese, they numbered in the hundreds when they flew over. Now, we
might see a flock of 20 at a time. Good things come to an end. In late May, it becomes time to
leave the spring camps, return to the village, and prepare for summer camps. In Nulato, people
coming from spring camps all waiting for each other a few miles below the village. They tied
their boats together and proceeded to Nulato. A couple miles below the village, everyone
began shooting their guns to let the people in Nulato know that the spring campers were
returning.
School was over and for a little while, our people enjoyed each other’s company as they
prepared for summer camp. The whole family, along with the sled dogs moved to summer
camp for fishing. Fast powered boats didn’t come into the village until the 1960’s and most
families had boats with board motors – we called those putt – putt boats, slow moving but they
got you to where you had to go. Gas for these motors came in wooden boxes that held two –
five gallon cans of gas. Those wooden boxes were used as cupboards and chairs in many
homes. Those cans were cut up and made into dog pots.
Fish camps were labor intensive as thousands of fish had to caught and preserved for both
humans and dogs for sustenance through the coming winter. Empty out the fish wheel and set
nets early in the morning, cut fish all day, gather fire wood for the cooking fires, gather smoke
wood for the drying racks and smokehouse. When we slept, we slept like we were dead. We
could not do this labor intensive work day after day, and occasionally, we took a break. Our fish
camps was 120 miles below Nulato and there were other fish camps above us and below us.
We visited other fish camps during our breaks. Or we went hunting for moose and molting
geese. It was a riot – chasing molting geese once they got out of the water – those suckers
would run like heck. Nowadays, it is illegal to hunt molting geese.
Fish camps were always plagued with camp raiders – the black bear. Sled dogs were tied up
and the bear seemed to sense this, and would make its way to the smoke house. You could kill
one and the next day, another one would appear. They were a constant pain in the butt.
We returned to our villages during the month of august. This was a time for relaxation. Visiting
relatives in nearby villages kept our communities linked through culture and heritage.
Travelling with putt – putt boats would take all day to Galena (50 miles). Nowadays, it only
takes an hour or so. When the miners and Air Force used to be in Ruby, my elders used to putt
– putt all that way to dance and have a good time. They danced to fiddle music – square dance,
two-step, jitterbug etc. A couple of my relatives married Air Force servicemen stationed in
Ruby, and that was another reason they travelled so far – to fool around. During this period
was also moose hunting season. In Nulato, we are descendants of the Caribou Clan. Moose
only entered our hunting grounds during the 1930’s and they replaced the caribou. There are
no more caribou in our hunting grounds.
Families went to wood cutting camps to gather fire wood for the coming winter. A few days
cutting up wood, building a wood raft for the wood, and floating the raft home. Most wood
rafts held four to five cords of wood. People tell me that my dad used to travel to Yuki – below
Ruby – and float a raft home for there – 100 to 120 miles. My wife and I were still going to the
wood yards during the 1980’s. We were among the last of the families in Nulato to do this. We
didn’t float wood rafts home from 100 miles away though. We went to the wood yards 40 to
45 miles above Nulato.
Winter Camps! I never lived in Nulato during the winters to experience living for months in a
camp for one purpose – trapping. I was of a generation who left the village for schooling, I
went into the U.S. Navy. I stayed in the cities for more schooling, then I took jobs in the cities,
etc. When I decided to live in Nulato, I listened to the stories from my elders and people of my
age who never left the village – stories about life in these winter camps. Winter camps
consisted of a very small cabin quickly thrown together if you had time, but for many, camps
was living in a canvas wall tent. It was a rough, tough and hard life – up before daylight, snow
shoeing all day, returning to camp after dark, skinning your catch before you went to bed.
Every day was the same and that was the only life our ancestors knew – every winter. Trappers
didn’t use flashlights. They used a gallon can punched through with holes with a candle in the
can. That was their flashlight. Their tents were lit with kerosene lanterns. You had to pump
the lanterns every hour or so.
A trapper couldn’t trap in one area year after year. Every few years, they would have to trap in
a new area – sometimes a hundred miles apart. That way the animals in the old trapping are
could have time to replenish themselves. This is an example of our ancestors knowing about
the preservation and conservation of the wildlife – long before the white man came around.
I listened to elders who trapped with my dad and from what they told me, he was the trapper,
among trappers. Everybody wanted to go into the woods with him. I heard so many stories
about him that I just had to experience a winter camp, trapping, and live like he and his
ancestors lived year after year. In 1980 I and a relative of mine about my age who never left
the village as I did and who lived in winter camps before decided to go trapping 120 miles
below Nulato where his parents and my parents trapped before. We had an elder make up a
list of food we would need for a couple months or so. Crackers, flour, sugar, coffee, tea, eating
fish, potatoes and a moose hind quarter. Just the basics for survival – no junk food! We
chartered a plane, loaded up and took off. The pilot dropped us off on the river, said he’d pick
us up in a couple of months on a certain da and he left us. We put on our snow-shoes, packed
our supplies up the bank, shoveled out an area of snow large enough to put up the 10x12
canvas wall tent.
Like our ancestors before us, we were up before daylight, snow-shoed all day on the trail, and
returned to camp many times after dark. Fifteen to twenty miles snow-shoeing every day! We
used headlights to light our way – not the gallon cans with a candle. Our meals were really
Spartan – pancakes in the morning, dried fish and crackers on the trail, then moose meat and
potato soup for dinner. Day after day! Nowadays you could travel 50 miles on a trapping trail
with a snow machine and still return home in daylight to a warm house and dinner. Believe it
or not I was enjoying myself!
I had relatives who lived 15 miles below us – they lived there year round. One day we took a
break and snow-shoed on down to visit them. Seven hours by snow-shoes so we had to spend
the night with them. Early the next day, we put on our snow-shoes to head back upriver to our
camp. Along the way, we ran into a moose trying to get up the steep cut bank along the river
edge. Fresh meat is always welcome in winter camp and my partner loaded up the 30-30 and
he tells me he only brought four bullets. That didn’t worry me – who misses a moose only a
couple hundred feet away. My partner was 20 feet or so to the side of me and he starts
shooting – once, twice, three times. That moose became enraged, turned around and charged
us. And it was running at me – not my partner with the gun. I’m standing there with only an ax
and I’m hollering – “shoot that S.O.B.!” He shot and that moose dropped about 15 feet in front
of me. I was so shook up I just wanted to club my partner for bringing only four bullets.
Winter conditions went to all extremes while we were out there. It could be 10 to 20 above, it
could be 30 to 40 below zero, and a couple times it rained on us. Sometimes, it was so windy,
you leaned in the wind. Whatever the weather, we show-shoed every day to check our traps,
except when it rained.
The day was coming to be picked up. We were out of food anyway. The weather turned ugly
and began snowing like hell and no plane was coming. That storm lasted three days and we
were forced to dig up marten carcasses, gutted them, and put them in the pot for boiling. We
lived on marten for three days and you can eat them all day and you’re still hungry.
From my presentations to you, I wanted you to know that your ancestors survived for
thousands of years in the most extreme weather conditions on earth. They were strong,
persevering dedicated survivalist. They preserved their families, their cultures and traditions.
You are the results of their heritage. You don’t have to live like they did anymore but you can
still be strong and persevering. By being so, you will do honor to your ancestors and the
Athabascan people will not disappear. We will life on forever!