This episode begins in Fairbanks, AK. Yo-Yo Ma is at a house concert with drag queen environmentalist Pattie Gonia, singer/songwriter Quinn Christopherson and Princess Daazhraii Johnson, a writer and filmmaker from the Gwich’in Nation. They were all performing to help their communities process the negative effects of climate change in Alaska.
This episode begins in Fairbanks, AK. Yo-Yo Ma is at a house concert with drag queen environmentalist Pattie Gonia, singer/songwriter Quinn Christopherson and Princess Daazhraii Johnson, a writer and filmmaker from the Gwich’in Nation. They were all performing to help their communities process the negative effects of climate change in Alaska. Salmon have been disappearing for decades, but now there are laws preventing fishing along the Yukon River, an ancestral practice for many Alaska Native people. Host Ana travels up to the 2024 Gwich’in Gathering in Circle, Alaska to learn how the Gwich’in nation uses its centuries-old tools of music and discussion to speak with one voice and bring back the salmon.
Featuring music by Yo-Yo Ma, Quinn Christopherson and Pattie Gonia, poetry by Princess Johnson, and traditional music by members of the Gwich’in Nation.
Credits: Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings
Hosted by Ana González
Produced by Alan Goffinski
With editing from Pearl Marvell
Sound design and episode music by Alan Goffinski
Mixed by Joe Plourde
Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado
Executive Producers are Emily Botein, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays.
Our advisors are Mira Burt-Wintonick, Kamaka Dias, Kelley Libbey, and Chris Newell
Episode photo by Austin Mann; Episode and show art by Tiffany Pai
This podcast was inspired by a project of the same name, conceived by Yo-Yo Ma and Sound Postings, with creative direction by Sophie Shackleton, in collaboration with partners all over the world.
Our Common Nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Philanthropies
ANA GONZÁLEZ: The fish begin as eggs. Placed at one end of the Yukon River. When they hatch, they stay close for years, swimming around, getting stronger, for what they know will come. The migration. Propelled by their own instincts, perhaps the pull of the earth’s magnetic fields or a strong sense of smell, salmon swim for weeks, through Canada and Alaska. West. For thousands of miles, through tiny towns, migrating herds of caribou. Old gross forests, cities and eventually they reach the ocean. Their cells change to be able to live in saltwater. There, they eat and eat to regain their strength. And when it's time, they turn around and swim right back up the river, all the way back to where they were born, where they lay and fertilize their own eggs. And then die. Every year for millions of years, king salmon have made this journey through the Yukon, attracting living beings to the river. Things like bears, and trees, and humans. They all evolved to rely on the yearly ritual of the salmon run. But now, the salmon aren’t running.
I’m Ana González and this is Our Common Nature, a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma and me through this complicated country to help us all find that connection to nature that so many of us are missing. We climb mountains, play music, drive dirt roads, recite poetry, traverse rivers and oceans and even our own brains – all to figure out how to better live on our planet, together.
In this episode, we are in Alaska. Looking at how the order of life here is changing and how the people who live here and care deeply about this place are responding to that change by coming together even closer against insurmountable odds. And in order to do that, we’re going on a little bit of journey starting from a house in Fairbanks filled with musicians and activists, where one of those artists will take us up hundreds of miles to a tiny town where the midnight sun lingers over the horizon, where the mosquitos reign, and where the Gwich’in people are dealing with the void salmon have left in the Yukon River. But we start with a little story about how Yo-Yo wound up here.
Yo-Yo Ma: You made all of our hearts beat together. Culture is what turns the other into us. I was the other until yesterday. You turned me into one of you through your culture of openness.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And that story begins with singer-songwriter Quinn Christopherson
BARK
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And his dogs
Quinn Christopherson: She does this like when people are here to like show that she's dominant
ANA GONZÁLEZ: We settle into Quinn’s apartment, strewn with instruments and dog toys. And we immediately start talking about fish
Quinn Christopherson: You know, growing up, there's an abundance. So much fish. Yes, so much fish … a lot of work to be done. We're taught to use everything that we catch is really beautiful too. Like from like the skin, we fry it up and in the guts, we just give it to the dogs and then they have just the most beautiful fur, right?...And then the eyeballs, you just, that's a prank that you pull on your friends.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : What do you do with the eyeballs?
