For years, the regulations about who could hunt sea otters in Alaska were confusing. Many thought hunters must be at least one-quarter Alaska Native and belong to a coastal tribe. But a recent opinion from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service confirms that any coastal tribal member can hunt sea otters, no matter their blood quantum.
The Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the regional tribe of Southeast, led a workshop on processing sea otters at the Elders and Youth Conference in Anchorage in October.
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At the event, dozens of people gather around long tables covered in plastic in the Denaina Convention Center. Most are youth, but there are elders, too. They’re here to learn how to clean and process sea otter pelts, a fur traditionally prized for its warmth.
“Sea otters have up to a million hairs per square inch,” said Kootink Heather Douville. “They’re the most densely furred mammal on the planet.”
Douville hunts sea otters from her home in Craig on Prince of Wales Island. She sews all kinds of things with the pelts like hats, scarves, purses, and blankets. Several people are waiting at her table, eager to learn how to skin an otter with a knife.
“The word for knife in Lingít is lítaa,” Douville said.
Sea otters are protected under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. Who can hunt them has long been questioned by the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. About a year ago, the Tlingit & Haida asked the federal government for another legal opinion of the law language. They focused on one word: “or”.
“There’s actually an OR in the regulation,” said Gooch Xaay Ralph Wolfe, Tlingit & Haida’s director of Indigenous Stewardship.
He said the law actually allows sea otter hunting by people who live on the coast and are a quarter Native OR are an enrolled member of a coastal tribe.
“There’s people who cannot hunt and haven’t been able to hunt because they don’t have a quarter-blood quantum,” Wolfe said. “And our argument for that is there’s no other people in the world who are justified by blood quantum. There’s horses and dogs, and we are neither.”
Blood quantum requirements have increasingly been scoffed at by tribes who say they know who is and who isn’t a tribal member without needing to prove it with blood. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service clarified the sea otter regulation language in early October in a letter sent to Richard Peterson, the president of Tlingit & Haida. That followed a request by the tribe for co-management – so the tribe and the federal government would share responsibilities for conserving the species.
Scientists agree that Southeast’s sea otter population has increased. Now there are over 22,000 of the voracious shellfish eaters. Wolfe said the population has dramatically increased in recent years, in part, due to lack of hunting.
“The otters have been devastating populations of resources that we rely on for so long now; in the management that it’s been under is kind of a management of terror, right?” said Wolfe. “Like there’s fear that’s put out there to go out and hunt these things.”
In the sea otter workshop, attendees were from all over the state.
10-year-old Leona Richardson is Inupiaq and took a turn with the knife. Her family is from Ambler in northwest Alaska but she lives in Anchorage.
“I just want to know what it feels like cutting an animal,” Richardson said. “And some Native people that I’m friends with, they said, just touching the animal just makes you feel more Indigenous to your culture, and I really liked it.”
12-year-old Alissa Levit also had a go. She’s from Venetie, north of Fairbanks.
“I think it was pretty fun; it was very interesting,” Levit said. “I’ve done skinning with moose and caribou legs before, but this one was more fun than that.”
Although she didn’t go into the implications of the new ruling in her workshop, leader Kootink Heather Douville clearly sees a benefit in sharing sea otter processing with kids from outside her tribe.
“I think youth are sacred, and I’m so glad that so many showed up,” she said.
Douville said youth are the link between past generations and those to come.
“In our culture, and I believe, that our youth are the insurance that we have a bright, healthy future,” Douville said. “And we should invest in our youth, teach them what we know, have them here beside us, watching and working on our traditional foods and materials with us, and it gives them purpose.”
Now, these youth can take their newly learned skills home with them. And maybe one day, they’ll be able to hunt sea otters themselves.
