Kituusit? My name is Charity Qalutaq Blanchett. I am Dipping Spoon. A Yup’ik and Black Woman born on Dena’ina land, a descendant of the tundra from the land of the caribou, a rural village, Tuntutuliak, from a bloodline of Yup’ik royalty, the Real People.
I am also a Calista Shareholder. Calista is the Alaska Native regional corporation for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Region where my Indigenous Yup’ik mother was born and raised. It encompasses 57,000 square miles and is the second largest Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) region in size. My mother returns to her village every summer for Fish camp. Led with ancestral expertise she filets, guts and dries salmon, she heads up the Kuskokwim River with five gallon buckets to pick Salmonberries for Akutaq, or what western culture calls, Eskimo Ice cream; she opens the earth and dips her hand into natured water which gifts, debuq, salmon stink heads. Iykyk. My Yup’ik mother lives off the land, Subsistence Living.
Did You Know…Calista’s land entitlement is 6.5 million acres, which is less than 20% of the land area
Did You Know…75% of the land within the Region is owned by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Most of the remaining lands are owned by federal and state governments, with a very small amount privately owned. Surrounded by mostly federally owned lands, the Region is about the size of New York State.
Most Importantly, Did You Know…Five of the eight members of the Federal Subsistence Board, which manages subsistence harvesting on federal lands and waters in Alaska, are agency personnel based in urban areas?
In the March/April 2024 Edition of my Native corporation’s publication, Storyknife, there was a call to action, Fed up with salmon bycatch and reduced opportunities for subsistence fishing?
In April, governing bodies are considering two actions:
Adding subsistence user representation on the Federal Subsistence Board
Capping chum salmon bycatch by Alaska’s pollock trawling fleet
Calista strongly supports increased representation by subsistence users in federal decision making that affects our food and our way of life. We encourage Shareholders to provide their input as well.
My inner child knew we had an obligation to respond, she looked up at me and said, “Access and Representation. Submit your statement to the Federal Subsistence Board.”
After consultation with Tribes, Native Corporations and others, the federal departments of the Interior and Agriculture have published a set of proposed rules to increase representation from qualified subsistence users.
Dear Secretary Haaland and Secretary Vilsack,
My name is Charity Qaluatq Blanchett. I’m an Indigenous Yup’ik and Black Woman, Calista Corporation Shareholder, and Founder and CEO, of the Dipping Spoon Foundation.
The Dipping Spoon Mission is identifying and cultivating the next generation of Indigenous Youth to become Culinary Rockstars by creating access to inclusive and dynamic FoodSTEM programs rooted in Cultural Identity, Food Sovereignty, Food Science and Math.
We do this by shifting culture and offering monumental access to all the avenues which food touches, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math and for dessert, Public Policy, sprinkled with Equity.
The work I do is rooted and fueled by access, representation and cultural identity.
I believe not everyone is going to be a head chef at a restaurant or a celebrity chef on television. There are many educational and business career avenues to have through food in the public and private sector, Gastro Diplomacy is a real career path. Indigenous Alaska Native Youth deserve to see community members, leaders and elders who look like them holding office and/or roles in ALL the avenues Subsistence Food touches, including, the Federal Subsistence Board.
How can I advocate for cultural and gender representation and inspire Indigenous youth when the Federal Subsistence Board currently does not have adequate cultural representation in place, nor Indigenous experts who possess personal knowledge of direct experience with subsistence uses in rural Alaska, this is a grave oversight. If this proposal is not passed, the government and Federal Subsistence Board are telling my students they don't matter, their cultural identity doesn't matter, and you would not just be telling us, you would be showing us.
The ancestors of our students and my people come from a lineage of cultural experts who have preserved our identity and successfully understood the driving forces behind Indigenous Subsistence Foods. These are natural preservatives. Salt preserves food. Fat preserves food. Acid preserves food. Heat in conjunction with all the other preserves food. Everyone relies on Native Food in rural Alaska.
The future of Agriculture is Indigenous. Farm to table is nothing new. It’s a gentrified term for subsistance living. Yet our transmission of traditional ancestral knowledge food and all the industries food touches is missing, undervalued and unrepresented in a modern world, more pointedly, through education and business in the public and private sector.
Due to continuing lack of access and representation, the Colonization of Indigenous Culinization, challenges cultural and economic survival.
A woman I admire greatly is Elizabeth Peratrovich. She was an Alaskan Native Civil Rights Hero who championed the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States. She was a civil servant to her people. She eloquently reminded the good ole’ boys club: “I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind the gentlemen with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights.”
Ms. Peratrovich’s brave actions fought for equality, representation and justice.
I believe food should champion culture and rebel against boundaries. Why? Indigenous people and culture can be traced back 10000 years, since time immemorial. We have survived. It makes one wonder who the real savages are.
The Federal Subsistence Board must dip into the right side of history and pledge to commit longterm systems solutions that address the root problems by changing policies and norms.
Indigenous Youth MUST see themselves, their cultural identity in all the avenues food touches Science, Technology, Engineering Arts, Math, Public Policy and Equity.
I ardently encourage the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to create a paradigm shift of change and swiftly enact the proposed rule, adding three tribally nominated, recommended seats to the Federal Subsistence Board.
Quyana,
Charity Qalutaq Blanchett
Founder & CEO, Dipping Spoon Foundation
U.S. Speaker & Activist