Quinn Christopherson: Try and get em to eat it! hahaha
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Quinn is Alaska Native, a mix of Ahtna and Inupiaq. And he grew up going fishing with his family in Alaska. But that has changed.
Quinn Christopherson: You know, there is less and less salmon now,
ANA GONZÁLEZ: For the past 20 years or so, salmon numbers have been declining in parts of Alaska. The predictability of the every summer fish camp is gone. And Quinn is coping with that loss the best way he knows how.
Quinn Christopherson: I started like writing poetry when I was in seventh grade and I remember it like so clear because I was going through a really hard time, like with my home life and I just started writing these poems and immediately like felt better. .... it just gave me like so much power …from then on, I just never stopped writing.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Today, Quinn is making a career out of that process. He’s a singer-songwriter and this song won him the 2019 NPR Tiny Desk contest. Quinn tours all over the world, singing words that he wrote, processing all the big emotions of his life. He’s also a trans man and known as one of the few queer Alaska native musicians in the public eye. Quinn’s songwriting skills got the attention of another queer performer.
Pattie Gonia: Yeah, my name is Pattie Gonia and I am an environmentalist and drag queen.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: How did those two things in your mind go together?
Pattie Gonia: I mean the art form of drag has been used since its inception to fight for what people believe in, for human rights, for queer rights at first, but I think it makes a lot of sense to use drag as a communication tool, as an art form, to advocate for this planet as well.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And that's what Pattie’s doing. She’s known for going out into nature in full drag, hiking in heels, skiing with a full beat on her face, 3 feet of wig flying in the wind. All to raise awareness for enormous environmental issues. And recently, she turned her attention to a glacier in Alaska that meant a lot to her.
Pattie Gonia: My dad passed of brain cancer about ten years ago and when he passed, I took his ashes up to Alaska with my brother, and I got to scatter my dad's ashes in front of this glacier because he was actually born in Anchorage. And so it felt like a way to close that chapter
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And when she went there, she saw that it was dying.
Pattie Gonia: You see three story tall sections of ice crash into the water
ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is one of the many big changes in Alaska. Glaciers are supposed to melt. Slowly. It’s part of their lifecycle. But climate change is speeding up that process. Warming the waters which melts the ice which causes floods and this domino effect all the way down to the salmon. Which we will get back to, I promise. But Pattie wanted to honor the life and death of these essential icy giants in Alaska using her art of drag.
Pattie Gonia: My original idea for the project is to perform a funeral for a glacier.
But she didn’t quite know how to do that. So, she asked Quinn.
Quinn Christopherson: If you know Pattie, you don’t say no to her [laughs] so…
ANA GONZÁLEZ: So Pattie pitched Quinn this big kind of campy idea …
Quinn Christopherson: The glaciers melting. We're saying goodbye to it. This is a funeral.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: But that didn’t sit right with Quinn.
Quinn Christopherson: My perspective as a Native person is that we're not different than nature. So like when we're talking about nature, we're talking about ourselves and we're taking care of nature, we're taking care of yourself. We have so much fight to do, so much work to do, like it would be a disservice to say like, “alright, nice knowing you.” That's how it kind of turned into a love song.
Pattie Gonia: I am so thankful for collaboration because, you know, that, direction took an about face. And instead of giving up, the perspective changed to, what if there was something worth fighting for?
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And this is an idea Yo-Yo Ma can vibe with.
