ALASKA NATIVES COMMISSION
JOINT FEDERAL-STATE COMMISSION
ON
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS AFFECTING
ALASKA NATIVES
4000 Old Seward Highway, Suite 100
Anchorage,
Alaska 99503
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Witness List | Exhibit
List
| PDF Version
ALASKA NATIVES COMMISSION
HEARING
Nome, ALASKA
SEPTEMBER 21, 1992
Thomas Johnson
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: I notice Robert Fagerstrom,
you're here, so you're next on the list. I --
MR. FAGERSTROM:
Oh, that's --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: -- have a list: I'm going
down.
MR. FAGERSTROM: -- I'd like to apologize, but I
didn't have a chance to come down earlier; but what I want to
do is
find out
when we have the rest of our elders, and I could go pick them
up so we could --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Okay.
MR. FAGERSTROM: --
that's what I thought I'd do this morning.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK:
Okay, sure.
MR. FAGERSTROM: I'd like to apologize.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: We can pick them up. We're ready for them pretty much,
so -- in fact, Hannah was on the bottom of the list
that I went through, so. . .
MR. FAGERSTROM: Well, if you'd forgive
me, I'd like to go get them.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Sure.
MR. FAGERSTROM: That
way we could --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Sure.
MR. FAGERSTROM: - - get them out of the way early.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Okay, sure, sure.
MR. FAGERSTROM:
You could have other people that might be here already.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Okay. Margaret Seeganna? Is she here?
(Pause.)
MR. FAGERSTROM: That's one of the people --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Okay. Okay (laughing). Thomas Johnson? (Pause. ) I don't
know why I read Thomas Johnson. Should have
been Tommy Johnson, huh? (Laughing.)
MR. JOHNSON: Well, that's
the way I sign my check --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Oh (laughing).
MR. JOHNSON:
-- and that's the only reason. Thanks a lot for coming, and I
appreciate us to go ahead and say a few kind words.
But the thing that Hannah just talked about is really true. Now,
if you go ahead and you take a look at the Bristol Bay, the Kuskokwim,
the Yukon, and Bering Straits. You look at Bering Straits now,
the amount of fish that are coming up here now has dwindled way
down. I believe that Hansen (ph.) and the other person out of
Dillingham have tried hard to control the fish that would come
into their own spawning grounds.
Let's take a look at False Pass,
where you have a great many of seiners that come up and pick
the fish before they can even
get into the spawning grounds. They have approximately 67 miles
of area that they can go ahead and fish. I believe, to go ahead
and close an area roughly about 30 miles, where False Pass is
located now, that would give our subsistence fishermen up here
the right to have the fish come back into their own spawning
grounds.
Now, in False Pass area, there is no spawning grounds
that the fish go into, so technically those fishermen that are
fishing
down there are stealing our fish to come back to spawn. In time,
they deplete the fishing industry. They deplete all the spawning
fish that are coming into an area; and then, in ten years time,
they do the same thing as the crab system that they're applying
now.
I have made application to be on the Fish and Game
Board, so you could put some of this into it. have fished in
Bristol
Bay
since 1944. That's approximately 48 years. I plan on going back
down there this year. I'm retired; but the thing that I look
at is, let's say, sometimes the state and federal government
have a deaf ear to those people that want to subsistence fish;
and that's the problem that we have here now. They made the decision
last year to bring the quota up, and then they brought it back
down. That's not the problem. The problem is to close an area
there, approximately 30 miles, they still have -- would have
roughly 37 miles.
Let' s take Igiugig, where most of the fishermen
came out. Eleven million fish going up there this year. They
harvested approximately
that amount. A million and a half went up the river to spawn.
Last year, they went ahead and put two and a half million up
there. That's the reason why they have such a amount of fish
going out there. Anybody could figure that out.
And Naknek has
12 miles. Igiugig has approximately six miles that all those
fishermen can go ahead and go into. But those
people out there are stretched on the Yukon, the Kuskokwim, Bristol
Bay.
