♪ ♪
TIG: Hazel, Terry, Evan!
EVAN: Yeah, I'm here.
TIG: Hazel, Terry.
Chop, chop.
EVAN: Dad? TIG: Hmm?
EVAN: Where are we going?
TIG: Oh, we're gonna head back Kanuti.
Spring camp they call it.
Kanuti spring camp.
I do try and carry on the tradition of living
a nomadic lifestyle as much as I can.
With spring time, I start taking my family down river back
to Kanuti to the family allotments back there.
It's a good spot for spring time hunting.
Yeah, I just left the triangle.
It's close to our roots as possible.
I mean, this is the time of the year where it's,
it gets easy to live off the land.
There's fish in the river, ducks in the sky.
I mean, I didn't really bring much food.
Planning on these kids getting a duck or something.
They're not shooting straight, we're not eating good.
(theme music playing).
♪ ♪
TIG: So my grandma used to drive with me.
Drive right next to the willow and
these ducks take off real close.
Might be able to get some good easy shots for these boys.
Now, they got the shotguns ready up front.
Something's gonna pop up soon.
(quacking)
(gunshot)
Ah.
These kids, they do have guns.
These aren't toys, this is real ammo that my children got.
And it's just something that I've been teaching them
since they're two, three years old is gun safety.
There's hours of gun around.
You can't be in the woods without that gun.
(imitating geese calls)
TOG: There's three in back coming over.
Go ahead, Evan.
(gunshot)
Oh.
EVAN: Mm-hmm. TIG: But we gotta keep going.
The sun is almost down.
It is now just about 1:00 in the morning.
(laughs)
Let's start making our way back to camp.
MARCELLA: We've always had deep respect for the land and
trying to make things still exist for the younger generations.
GLYNDARIL: Tide waits for no man.
It's the reason we have to go now,
this early in the morning, is because we're catching
the morning minus.
MARCELLA: Tide is out and the table is set.
You know what that means?
We're going out and getting our own food.
(laughs)
My name is Marcella Amodo-White.
I am from Akhiok.
I am Alutiiq.
I am Filipino.
I am a mom.
I have five beautiful children that we get to raise here,
in a place like this.
GLYNDARIL: The test is not hitting any rocks,
not hitting land 'cause this is shallow up in here.
The rule of thumb is if you're going fast and you see ground,
don't slow down because your motor drops.
Marvin's, uh, older sister, she's the one who showed me,
minus tide first.
MARCELLA: No, she knew where all the reefs were.
GLYNDARIL: Well, you know that old school native,
that's tough right there.
Your mom, Uncle Marvin, it's a special kind of tough.
MARCELLA: We rely on our subsistence life.
The fish, the deer, seal, clams.
GLYNDARIL: And now, straight to land.
MARCELLA: I have a husband that is not from Alaska.
I feel like it's my duty to sit there and not only teach
my children, but also to teach my husband.
GLYNDARIL: Which way's the wind blowing?
MARCELLA: According to my hair, it's going this way.
GLYNDARIL: Okay, I'll take it.
MARCELLA: He's blossoming, beautifully.
Uh-oh (inaudible).
GLYNDARIL: Ooh, look at the crab.
As a matter of fact, we might need that crab.
Hand me a bucket.
Today's plan, we're gonna cut some holes into the bucket.
We'll get some crab.
We're gonna dig a little hole, set the bucket in there.
We're gonna make octopus traps.
There 'ya go, grab it, squeeze.
There you go, drop him in the bucket.
Awesome!
The reason we can only do this now is because
this is minus tide.
We can't set it up on, we ain't gonna get an octopus on the beach.
We gotta go to like, it has gotta be under water, so.
JO JO: So it can swim in?
GLYNDARIL: Yeah, so it can swim in, exactly.
JO JO: Octopus don't have bones so they can swim in into small hole.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, yeah.
All is has to be is big enough for the beak.
MARCELLA: My connection to the land,
I care for it on a whole new level than
I did when I was younger.
I am trying to make it blend into the environment
that the octopus live in.
When we were growing up, you know,
there were some kids that weren't taught
the same way as we were.
They'd make trails all throughout the salmon berry bushes
and ruin them.
Get that as well.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, yeah. There we go.
MARCELLA: Enlightening people is definitely
what it is that, I, you know, I try to do.