Yo-Yo Ma: Pattie Gonia and Quinn are incredible characters. They're both so devoted to their mission, to highlight what is happening to their homes and to have a human reaction to it.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: So Yo-Yo flew to Alaska and met up with Quinn and Pattie.
Pattie Gonia: Yeah, I'll never forget. I had a backup wig and Yo-Yo decided that he would love to wear that backup wig and put it on.
Yo-Yo Ma: You put on a wig, you start to act differently. I sashay, you know, around the floor.
Pattie Gonia: : He hopped straight into his drag persona. He was finger snapping. He was literally saying “Slay boots”. And I can die happy now.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: What do you think his drag persona is? Like, what's her name?
Pattie Gonia: Yo Mama, duh.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Eventually, he put the wig down and started playing his addition to the song that Quinn and Pattie wrote.
SONG PLAYS
Well I’m not
I’m not gonna say goodbye
I won’t see you on the other side
Even when I feel tired
I won’t stop
You and I
Made of both the same things
Nature running in our veins
Even when I feel tired
I won’t stop trying
I won’t give up for a minute
Never giving up on you, never giving up on you
ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is Yo-Yo, Quinn and Pattie performing their song “Won’t Give Up” at an event in Fairbanks Alaska. It’s a workshop called “Listen to Heal” created by Princess Dhaazhraai Johnson.
Princess Dhaazhraai Johnson: The intention of the workshop was really to create a safe space where we could channel these feelings of frustration but, beneath all that is just a deep grief for how quickly everything is changing up here.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Princess is an activist, organizer, and writer. And she wrote a poem about salmon, which she performed after Pattie, Quinn and Yo-Yo in Fairbanks.
PPrincess Dhaazhraai Johnson: (performing): Oceans and Rivers. Once teeming with life.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: The title of the poem is “When We Were Salmon.” Princess wrote it to reflect her angst about the declining salmon numbers in Alaska. About how Alaska native people, like her, are struggling to keep their connection to this species.
Princess Dhaazhraai Johnson: (performing): Let us grieve together. Let us honor what is left. And make prayers to restore our relationship so we might continue to swim together so that we might see, once again, full nets and busy fish camps.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: As Princess projects these words into a small room in Fairbanks, it’s kind of hard to see how a musical performance to a small crowd can change anything. But the point is that all of these seemingly random pairings of Pattie and Quinn and Princess and Yo-Yo, they can come together and listen to each other. They can collaborate and become one unified voice.
Yo-Yo Ma: Absolutely. I mean, all of these voices have to come together. And sometimes you act in unison, sometimes you act separately. Sometimes, one changes roles, or wigs, whatever the case. And that's the resilience of a group. You know, Wynton Marsalis has a way of talking about jazz as being a democracy. And when I heard him say that, I said, wait a minute, that applies to chamber music, it applies to any large scale artistic group where people agree that there's gonna be a form and guardrails of that form, and once you agree, it's a micro version of our constitution,
ANA GONZÁLEZ: A constitution is really just a group of people agreeing on a set of rules for their community. And I get how people do it with music. But how do actual governments figure out those rules? And how the heck do people ever agree on them?
Princess Dhaazhraai Johnson: It's not easy, but we have to protect the salmon.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: After the break, we go north, way north, with Princess to see how her culture has mANA GONZÁLEZ: ged to protect an entire ecosystem through the power of their voices.
BREAK
AM RADIO PLAYS
ANA GONZÁLEZ in car: You’re listening to 1170 AM, Alaska AM radio… the only station you get on the drive up to Circle.
radio plays under this next part
ANA GONZÁLEZ: in car: It is Sunday July 14th 2024 and we've been driving Steese Highway for about a hundred miles.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our Common Nature is back. I’m ANA GONZÁLEZ Gonzalez and my producer Alan and I are on the only road that drives into Circle, Alaska. In fact we are driving to the end of the road. Like where there are no more roads. 50 miles south of the arctic circle.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is the farthest north I've ever been.
