How to prepare a king salmon for the smokehouse from Dennis Zaki on Vimeo.
This is from a documentary being put together by my friend Dennis Zaki.
This is how he describes it on the website:
"The Salmon People" is a documentary about the struggles of Alaska Natives to survive without king salmon while corporations catch their fish and dump them overboard as bycatch in the quest for McDonald's filet-o-fish sandwich.
Did you listen to how proud that Lenora Hootch was as she described learning how to cut up the salmon to be dried and smoked with her father as a young girl? Did you hear how humble she was, and how thankful she felt to have fish to feed her family? Quite a contrast from that OTHER program which claims to show people the real Alaska now isn't it?
Unlike Sarah Palin these people live the TRUE Alaskan subsistence lifestyle.
They could not imagine the luxury of spending $42,400 for a freezer full of Caribou meat. That is something that rich people, with choices, get to do if they have millions of dollars at their disposal and want to play pretend hunter or fisherman.
For these people it is about feeding their families, NOT feeding their egos.
Gryphen, pretty small freezer at that.
ReplyDeleteExcellent! when will it be released and where will it air?
ReplyDeleteTLC? Isn't that the abbreviation for The Learning Channel?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dennis (& Gryphen), for a
...........real lesson.............
Part I - Village perspective
ReplyDeleteGryphen, I'm glad Dennis had gone out to the Lower Yukon villages when the Governor was glacially slow to respond or acknowledge that the very real and crippling gas prices caused an energy crisis on her turf.
The top prices on oil managed to flush the State's coffers with Sarah's taxing the hell out of Big Oil (to the point they weren't willing to invest in the State anymore) but at the cost of affordable power, heat and outfitting Subsistence activities in the face of a fishery disaster (she still had ignored also too.)
continued. . .
SO get that on TLC....truth in Alaska advertising.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the nonsense I just say on the web that in Alaska everything that Palin did to steal from Alaskans is now legal? Alaska has to pay for the family kids to travel with the governor?
Alaska's new motto - Lie, cheat and steal!
Part II - Village perspective
ReplyDeleteFor six weeks during the winter of '67-'68 the caribou did not come within range of Point Hope. The village was experiencing a major food shortage. Options were limited and a clarion call went out to neighboring villages that Point Hope needed meat.
Governor Walter Hickel sent state airplanes to the villages in the area to pick up donated meat for transport. For example, a man from Kivalina went through his meat rack to inventory his cache, three sacks of white fish and two caribou leftovers would be sent to Point Hope. Another man collected the donations in a sled and took it to the airport. People had faith that enough caribou would come in time to feed the sled dogs.
The state airplane came and transported the meat to Point Hope. Some hunters from Point Hope were taken by the state airplanes to where the caribou herds were and sufficient meat was taken for the village needs. Thus ended the meat shortage in Point Hope.
That is the way a Governor handles a food crisis in the Extreme North.
Continued. . .
Wow! What a skillful, knowledgeable woman. I love her gentle strength. A heartfelt "Thank You" to Dennis for producing and sharing this film.
ReplyDeletePart III - Village perspective
ReplyDeleteThe Iron Dog race, the race that Todd Palin thinks is flippin cool.
A Real Time with Bill Maher writer wrote a hilarious (yet sad) blog post on the fuel consumption involved in Iron Dog - a 1971 mile snogo race from Big Lake to Fairbanks that in someway is comparable to The Iditarod?
"In the course of performing this awesome feat, his Arctic Cat's powerful two-stroke engine will emit the same amount of hydrocarbons as an automobile driving from Chicago to San Francisco and back 150 times."
I theorize that one racer, namely Todd, burns more gas than all the households in Bristol Bay put together in one winter. It could outfit all their Subsistence hunts. Maybe even their summer fishing also too.
If Todd hadn't been revealed as being a shadow governor, pushing vendetta's and chits in a frightening way - and if he hadn't of bragged to Greta Van Susteren that he advocated for native hire in the oil industry (thereby exhibiting his Native bonafides) then I'd leave him alone about trying to improve the quality of life for his villages. But these are the Palin's we are talking about. They presume to have all the answers for not only Alaska, but for the country and most of the world.
Meanwhile, their villages pay upwards of $8 a gallon for petroleum products, quiet often literally chose between lights or diapers, while the Millionaires are comped a $50,000 staged caribou hunting trip for shits and giggles to reinforce their bullshit frontier narrative.
Village Perspective.
