Calling these incidents subsistence is kind of like calling spotlighting/poaching sport hunting.
Yup. Remember the rash of "hunters" killing black bears several years ago and the only thing "harvested" was gall bladders?
I could play. Dignity and self-respect are sold for second-hand store prices these days.
I grew up hearing “waste not, want not”, and it’s kind of funny how so many Western values and ideas have parallels in Yup’ik culture. (They don’t always jump out at you right away, but this one is clear.) You’ll sometimes hear the elders -especially- lament the loss of respect for these values. Lots of cultural ‘holes’ in need of filling these days, and the saggy pants culture seems to be filling a lot of them.
On the bright side however, was at a cookout on the Fourth and was talking to a swarthy, weathered young man.... around 40 years old. I remember the ‘kid’ well when he was waist high. He was talking eagerly about the start of berries. (Tundra Salmonberries are imminent.) I asked if he was working this summer since there are some good Davis-Bacon jobs locally this summer. He said “no, but putting food away” ..... “just finished fish (herring, salmon), now looking forward to berries.” I know he and his wife, another ‘kid’ I worked with as a student, probably put away early summer greens. I know their freezers have a bunch of fat spring geese in them. ‘They’ don’t all turn out poorly, but the rotten ones sure spoil the whole. Works the same way when some pasty-looking d!€¥ wad makes the rest of us pasty-looking humans suspect out in these parts.