Alan Goffinski: No. This is the farthest north you've ever been.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Actually, you're wrong. This is now the farthest north I've ever been.
Alan Goffinski: I'm pretty sure you're wrong. This is the furthest north you or I have ever been.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And again, I'm gonna correct you because it's actually right [FADE OUT] now, right here, right now on This is the farthest north either one of us have ever been.Except for now.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: We’re traversing mountain ranges, passing crystalline lakes. Eating cheese sandwiches and hoping that we don’t get a flat tire as the road becomes unpaved. We’re only a few weeks out from the summer solstice, so luckily we don’t have to worry about driving in the dark.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: 6.48, coming up on 7pm. The sun is not setting. Don’t really know what’s gonna happen, but the plan is we're gonna literally camp. We're gonna pop our tents, and spend the next five days, in Circle, along the banks of the Yukon River.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Why Circle, population 91? Well, Princess invited us up to attend this year's Gwich'in Gathering, the biennial event that brings together her Alaska native community, the Gwich’in, from all across Alaska and Canada.
Princess Dhaazhraai Johnson: Every Gwich’in community has its own vibe. It has its microculture of, you know, Gwich'in life.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: We’re actually lucky we can even drive into Circle. Many Gwich'in communities can only be reached by plane or boat, because they lie along the Yukon river. Circle sits at a calm part of the river. And as we finally arrive, we see it glittering in the distance.
Princess Dhaazhraai Johnson: I mean, every time I get close to the Yukon, I just feel the power of that waterway. I think about my ancestors who traveled up and down it. I think about the life that it gives us.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Every 2 years, the Gwich'in gathering is held at a different Gwich'in community. It's always at the height of summer, when the salmon are supposed to be traveling from the ocean, almost 2000 miles, back to the beginning of the Yukon in northwestern CANA GONZÁLEZ: da, where they will spawn and die.
Alan Goffinski Do you mind if I press record and can you tell me about a fish wheel?
Curtis Tyndall: If you hit a school of fish, man, it just pulls all these fish out. And the box would even overflow…
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Alan and I are part of the small group of people at the Gathering who are not Gwich'in, here to awkwardly insert ourselves into this tight knit indigenous community camping along the banks of the river, but we found out that everyone was pretty open.
Curtis Tyndall: Okay. Hi, my name is Curtis Tyndall. I'm 61 and happily married, but if this was 30 years ago, I would be up here to meet the beautiful Gwich'in women.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: We're next to dozens of tents that are set up on the grass, on the banks of the Yukon River. It's got a family campground vibe with picnic tables, RVs, and grills. The water below us is silver and quiet. No waves, no visible fish of any kind, and no fish wheels, which Curtis is telling us about.
Curtis Tyndall: Okay, well you build the the bases out of logs. It's all made out of wood, right? And then the current makes buckets turn. And then when it comes down into the water, the fish are swimming towards it and it's just like a net and picks it up. We caught some king salmon that were so big, they literally broke the buckets. Those are probably like 70 pounds or more.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: He's talking about the King Salmon, or Chinook. Chinook can weigh up to 100 pounds per fish. A wheel full of them is enough to feed a family, or a village, for months. Everybody we talked to at the gathering had a story about them.
CHUCK: I guess my grandpa's brother had, had a fish wheel.. And they'd fish there for the summer.
CURTIS: Making like dry salmon and salmon strips? Because you have so many …
Diloola Erickson: I got a call at like 2 30 AM, and it was my cousin and he was like, hey, they just brought in 12 more fish to come down. And we were sitting there all night, cutting fish in the smokehouse.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: But that’s not the reality this summer. And it hasn’t been for a while. Every year, there have been fewer and fewer salmon running down the Yukon River. And, Diloola Erickson, who I talked salmon with along the banks of the Yukon, she explained to me that the governments of the United States and CANA GONZÁLEZ: da have been putting more and more restrictions on how and when people can fish.