JO JO: Are we gonna come back tomorrow, daddy?
GLYNDARIL: Yup, we gotta let it soak overnight.
JOEL: Being out here,
sometimes less, is definitely more.
It kind of rejuvenates you.
It just sets you back where you need to be.
JOEL: Wow.
It's destroyed in here.
This is my dad's old cabin.
It's in, uh, pretty rough shape.
I'm building a new hunting cabin a couple miles up Pile River to
the head of Iliamna Lake.
My dad's old hunting cabin is pretty much falling over so,
I'm gonna go see what I can reclaim for the new cabin.
Mother Nature will take its course and, uh,
return your building back to the Earth.
I think it's time to get to work before the rain comes.
(groans)
(whistles)
Sketchy.
When my dad built that cabin,
I'm pretty sure he was by himself, too.
You know, I'm up here doing the same thing he was,
building a cabin so I could go hunting and trapping up here.
I never saw myself doing that.
You know, it's kinda cool being back up here,
kinda walking in his footsteps so to speak.
(cracks)
Oh, (bleep)!
The tin is definitely not in, in as good of shape
as I thought it was.
Hopefully, there's enough of it that's
salvageable for the new building.
It's pretty difficult to get that material up there.
I can't go to the store and buy tin and stuff.
The walls are about to fall down now that I took the tin off.
It was kinda holding the walls up.
It's ready to go.
See if I can get the flooring outta there now.
(grunts)
This is the wood from our old barn at Peter's Creek
right outside of Anchorage.
But we tore it down when I was, like, middle school.
So this is probably pushing 100 years now.
I think it's got one more, one more building in its life.
Straight out of the 70's.
Still some good stuff in here.
Stapler.
Oh, yeah, look at that coffee pot.
When I was coming up here as a kid,
the first thing we ever did was you lit a fire and
you made some coffee.
You had a percolator.
I mean, it was usually the most beat up thing you've ever seen.
Back then, I didn't drink coffee so I was like,
"That stuff tastes like crap."
But my dad would put a cup of coffee on the old fire and
we'd sit around and, you know, drink coffee and
talk about what we're gonna do.
Start hauling this stuff over to the new cabin.
TIG: Everything that we know is passed down from
generation to generation.
So it's pretty important for us to teach our kids as much as
we remember that we were taught.
TIG: Look alive, guys.
Look alive. You guys ready?
Oh, the kids are doing fine.
They're probably a little sleepy.
They just gotta get used to this type of lifestyle.
Farewell, Allakaket.
What they're gonna be doing all their life if
they're gonna be out here living a subsistence lifestyle.
There's next month and the month after that to rest.
These seasons are short.
The windows of opportunity to get these animals is small.
TIG: They call it.
TIG: Go ahead, Terry!
(gun clicks)
TIG: Go ahead.
(gunshot)
Oh.
(gunshot)
TIG: (inaudible) ooh!
(gunshot)
Almost buddy.
EVAN: Over there.
TIG: That's a sea duck.
One of those sea ducks that we're looking for.
(gunshot)
TERRANCE: I aimed a bit above it, but it flew away too fast.
TIG: Little ducks, straight ahead, Terry.
TERRANCE: Canvasback?
TIG: Bufflehead.
(gunshot)
TERRANCE: I got him. TIG: You got it, Terry.
Grab it, Hazel.
EVAN: Grab it, Hazel. TERRANCE: Hazel.
HAZEL: There EVAN: Whoa.
TERRANCE: That was my first duck of the year right there.
HAZEL: Blue, some green, some purple.
TIG: Good shot, buddy. TERRANCE: Thank you.
HAZEL: A bit of orange.
TIG: Things are looking up.
JODY: For us, the salmon are more of a relative
than just a resource.
I think if the rest of the world shared that view,
we'd have less problems.
JODY: Rise and shine.
You know like they say, daylight's a burning.
JAMEY: Ah, shall we?
JODY: As native people, there's always something to do in every season.
Is the net in the boat already?
JAMEY: Yeah, net's in the boat. We just gotta grab an anchor.
JODY: It is summer time, and traditionally,
we would be fishing for salmon on the Yukon River.
JAMEY: Time to go to work.
JODY: Climate change and over fishing in the ocean has
had a huge impact on the Yukon River salmon fisheries.