The chum salmon. There's hardly any chums coming
back in that area either. The reason why we like the chum, because
they're
nor a fat fish, and the people like to go ahead and fish them
up the river. And that's one of the problems. Now, I also came
up, as a senior I'm 67 years young, and I'd like to go ahead
and give you some of the programs that are involved up here.
But we, as seniors, like to go ahead and direct some of the problems
that we have within our area, and I'll give you a copy of the
Nome Community Center. As a senior I've looked at this program,
and I figured out why we don't have more input on it. The board
of directors really are -- or who are they? Then the executive
director, where does he get his inf -- marching orders? I believe
the Nome Community Center may - - I said may be involved-- through--
the Methodist Church.
The senior -- let's look at the first one.
The senior -- X-Y Senior Program. We have an advisory board.
Then the senior program
director is one of us.
Now look at the Nome Adult Day Care. They
don' t have an advisory board. But we like to have somebody sitting
there as an advisory
board.
Teen Center program. Should there be an advisory
board there? Youth Center. Should there be an advisory board?
Community Partnership. Everybody in town wonders
where you got that two and a half million dollars to run it for
three years
or four years, or -- we don' t know. There's no - - the steering
committee on one of the letters is there is only one man that's
running. The steering committee doesn't have a chairman, where
we would go ahead and make our complaints to.
I believe that
the seniors should have the chance to go ahead and make a complaint
to the chairman -- not the executive director,
but the chairman of the board, or the chairman of the steering
committee.
These are the things that I dislike about some
of these programs. We should be all involved. If the Eskimo community
had the procedure
of running this, they wouldn't have to answer to no one; but
we have a board up there. Sure we made mistakes. All of us do,
but there was other things that involved in this process for
the seniors that we should -- the seniors should run the program
themselves.
We have the Community Center board, and I've -seen
the Community Center board members go to the senior building
and have their
meetings. The senior building itself, the Community Center's
moved into it; and pretty soon the seniors won't have a place
to move in, for the simple reason the Community Center looks
like it's going to take the whole building over.
Now, maybe I
talked too long on that. I was also a member of the Operating
Engineers, and I was employed from them for approximately
11 years. I'm retired, and I have a good retirement salary. Now,
the Department of Labor, Labor Standards and Safety Division.
There is some questions that I have in reference to those people
that
work for the contractors. Let's presume that the subcontractor
had the job, and his salary is supposed to be $16.68 an hour
for being a truck driver. That's from 10 yards to 20 yards. Now
in the contract itself to the prime contractor states that there
would be a pension plan and a health and welfare plan put into
it. Where does this money go to? Does the contractor keep it,
or do they go ahead and give it to the employer, which is roughly
about $7 an hour, and you take 15 -- let's say at 15 hours; that
would be about a hundred dollars. Let's say if he worked 15 hours
a day and you have, let's say, 10 men working, that's a thousand
dollars, but where does that money go to? Does that money stay
with the contractor, or does he give it up to the employee?
You
know the State law to have a teacher teaching, and I think you
know that quite well, at the end of his term to retire, he
received a State retirement. Within the state, all up and down
the coast, you look at the contractor. Why are these -- some
of these contractors getting so big? Maybe they're using that
retirement moneys for themselves. It should be on the contract.
If he's a subcontractor, he should be putting it somewhere. That's
the big problem, let's say under the Davis-Bacon Act, which is
federal and state; and who's stealing that money? Where is it
going? And where do you put a trace on it for the employee that
is working here, or in Unalakleet if he's building a school?
That's the big problem. Let's turn it back to that person that
earned the money, because he only receives that money at a short
time of the year, which would be about three months at the most.
And the thing that I look at the education system
we have within the state of Alaska, and I think you know it very
well, that:
there's too many standards from the village to None, from Nome
to Anchorage. Why can't we have one standard? If the ki-d can't
go ahead and graduate from the second grade, then that standard
is looked on, too. I believe, Sam, where you were educated was,
let's say, a private place. But the thing that look at is there
was a decision being made, let's say, in Anchorage. And that
person went ahead -- that judge made the decision in reference
to a person being the father or the mother would take care of
this little child. The decision's been made that the education
system we have here in Nome wasn't as good as the one in Anchorage,
so I believe the father taking that children so she would have
a better education in Anchorage. And I believe very strongly
that we should look toward the education system.