Diloola Erickson: And that's like one of the things I think that creates a lot of grief within our communities too, is like the younger generation, missing out on those kinds of interactions. My cousin, he's a teacher and they were watching like an old video and there was a fish wheel in it, and the kids didn't know what it was.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Wow.
Diloola Erickson: Yeah.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: What are your hopes for the salmon?
Diloola Erickson: I have to think that they're gonna come back. Yeah. It's the only way forward.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: But right now, entire generations are missing out on learning how to fish with their families. And that’s what hurts Princess the most.
Princess Dhaazhraai Johnson: We're not able to go there and actually set net for king salmon. It didn't need to be this way. If we had more decision makers honoring our relationship with the salmon and not looking at it only as this method of fueling the economy. It's so much more than that.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Okay, so let’s consider the salmon. What exactly is our human relationship with this fish? Outside of just eating it?
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Oh, it looks like dinner’s being served.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : While waiting in line for dinner one night, we met this tall Swedish scientist, named Peter Winsor.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : We’ll let you cut us in line for an interview…
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : Turns out he’s an oceanographer who’s spent over 25 years working on arctic ecosystems. So I asked him about salmon.
Peter Winsor: I mean, arctic ecosystems are, uh, low biodiversity, so each, each little moth or butterfly or even mosquito, up to bigger animals like caribou, polar bears. Same with salmon. I mean, you can't pull out something out of the ecosystem and think it's just going to be functional. It's all connected.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And salmon are the connectors: weaving the oceans into the rivers and the forests and mountains just by living their migratory lives: eating, digesting and decomposing over the thousands of miles of their journeys. They’re a keystone species. Without them, the entire system of life here would fall.
Peter Winsor: That will be absolutely catastrophic.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : How do you deal with all the stress and worry because you know so much and you can foretell what can happen in all these scenarios?
Peter Winsor: I, I think you can't be a doomist, you know, I think there are lots of brakes and, and safety valves we can still switch on for the global climate system, both for oceans and animals and people too. The Earth system has the capacity to rebound if we, the ultimate invasive species, start doing the right thing.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: There are a lot of interpretations of what “doing the right thing” can mean in the face of the global threat that is climate change. But for decades, the Gwich’in have decided to figure it out the way that their ancestors did, camping along the banks of the Yukon River and talking.
MEETING: ROCHELLE Adams Gwich’in
MELISSA: My name is Melissa Charlie. I’m originally from Minto.
BRYAN RIDLEY: Bryan Ridley. I’m the chief chairman for the TANA GONZÁLEZ: na Chiefs Conference.
JODI: A lot of our elders and relatives have been fighting this salmon issue and the decimation of our king and dog salmon …
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : The Gwich’in Gathering of 2024 took place in a series of tents and buildings in the tiny town of Circle, Alaska. And the main tent is long and white, backed by the Yukon river, with a speaker podium on one end and dozens of folding chairs for folks to sit and listen to the issues in each Gwich’in community.
It’s really beautiful here. It’s powerful here.
It's up to us. We can't speak one without the other, and I wanna just you know talk a little bit about losing our resources slowly, well, that’s exactly what’s happening around us right now.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : Can you say your first and last name and kind of, uh, however you want to introduce yourself?
Kris Statnyk: Uh, my name is Kris Statnyk. I am a Vuntut Gwich’in.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: I met up with Kris outside of the tent. He’s a lawyer from CANA GONZÁLEZ: da, and he’s known about the gathering his whole life.
Kris Statnyk: I remember my uncle, Robert Bruce, coming home from a trip from Washington and he had a picture of him and Will Smith together. This is like the height of Fresh Prince of Bel Air. And I was like, who is my uncle?
