I presently have a kid going to school in Fairbanks. He is a village kid from Noatak. He was captain of their basketball team and is forced to go to school in Fairbanks in foster care. He has hunted and fished since he could walk. During one fall, he shot a truculent grizzly that was trying to get their caribou meat at his grandfather's camp. It was filled with parasites and worms and the young man didn't record the DLP or salvage the meat. A Brown shirt happened by and cited the young man and it was decided by the court to give him 6 months of time in the Juvenile detention center. He got into several fights at the center and has actually been in FCC for those interactions. He wants very badly to go back to Noatak where he is happy and he can hunt and fish and actually play basketball because the result of all the legal carnage was that his inconsistent academic attendance caused him to be ineligible and his foster parents couldn't get him to BB practice.
Traditional subsistence users are subject to laws. And it hasn't always been the best for them. This kid doesn't use a cell phone and wants to get back up to the Noatak river where he can make meaning of everything. He did what he felt was natural but the system wanted to teach him a lesson. Should he have shot the grizzly? Yes. Did he understand that he had to process the bear? No. Is it a learning experience for him to be associated with the riffraff of society while he learns his lesson. I don't think so.
People might get all butthurt that Alaska Natives living in the village have different hunting opportunities that people who don't live in the village. But the truth is that sometimes the system isnt quite fair and many of those kids from the vill have a distinct disadvantage with dealing with the rules that have been placed upon them. I say let them co-manage areas like that and have tribal court systems. Don't cause a super good kid to be confronted with the worst part of our society because he doesn't know how a DLP works.
One of the roughest things in Alaska is that if you do something that you shouldn't do like shoot a sublegal dall sheep and you report yourself that the system will throw the book at you and make you pay while somebody who poaches and gets caught will pay less. That crap has to change.