So, we are getting less salmon in the Yukon River every year
till where this last year,
there was no subsistence fishing allowed on the Yukon River.
JAMEY: This is the place my family's been
setting nets for, uh, for generations.
You'd see camps all along the Yukon, and usually,
they set up right around where they're,
they've been setting their nets,
their grandfathers, great-grandfathers.
JODY: Salmon, it's a very important part of our diet.
So that's one thing that we'll have to learn to adapt to
is not having salmon potentially in the future.
JAMEY: We're gonna have to, uh, tie off here in a minute here.
JODY: Okay.
We do have a white fish net, which is legal to fish with
right now, and I'm just hoping that we're able to get
a few white fish in order to have some fresh food.
JAMEY: This is a white fish net so it's got small mesh.
Let's go take a look around for some morel mushrooms.
JODY: Gonna have morel mushrooms and white fish dinner.
JAMEY: Yeah, there you go.
MARCELLA: Living in Akhiok,
everybody is always so willing to help.
But at the same time, you cannot just rely on other people.
You have to also learn to do things on your own.
MARCELLA: Let's grab our knives and go look for some bidarkis.
JO JO: Yep. GLYNDARIL: Okay.
MARCELLA: Ooh.
MARCELLA: Who needs an ice rink when you have a kelpy beach?
GLYNDARIL: Let's see. MARCELLA: You seeing them?
GLYNDARIL: Ooh. I see one over there.
Living here every day is like going to the zoo.
When I walk out the house, you never really truly know
what you're going to see.
MARCELLA: Put it in the bucket, please.
Yay! Good job.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, there's one.
Look at that.
Feeling kind of brave today.
Want to show me how to eat one?
MARCELLA: Cut around, outside part.
GLYNDARIL: See Jo Jo? Check that out.
MARCELLA: The kids are usually not a fan of the,
this black outer part.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, is that what you're supposed to eat?
MARCELLA: Yeah. Really good.
It's quite tough.
Kinda tastes the way like rubber smells.
GLYNDARIL: As always, this is mommy's snack.
(laughter)
MARCELLA: It's very helpful to have a very imaginative husband
and open-minded, you know.
We could take things from what little that we have and create a lot.
GLYNDARIL: Got one. MARCELLA: Okay.
After that one, that's enough.
GLYNDARIL: All right. MARCELLA: We got plenty.
I'm an old timer living in modern times.
GLYNDARIL: All right kids, let's put our knives away.
JOEL: Around this part of the world,
you never know when you're gonna break down,
or you're gonna be stuck somewhere,
or the weathers gonna get bad.
JOEL: How come you aren't helping, Tracker, huh?
This is the spot I had picked out for the new cabin.
So I just got the flooring down from my dad's old cabin.
It's seen some better days, that's for sure.
Not much strength left in these things.
I guess it is what it is.
Time to start stacking.
Stacking and building.
So this being my first log cabin build,
I don't have everything figured out yet.
I do want it to be kind of a traditional cabin.
Hopefully, nothing breaks,
nothing falls over, nothing snaps in the process.
So right now, we're like four feet off the ground,
but the walls are gonna be like at least five feet tall.
So I need like, uh, 28, 30 more logs.
I'm out here alone, and this would definitely be
a lot easier with two people.
With, you know, everything,
especially just cutting the trees down and moving them,
it's gonna be pretty challenging.
(chainsaw whirring)
(thuds)
One down, 20 more to go.
Living out here, you're usually doing mildly to
very dangerous stuff.
(thuds)
(chainsaw whirring)
I don't have anyone coming to get me,
so you do kinda have to remember that when
you're out doing stuff alone.
I know, I'm not too worried about it 'cause I'm pretty sure
I'm never going to die, so, uh, yeah.
(chainsaw whirring)
(chainsaw stops)
Dammit!
I tried to drop the tree, and it pinched my saw.
How much risk I'm willing to take depends on how badly
whatever I'm doing needs to get done.
That's not working.
Like this cabin really needs to get done because I only have
this small window because of the weather.
Well, the chainsaw's free.
♪ ♪
I think this tree hates me.
(sighs)
It's about time for a bad idea.
(grunts)
♪ ♪
Whoa!
JOEL: Whoa!