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : Kris is one of the roughly 9,000 people in the US and Canada who claim Gwich'in ancestry. And he explained to me that the reason people like his uncle made it to Washington DC to meet the fresh prince and probably also US leaders is because they are organized. The Gwich’in speak with one political voice, even though their population lives between 2 countries and 3 time zones. When the Gwich’in come to this gathering every two years, they listen to each other and decide what to do next through consensus.
Kris Statnyk: It means you can't leave people behind, and you really do have to build understanding and help us all get on the same page.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Consensus voting on big issues is what’s helped the Gwich'in protect one of their most sacred places. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration wanted to open up thousands of acres of coastal Alaska for oil drilling. This land is part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and it's been sacred to the Gwich'in people for thousands of years.
Kris Statnyk: Our teachings were essentially to avoid it.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: I spoke with Kris about this more via zoom and he explained to me that, for Gwich’in people, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has always been known as the Sacred Place Where Life Begins. And Gwich’in people are told never to step foot there
Kris Statnyk: Because we know it's this important place of renewal
ANA GONZÁLEZ: The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is roughly the size of South Carolina. It sits a short plane ride north of where we are in the Yukon. It connects the Gwich’in lands to the sea north of Alaska. There are no roads, no cars, no pipelines. The porcupine Caribou have their babies there. The muskox roam free, and hundreds of migratory bird species find safety in its trees. This is a sacred place that feeds the entire Arctic. But in the 1980s, oil companies threatened to trample this precious ecosystem. So, the Gwich’in decided to come together in 1988 along the banks of the Yukon River and they talked. They danced, they sang. And they created a resolution.
Kris Statnyk: Saying that we withhold our consent to development in the calving grounds of the caribou.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And it worked. If you look at a map today of the northern coast of Alaska, you'll see oil fields dotting the entire coast everywhere, except for the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. That's because the Gwich'in people came together and spoke with one voice. And every two years, the Gwich'in Gathering brings community leaders back together to reaffirm this resolution. And in 2022, for the first time, that resolution also included the protection of the salmon.
Kris Statnyk: Whereas for thousands of years, we the Gwich’in have and continue to, steward and live alongside the Chinook and Coho salmon
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our lawyer friend Kris helped write it
CONTINUES TO READ IT: The Gwich’in have the inherent right…..
ANA GONZÁLEZ: It took days to write and days to talk through to make sure that every single person in the room agreed with it. The final paragraph reads The Gwich’in Nation restore Łùk Choo and their ecosystems of the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers through Gwich’in-led stewardship based upon Gwich’in knowledge, research and studies while utilizing local, national and international forums and partnerships.
Kris Statnyk: This resolution passed unanimously this 21st day of July, 2022 in Old Crow, Yukon.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: But the very next year, the governments of Alaska and CANA GONZÁLEZ: da decided to take their own action and place a moratorium on all salmon fishing in the Yukon River for one complete life cycle of a king salmon. That’s seven years of no salmon fishing in the Yukon. Which maybe sounds like a good thing if you are trying to prevent the salmon from disappearing altogether. Except that it only really prevents the very few people who live along Yukon from fishing in their traditional ways. Those are mostly Gwich’in people. And they didn’t all agree with that decision. How the Gwich’in responded after the break.
BREAK
ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is Our Common Nature. In 2023, the governments of the United States and CANA GONZÁLEZ: da created a 7-year moratorium on fishing for salmon in the Yukon River. The Gwich’in people, who have fished salmon in the Yukon for centuries, did not all agree with that decision. Here’s Princess Dhaazraii Johnson again.
Princess Dhaazraii Johnson: It's years of mismANA GONZÁLEZ: gement. And we're the first ones to pay the price.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: She says that while the people who fish along the Yukon are prevented from fishing in their waters, commercial fishing operations can still pull in huge numbers of salmon in the ocean.
Princess Dhaazraii Johnson: So these big fisheries, they might be out there fishing for pollock and they can't help it, right? They bring up all of this good King Salmon. Well, once the fish come up, they're dead and they are not allowed to keep them; they're thrown overboard. The amount over the years, it's staggering and that could have been going to feed families.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Princess says that the Alaskan government is donating fish to people who need it to survive. But it’s not just about eating the salmon.
