"I was born in Dillingham back in 1961. My folks came to Bristol Bay in 1948. They worked out of Clark’s Point Cannery on the Nushagak. My dad, Denny, started out commercial fishing out of Clark’s Point — he was able to talk his way onto a boat. While at Clark’s Point my mom, Jan, had her first child, Katrina, who was born in the old school house near the cannery. After their time at Clark’s Point they were able to apply for a GI Bill homestead.”

"Growing up as a kid in the summers in Egegik, I remember at the peak of summer the grass was taller than I was. It was always a fun and mysterious thing. My friends and I would chase rabbits in the grass, and my parents would be out fishing. It was fun growing up in a community where everything revolved around salmon, the tides, and the weather.”

“When I was growing up out at Pope Vannoy, on the south side of Lake Iliamna, we would swim a lot in the summertime, and I really enjoyed fishing with my Grandpa. I just had a willow pole with a hook on it — it was pretty simple. But we must have had a lot of trout then, because it was so easy to catch fish. I remember one day I caught two at the same time on one hook. I was so impressed!”

"The first time I laid eyes on the Kvichak River was mid-May 1994, and the clarity of the river was unbelievable. I had never seen anything so clear, and there was so much of it— a massive wide bodied river flowing gin clear. Mesmerizing.”

“Salmon are everything. They provide sustenance for us. In many ways too, salmon have been teachers. I’ve just grown as a human in ways that I think are really important to grow as a human, and I feel like it’s because of my salmon life that I’ve been able to do that.”

“I got out of high school. I got on the oil pipeline with BP. And within a year, I was buying a Bristol Bay boat permit with my brothers, and we all started fishing. I got married, raised a family, and my three sons all starting working on the boat when they were 10 years old.”

“Some of the most iconic bear images ever captured are from Bristol Bay. You think of the Bristol Bay fish that go up the Brooks River— that is the most popular destination, maybe in the world. So when you think of Alaska, that image of the bear snatching the salmon out of the air at Brooks Falls is close to the top.”

“Sometimes with Bristol Bay, you don’t know until you know. You’ve got to just experience the fishing and the beauty of the area. Pictures and even videos don’t do it justice. Not even close. Once you get up there, it’s a totally different feeling. You see everything, you’re experiencing everything, you feel everything— it’s so much different.”

“In 2005, 3 years after graduating, a Dillingham community member and business owner dropped this challenge and called me up and said, ‘Hey I know you’re an artist, and I want you to paint me this mural.’ I thought, ‘I don’t even know what a mural is, man. What are you talking about?’ And he said, ‘It’s just a bigger version of a painting, you could do it really easily. Maybe it could say Welcome to Dillingham.’ And then he said, ‘Everyone is going to want one of these, you just wait and see.’ He paid me to create the first public mural that I’ve ever done, on Bristol Express.”

“My brother and I grew up very remotely, on an Alaskan inholding homestead in the Becharof National Wildlife Refuge, on the Alaska Peninsula. My first memory that really stands out was catching a 12, 15 pound monster Dolly Varden on one of the nearby creeks. I was maybe six years old and barely able to get it in.”

I’m a fairly conservative individual. I typically vote Republican. I’m pro-development and I’m for the responsible use of our God-given resources. But this mine, in this location, could be catastrophic on so many levels.