(chainsaw stops)
Uh, it's perfect.
All right. Hope I got my length right.
(chainsaw whirring)
(bleep)!
(sighs)
Trigger control, very important on the chainsaw.
All right, I got up to the, uh, the bluff,
and now that I'm looking at it, it's steeper than I thought.
I thought I'd be able to drive up right here,
'cause I thought it'd be more of a,
you know, not so steep I guess.
But, I think I'm gonna have to make a ramp so
I can drive the four-wheeler up.
18 feet.
Just trying to get to the trees and get the trees out.
It's like its whole own little fricking process.
These are much heavier than they look.
(sighs)
That's half the ramp.
I'm gonna try to line these up with the tires and then line
them up with the trail too so I can just pull straight up there
and then straight back out.
Ooh, that's a lot of flex.
I already got my ramp all tied together.
I'm gonna give it a little test run.
Hey, that worked really well.
Feel like that's the only thing that's, uh,
worked like it's supposed to, so far.
♪ ♪
Now I gotta take it back to my new cabin.
One down, 28 to go.
(thunder rumbling)
JODY: We have an important relationship with the land
and its resources.
We don't need to take everything that's out there.
JODY: Good we got a little rain yesterday.
There's still some moisture back here in this moss.
We're waiting on the white fish net,
but there's no time to be lazy
and there's no time for, uh, down time.
JAMEY: We are looking for some mushrooms.
I'm sure we'll find some, like under the tree's where
the root masters were burnt out.
See this stuff right here, all of these,
these small ones are starting to come up?
JODY: You see morels, oh there's an old one from last year.
JAMEY: There's an old one from last year right here.
JODY: A fire went through here, two summers ago.
You can see it just goes on for miles.
It was devastating, but we do have new growth
that will be coming in.
Morels grow after a fire has gone through a forest.
I mean, you do have to just make the most of something
like a natural disaster.
We're facing unprecedented times and we're gonna have to learn as
indigenous peoples to adapt.
JAMEY: I'm not seeing any.
But I think it's too dry yet, babe.
I think we're, it's too early.
JODY: Just like the animals are gonna have to adapt to
their surroundings and this habitat change,
so are we as native peoples.
JAMEY: Got one! JODY: Oh, yeah.
JAMEY: Single one, popping up.
A cute little bugger but I'm gonna let it.
I'm gonna leave it.
JODY: Let it get bigger. JAMEY: It's too small.
It's just a, yeah.
So we'll go back and continue on.
Too early.
JODY: Food in general is very expensive in Alaska.
In the villages, it's sometime two or three times the amount.
Our native foods are essential to our existence.
(screams)
Babe, I found way more.
Jackpot. There's a lot in here.
JAMEY: Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we're in business now.
We got a meal here. We got a meal now.
Jackpot.
JODY: It's, like, so exciting.
I'm really happy.
All these little blessings.
We're gonna have a tasty meal.
Do we go down river?
JAMEY: Yeah. So we'll go, uh, check the net.
Coming in hot, watch out for the brush.
JODY: Oh, it caught on to something babe.
It's not a fish.
(grunts)
JAMEY: Got a little bit of drift.
JODY: See a few fish. See the fish?
Well, first fish.
First little fish.
Got couple more in the water.
Got three fish.
JAMEY: Scored.
GLYNDARIL: Any sense of urgency comes more around summer time.
This is the time where you gotta make sure everything is
prepared for the winter.
GLYNDARIL: Whoo!
We come back here to check our traps.
And if we're lucky, we'll have an octopus.
MARCELLA: Wow. Where's our rock, Jo Jo?
Do you know where our rock is?
There it is.
With all the climate change and stuff that's going on,
it just seems like we're having to move further out of
the village to find subsistence food to put away.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, well let's see what we get.
All right, Tinky, let me see your stick.
MARCELLA: Anything around in it?
GLYNDARIL: Does not feel...
Nope. No nothing.
Nothing in this one.
We'll look over here.
Hey Jo Jo, you wanna try?
Poke down in there, see if you feel something squishy.
And try to put your hand in there.
MARCELLA: Nothing?
(sighs)
GLYNDARIL: All right, kids.
MARCELLA: Trial and error.
GLYNDARIL: Whoa.
Look down here, there's an octopus down there.