Princess Dhaazraii Johnson: We are not able to pass on the ways in which we keep the relationship with the salmon. We're not able to pass on how you set the net, how you check the net, how you read the rivers. It is heartbreaking, the frustration, the injustice of it all.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And back in that main white tent at the 2024 gathering, a lot of people were feeling that sort of frustration. Especially in the summer before two big elections in the US and CANA GONZÁLEZ: da.
CHIEF: The next president of the United States, he's going to open everything up to whoever wants to develop it. That’s not gonna be good for our people.
NORMA: They are going to go there whether we got a United Nations declaration or not. But, how much does CANA GONZÁLEZ: da stand if they're going to go conservative as well when we don't know?
ANA GONZÁLEZ: On the last day I was in Circle, all of the leaders were supposed to vote to reaffirm this resolution to protect the caribou and the salmon, just like they done every two years for decades. But some of the older generation seemed to be losing hope in that ancient power of discussion and consensus. What good does a resolution like this do if no one outside of this tent in Circle pays attention?
NORMA: So, I stand here unsure, and I will withdraw that resolution, and put it back to discussion
ANA GONZÁLEZ: But then, a drum came out.
gwich'in drum: [FADE UP] It puts joy in my heart, strengthens my identity.
Hit the drum for us. Gonna sing for us. Help us start our day. Reconnect us as one people. And when he drums, I want you to think about your ancestors. Think about those people in 1988 that passed on. That started this. Let's bring them back in here today. Help us to get through some of those things that are really difficult for us. Because there's some things we're going to talk about today that we need to talk about.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: The core group of singers circled around the drum. First, a song about caribou.
MUSIC
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Then, a good luck song
MUSIC
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And finally a song about salmon
MUSIC
Drumming and singing: You notice this tent was shaking? That's our ancestors. Our ancestors are here with us.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And just like that, it was time to vote on reaffirming all of the resolutions
CHIEF: Approved the article 25
ANA GONZÁLEZ: It took hours. Even with the drumming and the coming together, there were many questions.
We were at an impasse. We have the authority … the jurisdiction of our people … Can we get a round of applause for that discussion we just had?
But they were all answered; nobody was ignored.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And then it was time to vote
CHIEF: Can we get a, can we get a motion for that to approve this othis resolution from 2022?
Grand Chief Ken Kiyokawichuk moves to reaffirm the Gwich’in neensayah (sp) resolution in 2022. Is there a second? Our traditional chief, Steve Guinness, seconds. Now comes the important part. Is there anybody opposed to this? Is there anybody opposed?
Seeing nobody opposed, which nation has reached consensus in adopting NCAA 2024 Resolution to protect the birthplace and nursery grounds of the porcupine caribou.
That took a while, but that's how we do things, right?
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Kris Statnyk, our lawyer friend, was in the tent during the resolution talks, and I caught up with him outside.
KRIS: Yeah, we had a lot of good discussion today. That’s the way we work towards consensus, which is an actually difficult thing to do. But it’s something that I'm really proud of Gwich'in of continuing to operate that way. That’s what we ended up getting to at the end of the day was a shared understanding of reaffirming and continuing this into the future and using whatever tools we can.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: The passing of this resolution is not legally binding under any government. But passing this resolution is a show of unity and strength at a moment of peril for the Arctic and maybe the world. Every 2 years, the process of gathering reconnects the Gwich’in community to its past, present, and its future. They talk, they sing, they tell stories and jokes and all of that protects not only their culture, but their way of life.
On my last night in Circle, there was a brief rainstorm and then it passed and left a rainbow
Princess Dhaazraii Johnson: Seriously it’s a double rainbow now!