I've been in
St. Mary's. You have some very good people down there that's
been educated through the Catholic -- and the Catholic
Church, but still again, we must remember our education's our
lifeline to a better system.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: A lot of the
NANA people through the Copper Center, too.
MR. JOHNSON: Yeah.
And maybe I've ran off the mouth a little; but still again, these
are the complaints you have to take back
GO the federal and state government.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: I've
got a couple of questions for you. One is on the False Pass.
They did reduce their area voluntarily.
They re -- quit fishing in a certain area. I was wondering if
you'd heard of that They did that on their own. They complained
about it, but they reduced it. And I was wondering about the
reduction of the Japanese, the Korean, and the Russian trawlers
in what they call the doughnut area, with regard to the type
of driftnets that they use. I wonder if those areas have impacted
Nome yet?
MR. JOHNSON: I believe anything impacts our area
for the simple reason is where do the fish come from?
COMMISSIONER
TOWARAK: Right, okay.
MR. JOHNSON: We must remember that the
fish come from someplace; but the thing that you must remember,
we'd like to keep the spawning
grounds open at all times. Just like Hannah Miller said, when
the Fish and Game says we can fish from 6 o'clock in the evening
'till 48 hours later, the good Lord, most of the time he goes
ahead and he makes a big storm, so we can't even put the net
out.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Right.
MR. JOHNSON: And Fish
and Game don't look at the good Lord, for the simple reason they
gob their own standards they want to go
by; and maybe all summer long we only fish when we're supposed
to.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Right.
MR. JOHNSON: I think
that Fish and Game should control the time that the people want
to fish, not the time that they want to
do it.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: There's where we need an
advisory board sitting right there of elders that could work
with that
group
and says: "Okay, let's go," so that is a good suggestion.
On the Department of Labor, Standards and Safety
Division, did -- do you know where your pension went to, or is
it any different
than what is happening now, or do you think maybe they're just
not following up on it?
MR. JOHNSON: Well, the contractor has
the right to put that money into a pension fund, but --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Oh, oh, his --
MR. JOHNSON: -- where does his --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: -- own private pension fund?
MR. JOHNSON: His own
private pension fund, which would go to an insurance company.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: So what you're --
MR. JOHNSON:
My pension fund goes into the Operating Engineers.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Okay.
MR. JOHNSON: And we have a billion dollars --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Right.
MR. JOHNSON: -- into the pension fund, and
it's controlled by four of the industry and
four from the union,
so --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Okay.
MR. JOHNSON: -- we
can't go south with the money.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Right.
MR. JOHNSON: We can't
--
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: So you're asking
maybe the State set up something
like the Teacher's
Retirement
System,
Lo be
put into
an Operating Engineers or union-type?
MR. JOHNSON: I believe that the best thing that
they can go ahead
and
do is when the
contract is let --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK:
Uh-huh
(affirmative). A State
contract?
MR. JOHNSON: Like the airport
job out here. It specifies
that amount
of money
is going
to go
into a pension
fund, and it
should remain within
the State, so we have control
of it.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK:
Okay, okay. Thank you,
Tommy.
MR. JOHNSON:
I'm sorry came and ran off at
the mouth,
but this
is the
time we're
supposed
to
do it.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: (Laughing.)
That' s right.
Francis Johnson?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
Can I just make
a quick comment?
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
I mean, you said
earlier that
you thought
that
voluntary
--
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK:
Right.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-- reduction
in
fish,
and I looked
at that
as being
a reduction
because
of the
lawsuit by --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK:
Okay.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
(Indiscernible
-
away from
microphone)
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK:
Okay.
(Tape
changed to
Tape #3.)
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