"Salmon is pretty much everything. We eat it every way possible. My whole family. My friends, their families, my aunts, uncles, cousins – everybody in Chignik. You eat it as much as you can. You smoke it, salt it, dry it, freeze it for the winter, can it. When my sister comes down we jar a bunch of fish for her. Salmon puts food on the table, literally and figuratively. We eat them and we make money to buy all of the other stuff. It puts a roof over our head.”

“Growing up, I spent summers in Chignik and winters in Kodiak. We’d cross Shelikof Strait, get the boats and gear ready, fish hard in the commercial season, and then catch and put away our subsistence harvest for the winter.”