When asked to talk about the nature of subsistence as practiced by Alaska’s Native peoples, Vernita Herdman becomes quiet. After some reflection, she begins sharing stories: about her parents, other Native elders, and Unalakleet, the Inupiaq Eskimo village in northwest Alaska where she grew up. She recalls her mother preparing a freshly caught trout along the banks of a cleanflowing river, and how sitting on the ground beside her mother, the river, and a campfire, “everything was perfect.”
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