Done.
Maybe OT, but a great woman died today: Elizabeth Edwards. Lost a child, raised three, had cancer, publicly betrayed by her husband, and died with her entire family, including her cheatin' husband by her side. Even the pictures show a loving, caring woman who connected with other women on a deep level. Elizabeth advocated for health care reform while suffering from cancer. She wrote inspiring books - not Facebook rants - even while facing the worst. A class act. Some said she should have been the Edwards who ran for public office. Meanwhile, her daughter Kate is a lawyer and the younger children look normal and are kept from the public eye. (Of course, all this would be lost on Sarah Palin, but it is not lost on people who want leaders who inspire rather than wannabes who only aspire.) Thank you, Elizabeth.
ReplyDeleteBy the way Gryphen, I beg to differ on your labeling here.
ReplyDeletePeople in the rural, remote villages, off the grid, do not live a Subsistence Lifestyle - it's called a way of life.
Lifestyle connotes a choice, which is what the Palin's exercise when they opt for a $50,000 hunting trip over a drive over to Taco Bell for Sarah's supreme crunch wraps.
The land is our supermarket, we get fresh protein with our returning migratory waterfowl in the Spring, fresh wild eggs, seals, walrus, whales, fish and shellfish on the coast, rivers and lakes. Fur bearing mammals are trapped for use, greens are gathered for arts, crafts, medicine and food. We love our lands, we honor the animal spirits and life sustaining flora for giving themselves up for our use. As long as we remain humble, the Creator will continue to give via Mother Nature.
We don't need a cable television show to promote these values, it has been passed on for millenia from the ones before us, and it will be passed on to the ones after us. . .that is if we don't take Sarah's advice that we all leave our families and homeland to take jobs on the Slope like Todd.
I never want to work that hard for my food but Mrs. Hootch put it all in perspective. She was totally covered in salmon oil and bits by the time she prepared that large fish for smoking and drying. It certainly is an art that us city dwellers do not possess. We had a whole silver that was given to us this summer frozen and we thawed it out and filleted it. I had no idea until now how much meat we had wasted.
ReplyDeletelook what showed up in a tinfoil forum
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10692930
This is actually interested, informative, educational, and not only does it not make me puke, I now want to go fishing with this person and work along her side.
ReplyDeleteTLC should hire HER!
Gryphen, you forgot to meant ion that they respect the riches of Alaska as they are and want to maintain them, not dig, them up poison them, cover them with oil, and mining and drilling muck and leave the state a toxic wasteland, with all natural mineral wealth destroyed forever.
ReplyDeleteSarah talks about Alaska's beauty and natural riches out one side of her mouth and brags about wanting to destroy its beauty and cash in its natural riches out the other side.
She is totally unaware of the duplicity of her own statements.
And no one in the MSM will call her on it.
http://astore.amazon.com/teasar-20/detail/0062064347
ReplyDeleteAmerica by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, Collector's Edition
By Sarah Palin
List Price: $100.00
SALE Price: $67.50
**Limited to only 1000 copies, this collectible edition of Sarah Palin's America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag is hand signed and hand numbered. The beautiful package also features a navy blue bonded leather cover; gold, gilded pages; a red ribbon marker; and a four-color insert. The perfect way to commemorate this publishing event.**
Wow - Gryphen, thank you for the post and thanks to Dennis for his documentary.
ReplyDeleteA special thanks to Anonymous who at 6:42,6:50, and 7:02 for his or her amazing comments! These should go viral. Wow - the statistics and the story of that truly dedicated and compassionate Governor Hickel - these should be go national. They truly put into perspective the shallowness, greed, and self-absorption of Todd and Sarah Palin.
Thank every one of you for providing these insights and revelations! This must be, must be more widely known.
I am sending this page as a link to people I know who need to understand these facts, and I hope others will follow suit.
Did you see the new ethics laws Gryphen passed in Alaska. Your state has nuts for politicians. They are am embarrassment to our country.
ReplyDeleteThat was truly amazing and educational. There certainly are Alaskan women we can be proud of. Make that...REAL Alaskan women.
ReplyDeleteWhat a kind and wonderful lady Mrs. Hootch is to share with us her knowledge and skills. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThank you too to Dennis for filming and sharing this.
Now that's true information and education about AK!!
Subsistence way of living is very hard living. It wasn't until the missionaries came in with modest farming and govt commodities that leisure time was introduced.
