Kings of the wild frontier

In 2013, I sat in a courtroom in Bethel, Alaska, and watched the trial of 23 Yup’ik fishermen, accused of flouting a ban on the fishing of king salmon the previous summer. The ban had been implemented by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as king salmon numbers plummeted, unexpectedly and inexplicably. The fishermen pleaded not guilty. They were justified in fishing, they said, because the taking of king salmon was part of their spiritual practice, their cultural heritage. First amendment. Mike Williams, then chief of the Yup’ik nation, pulled me to one side during a recess. “Gandhi had his salt, we have our salmon,” he said.

For the Yup’ik, getting arrested was no accident. They had issued a press release about their intention to fish before setting out. That first day in Bethel the courtroom was full, standing room only. Defendants, supporters, families hefting babies, a handful of journalists and cops. Someone produced a bag of salmon strips and passed it along the benches. Everyone took a piece and chewed on it, including the two state troopers.

As I listened to the evidence – the biologists stressing the need for a ban in the wake of the salmon’s collapse, the Alaskan Natives speaking of how the salmons’ spirits would be offended if they did not show up to catch them – I came to see how two different ways of interpreting the world were being forced up against each other.

Bethel is the regional hub of the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, one of the largest deltas in the world: the size of England, with a population of 25,000. It bulges from Alaska’s western coast, a relatively new growth 2,500 years old, from when the Yukon river settled on its current course and began discharging the 90m tonnes of sediment that it transports every year. The