It's just chilling there.
Don't touch him, not yet.
MARCELLA: You're gonna let it get mad and stick to the top.
Let me try blow it.
(bubbling)
Should blow bubbles and he'll come out.
MARCELLA: Look it. GLYNDARIL: Ooh, what's that?
TINKY: (inaudible). GLYNDARIL: Yeah, octo-fish.
MARCELLA: There it is.
GLYNDARIL: You see how she does that with just no problem?
(laughter)
MARCELLA: Oop.
Okay. Can you see these?
TINKY: Mm-hmm. MARCELLA: What are those?
TINKY: Gills. MARCELLA: Yep, those are gills.
TINKY: And that's the ink pad?
MARCELLA: I think this is the ink right here.
You don't have to worry about it.
And yeah, it's gonna try and wrap around you.
It's gonna try and stick on to you.
But you don't have to worry about it because
the beak is right here.
TINKY: Where's the beak?
MARCELLA: I just made a big mess.
GLYNDARIL: It just inked all over you.
Okay, kids. You see this octopus?
We're not going to eat this one.
Nah, we're gonna use this bad boy for bait.
And that's gonna help us get some halibut.
MARCELLA: It's a fun task.
Not so much for the hubby, though.
(laughs)
JOEL: One of the big things in Alaska is leaving your cabin open.
You don't usually try to lock your cabin up.
It was nice to have cabins that anyone can use,
open for anyone that needs it, that seek shelter.
JOEL: The weather's kinda taken a turn for the worst.
Everything's all slick now.
Not a great thing.
Pull, Tracker, pull!
Mm-hmm.
All right.
This is my first log cabin.
There's definitely a learning curve.
Everything is just getting taller and taller
and harder and harder.
So the main purpose of this cabin is obviously for hunting
but it's far enough away from Pedro Bay that if
the weather gets bad and you can't make it back,
you have somewhere to shelter up for the night.
Stay warm which is, you know,
almost a bigger deal than hunting,
'cause if you get stuck out here you're up a creep for sure.
That's it, I got the slopes cut for the roof.
Now all I have to do is throw the roof on,
cut the door in and be good.
JOEL: Wanna give me a hand Tracker?
Huh? No?
All right. That's fine.
Do whatever you want.
So when I was a kid growing up out here.
The town was almost 200 people.
We had a full school and a store and everything.
Now there's only, like, 15 people left.
I'll go ahead and bring it back a little bit.
Start with a cabin.
♪ ♪
That about does it.
All right, it looks good.
Feel like I didn't get a whole lot of advice as a kid
from my dad but the one good piece of advice he, he gave me was,
first thing you build when you're building something is
you build the outhouse.
And I have yet to do that.
Never gonna build any out of logs ever again.
That was way too much work.
But it will last forever.
Better, better last forever.
TIG: If I didn't go about teaching my children
tradition and culture, there'd be a whole gap and
that we might not be able to give back and then
my family would be lost in the tradition and culture.
TIG: Good little spot back here that sisters
a beaver dam blocking it.
But there's enough water flowing over it to where we can jump it.
Woo.
EVAN: Woo. (inaudible).
Dad, can we do that again?
TIG: No. Hell no.
This boat that I got last year,
and I was able to sell a bunch of mammoth ivory,
buy a nice big 150 motor and it's got a jet on there.
I'm able to drive in some pretty skinny water.
This boat is specially designed for smaller rivers
up here in Allakaket.
TIG: Yeah, he's hunting just like us.
TIG: Oh, a little calf.
Two calves!
TIG: Future generations food right there.
You know, someday my kids might be hunting those calf's
when they're nice strong bulls.
EVAN: Ooh, there's...
Wow.
TIG: We don't shoot swans when they're paired up like that.
They mate for life.
If you kill one of them,
that other one's just gonna fly around and, uh,
it quit eating and just die of a broken heart.
That's a happily married couple.
I don't want to jump in between that.
I think we've been out for at least 24 hours,
I'm not totally sure.
Hard to tell when the sun doesn't really go down.
We're just gonna keep on trying.
It'll open up wider here pretty quick.
Woo.
Uh-oh.
TIG: We really got to get up some speed to get over this next dam.
TIG: I don't know about this.