ReplyDeleteBut idle hands begat horrible social pathologies, piled on top of cultural annihilation by the same purveyors of The Way. If everything about us Natives were sinful, what worth were we? Every life instruction we passed on to make our children functional and contributing adults became taboo. Premarital sex, teenage sex, abuse, alcoholism and all sorts of social ills devestated us since 'assimilation.'
We are way past blaming anyone anymore, but my point is, we Natives still work very hard to keep to our traditions that involve the land and sea. The Creator lights our summer days with a midnight sun for a reason, we need those precious 20 hour daylight times for three months to keep up with the migratory species - waterfowl and salmon. They see us through the next long winter. And we start over again. We are Always Getting Ready.
But when something about our people makes the City papers, read the comment sections, Ugly Alaskans like the Heath's, the Palin's and the Millers tell us to quit complaining, living off the government, or to move.
I'd like to see then pack away 700 pounds of fish just for the fun of it and tell us how useless and lazy we are again.
Gryphen: Thank you for posting part of Dennis documentary.
ReplyDeleteIt shows what a farce Sarah Palin Alaska really is.
The way Mrs. Hootch handled that fish with reverence you could tell how important that King Salmon was to
her and her family.
The tip about the potato was great also.
That was fascinating. I was entranced watching the delicacy shown by Mrs. Hooch as she prepared the salmon for brining and smoking. Her hands were a ballet. Thank you, Mrs. Hooch, Dennis, and Gryphen for teaching me.
ReplyDeleteLOL. Aaron Sorkin states discussing Sarah Palin, "I can make the distinction between the two of us but I've tried and tried and for the life of me, I can't make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I'm able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-sorkin/sarah-palin-killing-animals_b_793600.html
An even better quote from Sorkin, "So I don't think I will save my condemnation, you phony pioneer girl. (I'm in film and television, Cruella, and there was an insert close-up of your manicure while you were roughing it in God's country. I know exactly how many feet off camera your hair and make-up trailer was.)"
ReplyDeleteLMAO. Best present I've opened in the morning was reading Sorkin's blog!
42K for a carribou that may or may not have already calved and before the hunting season even started. Is there a law against during calving season? If so, I want to ask the grizzled momma, the granny huntress of the north, "do you like killing unborn babies?"
ReplyDeleteThanks for showing this. Lenora is an amazing woman (and Twitler is not).
ReplyDeleteLenora made me want that salmon, too!
The new ethics laws are the reason that Sarahs excuse for quitting doesn't fly. Instead of quitting she could have worked to change the ethics laws.
ReplyDeleteI personally believe they were abused and that most of the complaints were frivilous, and Palin had a reason to be annoyed by them. She should have been a governor though and worked to change the problems in her state instead taking her ball and going home.
I don't know why no one has ever not publically asked her this question.
Now that is what one would expect to see when flipping to The LEARNING Channel. Thanks so much, I really enjoyed watching the video. It was beautiful and disgusting all at the same time. Fish guts are hard for me. It truly is an art form and I bet there are a lot of foodies out there that would like to see this video as well. Good Job Dennis!
ReplyDeleteGood post Gryphen.
ReplyDeleteIt might be nice to post Village Perspective's comments in a single post.
Do TV producers think the American people are a bunch of ghouls. I have yet to watch this horrid show, but why would they think we would want to watch people go hunting & fishing(without the necessary skills) & violently kill things in such a disrespectful way.
Hopefully, this macabre display by the Palins will help to produce their departure from the national stage.
Gryphen, The link to the research and breakdown of the 42K hunting trip to "fill the freezer" was eye opening. Your wording led me to think the Palin's freezer cost 42K.
ReplyDeleteThe research about the cost of the trip may deserve special attention.
Did the hunting episode suggest the Palins do this routinely (drop 42K to hunt) out of necessity for food? What happened to the promotional BS this program is "for AK" and going to feature and promote local businesses?
This faux reality show, lied about set up to be what it is clearly not, must be insulting to people who truly live off the land to sustain life.
There is irony when a personality like Palin spews garbage that people ultimately learn so much recognizing tall tales and BS for what it is. Truth is educational but something Palin opposes incited to anger.
Thank you for the video. I enjoy reading the information shared in the comments.
I, too, think the "Village Perspective" and other comments directly from the native/village source are well worth a post of their own.
ReplyDeleteThank you Gryphen for showing us the part of Alaska the ignorant Sarah can't capture for TLC.
ReplyDelete