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And princess and I walked down to the banks of the Yukon to take a look
Princess Dhaazraii Johnson: What has experience been like for you?
ANA GONZÁLEZ: It’s a little too loud at the camp site with people having fun, so we’re walking down a gravel boat ramp together.
Princess Dhaazraii Johnson: And we’re looking at a beautiful huge rainbow that spans one side of the river all the way to the other side of the river. It's such an embrace from the land. It's such a coming home to the water, to the Yukon River. Um, I mean, look at this. It’s also an affirmation of the incredible people I come from. That we're still very much exercising our language, our culture. And when we do that, we get these kind of acknowledgements, the river sings to you, the rainbow comes out, and that healing takes place.
YO-YO PLAYS SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW FROM THE FAIRBANKS SHOW
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : On every single trip, at some point Yo-Yo will play "Somewhere over the Rainbow". He's playing it here in Fairbanks. It's a sweet song and people have sweet reactions to it. But I asked Yo-Yo one time, why he plays it?
Yo-Yo Ma: 1939 was a very dark time in the world. The world was at war with one another, and people really literally thought this was the end of the kind of life as we knew it. And to know that somewhere over the rainbow was written during that time is so quintessentially human. For that song to be written that is so wistful and yearning and hopeful, that is what humans are capable of, it's one of the unique things for our species. to be able to have hope. Because hope is the beginning of dreaming. And dreaming is a beginning of organizing and acting towards a goal that is worthy for everybody to join in.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : Dreaming of a new reality, no matter how dark the present one might seem, is the first step towards change. Princess Johnson told me that after this journey through Alaska, first in Fairbanks with Yo-Yo and Pattie and Quinn and now, here, pn the Yukon River with her people, she was asleep one night, and deep in her subconscious dream state, she had a vision.
Princess Dhaazraii Johnson: I was on a bank of a river. I was with one of my brothers, I saw old driftwood and and the water was surging. It was like a push and it kind of got me scared because I thought, is this a flood? But when it got closer, it was King Salmon. From one side of the river to the other, bubbling, pushing the water. And I looked at my brother and I said, “We have to tell everyone that they're here, they're back!”
ANA GONZÁLEZ: : As Princess and I stand looking out over the Yukon, over the rainbow, and towards the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, there are no fish wheels or dropped nets in the river. And, at this point, we don’t know that Trump will win or that within the first 6 months of his presidency, he will open up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for bids to drill for oil. We don’t know he’ll be attempting to sell public lands and attack queer and trans people like Quinn and Pattie. Standing here with Princess hearing her dreams, they don’t seem far-fetched.
Because the Gwich'in have something more powerful than fear: a culture that unifies their voice, songs that connect them, and visions of a future that will come as new generations of lawyers, scientists, artists and activists continue to come together along the banks of the Yukon.
In the next episode of Our Common Nature, we go to West Virginia to hear about the ongoing impact of coal, in a place where music snakes through the mountains like a river.
CREDITS
Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings.
Hosted by ANA GONZÁLEZ: González
Produced by Alan Goffinski
With editing from Pearl Marvell
Scoring by Alan Goffinski
Mixed by Joe Plourde
Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado
Executive Producers are Emily Botein, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays
Our advisors are Mira Burt-Wintonick, Kamaka Dias, Kelley Libbey, and Chris Newell.
Thanks for additional audio from Princess and James Johnson. Here is their short film about Yo-Yo’s trip to Fairbanks and their workshops.
Music video with Pattie, Quinn and Yo-Yo on a glacier.
And if you want to listen to more music from this series, you can check out the Our Common Nature EP, featuring Yo-Yo playing with Eric Mingus, Jen Kreisberg and an Icelandic choir, now available on all streaming platforms.
This podcast was inspired by a project of the same name, conceived by Yo-Yo Ma and Sound Postings, with creative direction by Sophie Shackleton, in collaboration with partners all over the world.
Our Common Nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Philanthropies.