“It really has a detrimental impact on our ability to go out on the land and to be able to teach our young people, to bind together as families and as a community,” she says. “Many First Nations have relied on Chinook salmon for millennia, and it’s really difficult to live without traditional foods.” “The numbers are really alarming for us,” says Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Chief Roberta Joseph. In recent years, for example, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, whose traditional territory includes the Dawson City region, has resorted to using frozen chum salmon instead of Yukon River Chinook at their annual fish camp, which is intended to teach traditional skills to youth. This is doubly true for First Nations, who feel the loss not only in their freezers and wallets, but culturally and spiritually. This year, however, fewer than 45,000 fish entered the river from the sea to begin with, and a scant 11,000 crossed into Canada. Under the agreement, a minimum of 42,500 fish must cross the border to reach their Canadian spawning grounds. But how to best manage salmon populations – and determining who gets to harvest what, when, and how much – has been a contentious issue, especially as populations decline. The fish are internationally co-managed under the Yukon River Salmon Agreement, which is part of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. The journey, arduous as it is for the fish, also represents a politically and socially fraught situation for the people who rely on the salmon for food, income or both. Yukon River Chinook make one of the longest freshwater migrations in the world, with some fish travelling up to 3,200 kilometres to reach their spawning grounds, which dot the length of the Yukon River, beginning at the mouth of the Bering Sea in western Alaska, crossing the state before wending deep into Yukon Territory.
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