by Peter Twitchell
Looking back to my childhood I can say Alaska Native Tribes lived healthy lives eating mostly wild foods from the land, rivers, coastal shores, and lakes and streams.
Eating fish of all species, seals, walruses, moose, caribou, and reindeer when the Laplands Saami brought them to Alaska and herded them with the help of the local natives.
In those days long before the outside world interfered with our way of life our children grew up with healthy, strong bodies.
I can still see it today in our middle aged men and women who work hard to provide for their families with basically the same foods our ancestors harvested and depended on to feed their families.
Native people were blessed with great representatives in Congress who supported and still support the Alaskan Subsistence Life. Great men and women like Representative Mary Peltola, the late Rep. Don Young, Senator Ted Stevens, and other lawmakers through the decades past.
When I was a boy sitting in the Northern Commercial Co. theater seeing lawmaker Gruening entering the showhall prior to the movie starting, I was just a kid, but he got huge applause from the movie goers.
He appeared to be escorted by two bodyguards, as other lawmakers after him were.
Finally, we are all grateful for U.S. Representative Mary Peltola who is herself a subsistence fisherwoman for laying the law out to protect further and sustain our subsistence way of life as Alaskans. We are blessed and we can continue to raise a strong and healthy generation of children.
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