♪ ♪
(boat whirring)
♪ ♪
TIG: Hold on, trying to rip some of this sticks outta this beaver dam.
Having the kids out in the boat it is a safety hazard.
This is the spring time,
the rivers are just right above freezing.
And they got a lot of water in them.
When they get a lot of water in them,
they get heavy and they start flowing really fast.
TIG: And if we can get some speed, we can make it through it.
I'm sure of it.
TIG: Woo. EVAN: Finally!
(laughs)
TIG: That was pretty wild.
We made it.
Woo. Ah.
Hard times don't last forever.
Strong people do though.
See it?
TERRANCE: Yeah. TIG: Go ahead, Terry.
(gunshot)
Woo!
Good shot.
TERRANCE: Thanks.
Canvasback.
Wow.
TIG: We're 300 miles away from the ocean and you get to
eat something from the ocean.
That's pretty special.
JODY: There's something different when
you gather your own food.
It's really important, but it's also super challenging.
(sizzling)
JODY: Yeah, we got lots.
Lots and lots.
I was taught by my mom, and she was taught by her mom how
we take care of our food.
Jamey's the same way.
He knows we're respecting not just ourselves,
but also the food and the gifts that Creator gave us.
This is how I cook it over the fire like this.
It's a challenging time for all the people that live on
the Yukon River.
We don't have that really important nutrition source that
we get from the salmon, and this is something our people
have lived on for thousands of years.
And it's gonna be really important for my generation to
kind of lead our people into this new era
of how we're gonna adjust.
How we're gonna adapt but continue to fight for our rights
to our way of life on these lands.
Well, it was a good day, huh?
JAMEY: Mm-hmm. JODY: Feel super thankful.
JAMEY: This whole meal is just, wow.
MARCELLA: Being Alutiiq, it's important for us to retain
as much as we can and pass down what it is that we can.
GLYNDARIL: Come on Mr. John, let's cut up some bait.
Ooh. This is bait.
Wanna touch it?
MARCELLA: So we catch the octopus to bait in and get some halibut.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, and we'll just...
MARCELLA: That's we call the involuntary circle of life.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, good job. Thank you.
MARCELLA: Yeah.
GLYNDARIL: Put in the bucket, right here.
Put in the bucket. Yeah.
MARCELLA: Yay!
The tide plays a huge factor when it comes to halibut hooking.
GLYNDARIL: Pass me some bait.
MARCELLA: Yeah, we're trying to catch some halibut, huh?
The first hour of incoming and
the first hour of outgoing are the most crucial.
That's when you'll get your most action.
GLYNDARIL: Hey, Jo Jo, Tinky.
JO JO: Yeah.
GLYNDARIL: You guys know how we do this?
Put the anchor on the bottom.
You snap these on the line.
You let the hooks go over so they don't snag.
Once that first anchor hits, it will sit on the ground.
And when it sits, it will tighten up and the waves will
push us this way, and then we'll be fishing.
MARCELLA: 20 hooks that you said that were on it?
GLYNDARIL: 20 hooks.
MARCELLA: God willing, we'll catch at least one.
There's something on there, there's tugging.
GLYNDARIL: Let's pull up dinner.
Let's see what we get.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
GLYNDARIL: Tell us when you see something.
MARCELLA: Uh, nothing on this one.
Nothing on this next one either.
GLYNDARIL: Even if we only get one halibut.
That's a win for me.
Oh, yeah.
MARCELLA: Oh, it's a cod.
Cod, it's what we call a garbage fish.
We're just not very big on consuming cod.
Well, we're just gonna go ahead and throw it back,
we are not going to eat.
Kind of amazing how octopus got us all this though, huh?
MARCELLA: Yeah, wanna see? Watch him go.
TINKY: Oh, another cod.
MARCELLA: That's the cod.
GLYNDARIL: Another cod.
Got a lot of cod over here.
MARCELLA: Another cod. GLYNDARIL: Oh.
MARCELLA: You got him? GLYNDARIL: This way.
Come to me. Grab you by your eyes.
It seems mean, but you grab them by the eyes.
This is his, "I saw God moment,"
but God said, "You weren't big enough."
Pay attention Tinky, tell me if you see anything.
'Cause once it gets straight up and down it's hard for me
to look over, okay Tinky?
TINKY: Mm-hmm.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, Tinky.
