Over the last several years, fishing for salmon, whether for kings or chums, has been heavily restricted on the Yukon River. And that means many fish camps and smokehouses sit unused; in some cases they are abandoned. But in Nulato, Luwanna Sommer has been cutting sheefish, whitefish, cisco, and pike all summer.
“I was born in the fish camp 84 years ago,” Sommer said. Her full, round cheeks dip up and down as she talks.
Sommer’s family fish camp is nestled on a hill, up against a bluff that looks out over the Yukon about 12 miles downriver from the village.
“I think me and my husband were the last to stay in camp,” Sommer said. “I want to stay in summer camp every year, but they think I'm too old. But I'm not. I don't think I'm old.”
Sommer hasn’t been to her camp since 2019. Most people in Nulato say that there’s not much reason to go. They haven’t been able to subsistence fish for king salmon in four years, summer chum limits have been restricted for the last two, and this year the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shut down fall chum completely for the second year in a row.
“No fish wheels nowadays,” Sommer said.
Sommer doesn’t remember it ever being this bad. Years ago, everyone was fishing along the river.
“And we never miss a summer,” Sommer said.
“That's a great loss to us,” said Flora Nickoli, Sommer’s daughter. “It's a sad feeling because ever since I was small, I've been living in the camp. And that's when I learned to work at fish with my mom and my grandma and it was just there for us. Then all of a sudden they cut us off and there's nothing.”
As Nickoli talked about her family’s effort to put up whitefish and sheefish this summer, her three year-old granddaughter, Savannah, climbed up in a chair next to her.
The toddler eyed a strip of dried whitefish on a kitchen table. “Yummy!” she said as Nickoli peeled a chunk of the yellowish meat from crispy bluish-gray fish skin.
Whitefish and other species that also run alongside declining salmon in the Yukon are filling the void in the family freezer these days. All summer long, smoke has been streaming from the chimney of her family’s smokehouse in the heart of Nulato’s old village.
“This is where we do all of our cutting process and our fish,” said Martha Turner, mother of Savannah, daughter of Nickoli, and granddaughter to Sommer.
The smokehouse is two stories. It's a stick frame building with walls made from sheets of corrugated tin. Fires are burning in two wood stoves, one outside and one inside. A group of long, flat filets hangs above the one outside. There are deep lines cut through the meat and the woodsmoke wafts through the air, tickling the light-pink flesh.
“I pull out the skewers,” explained Nickoli as she pointed to the fish with her young granddaughter, Savannah, in tow. Nickoli’s mother showed her how to cut this sheefish and run thin wooden skewers across the width of the filets to keep it from curling as it dries. They’ll half dry these fish and then vacuum seal them before they get stored in the freezer for winter.
This is the only smokehouse in Nulato that’s operating, and it may be the only smokehouse that’s in use this summer in at least a 100-mile stretch along the Yukon River.
Many people don’t know how to cut whitefish and sheefish the way Sommer can. That’s because she grew up before statehood, before grocery stores, and before reliable delivery of food and supplies to communities like Nulato.
“What I am worried about [is] when this food is really getting expensive, you know, the white man food. This young generation, they're gonna go hungry because they have nothing to eat,” Sommer said.
But there are signs that things are changing. This summer is yet another with little to no salmon. More people have been showing up to Sommer's smokehouse to learn how she cuts other species of fish, something she’s done her whole life.