TINKY: Halibut!
(grunts)
JO JO: Yay, Daddy!
MARCELLA: There's another one on here.
GLYNDARIL: You could feel it? MARCELLA: It's heavy. Yep.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, yeah, you could feel that pull.
Right there, there it is.
JO JO: Oh, there it is.
(grunts)
MARCELLA: This line is still very heavy.
JO JO: Mom said that... GLYNDARIL: Tell me if you see...
MARCELLA: Right there, there it is.
It's another one.
GLYNDARIL: Oh, that's a halibut. JO JO: Another one.
GLYNDARIL: Hoorah. MARCELLA: Success.
GLYNDARIL: We made a trade with Mother Nature.
How about we take your octopus and then
we trade it for some halibut.
Mother Nature said, "That's a good trade, I like that."
MARCELLA: How cool is that? TINKY: Are we gonna keep that?
GLYNDARIL: We're gonna keep some.
But we're gonna share.
We share with the community.
It's what we do.
TINKY: Yeah. MARCELLA: Yeah!
GLYNDARIL: Tide has delivered, the table is set.
TIG: No nibble?
No nibble.
Well it must be around midnight now.
Up here in Alaska, during the summer and the spring, fall,
time doesn't really matter much.
'Cause, you know, the sun doesn't go down ever.
It stays bright like this throughout the night and so,
I think, the hour on the clock doesn't really mean a whole lot to us.
Oh, fish on. Oh, yeah.
Ooh, little guy.
Not big enough to eat.
Oh, hey, thank you.
Saved me.
Prior to 1972, it was all our land,
we all used it.
And then in 1972 they came out with
Alaskan Native Settlements Act.
And they said, "All right, this is no longer all your land.
It's all our land but we're gonna be nice to you guys,
and we'll give you guys little patches of land."
This is all we got.
We got no trust fund.
We got nothing like that.
And when I die, I'm not gonna be passing nothing on to these kids
except for my guns, my boat and the, and the land.
The land that was passed down to me.
Traditions and culture.
That's all we're gonna pass on.
And when I kick the bucket,
that's all I'm leaving these poor kids.
(laughs)
It's about 4:00 in the morning right now.
The kids, they've been up all night,
they're doing good though.
TIG: Is that a muskrat?
If there's one, there might be some more.
TERRANCE: That's a muskrat.
(gunshot)
TIG: Oh, little high.
(gunshot)
Oh, a little low.
(gunshot)
TIG: Oh, hell yeah. Headshot.
TIG: Oh, good shooting boy.
Yeah, we got breakfast of champs right there.
The spring time, the countries coming back to life.
It's amazing to hear these birds in the sky.
Seeing all the animals swimming around,
flying around.
Calf's pretty soon out on the beaches and islands.
Bear cubs are popping out of the dens with their mothers.
A whole lot going on in the country.
MARCELLA: Everything comes to life.
It's an amazing experience.
The grass gets a little greener,
the sky's turn a little bluer.
JOEL: The Pile River actually turns a like turquoise
in the summertime in the heat of the day.
The sun's melting the glaciers and
so it turns the river a turquoise color.
It's kind of cool.
JODY: The land of the midnight sun,
it's like 10:00 pm but the sun is shining bright
right into my eyes.
Need my help?
JAMEY: Yes, I do.
JODY: I think in the summer anyone that lives this
far north, maximizes the daylight.
I've been working on this diamond willow that I found when
I was out hunting alone.
I've been carving these two pieces out,
I want to use them in the log house that
we're gonna be building.
JAMEY: The sun's already up, starting to rise again.
Time to do something.
Time to go live life.
TIG: We're gonna stop and cook some breakfast.
My boy got breakfast of champs right there.
We got some fresh meat.
Don't get no fresher than that.
TIG: You know, we spent the whole night out here on
the boat, with, I don't know how many miles we put in on the river.
Seen a whole lot of country.
It's good, I love muskrat.
The sun's coming back up.
We'll take a little rest and nap and continue at it tomorrow.
MARCELLA: There's the dreadful winters that we have to live and
then our summers where, it's a whole lot of work.
The sun comes up, 4:00, 5:00 in the morning, you know.
The sun is awake, I'm awake.
Summertime comes with having our outdoor fun and
then prep for winter all over again.
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.