
Rivers Without Fish: An Activist’s Mission to Restore Her Yukon River Community | INDIE ALASKA
Season 13 Episode 2 | 3m 32sVideo has Closed Captions
Mackenzie Englishoe is dedicated to ensuring that future generations are connected to their culture.
Mackenzie Englishoe is dedicated to ensuring that future generations living in Gwichyaa Zhee also known as Fort Yukon are able to live off of and celebrate the lands they call home. In this Indie Alaska feature from PBS and PBS Digital Studios earn about the impact a lack of salmon can have on villages within the state of Alaska, and what it means for future generations.

Rivers Without Fish: An Activist’s Mission to Restore Her Yukon River Community | INDIE ALASKA
Season 13 Episode 2 | 3m 32sVideo has Closed Captions
Mackenzie Englishoe is dedicated to ensuring that future generations living in Gwichyaa Zhee also known as Fort Yukon are able to live off of and celebrate the lands they call home. In this Indie Alaska feature from PBS and PBS Digital Studios earn about the impact a lack of salmon can have on villages within the state of Alaska, and what it means for future generations.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipThe way commercial fishing is going.
I don't know if salmon will ever be back in our lifetimes.
Since fish has been gone, it's been a lot slower.
You don't see as many people around or out on the river anymore.
Usually the river would be all busy with boats right now, but it's not like that anymore since salmon got shut down.
That's why I moved back, is because I know this is where I'm meant to be.
And I meant to have my future family here and have the future generations here too, and trying my best to give them a better life.
Gwichyaa Zhee means people of the flats.
So welcome to the flats.
I think I live in two worlds.
The way I was raised and the way I started going to school when I was older.
I've definitely been in two worlds, and I think that's the best position to be in.
To advocate for our rights, like by living by two worlds is like going to school and like driving and being in this western, colonial area.
But like, still being who I am and to be protecting the land because you come from that land, but you also know how to speak to those people and speak to them in a way that they would understand.
There's a couple more over here.
When fishing got closed, we had to take our fish wheels out of the water and we put them all up here on the bank.
When these would be in the water, they would just catch full things that fish that keep catching it.
But if we were to put this on the water now, we would probably get maybe a few fish a day.
The kids that were born in the last five years, they they've never got the opportunity to be on one of these, to build one and be a part of the community, to build one.
It's a piece of knowledge that's a part of us, and it makes me sad that we're not able to go out there and learn how to do these, or how to make these.
Talking about salmon and spreading awareness about that, or talking about why we need to protect our lands or tribal sovereignty, and being more involved with my tribal government and especially with like colonial western areas, like, like D.C., there's a lot of the times where we have to bring how we're being threatened to them.
What I'm trying to just do now is I just want to be good to my people.
And I want to once again, like, make a better future, especially for our youth to see, like other kids that was raised here.
I'm really happy for them.
I am they they deserve all of it.
Get them living in two worlds, having the pride to practice your cultures and to go out on the land and to know where, which land you came from and where your grandparents are born, and all of that.
that's what really inspires me.
I just want to make make us stronger in our culture.
We're already so strong.
We are we.
We're resilient and strong people.
But it's.
You can always make a better future anywhere.
So that's something I want to do here.
Happy Earth month, everybody.
All this month, PBS is dropping videos about our amazing planet, including a new episode from Weathered Links to that video and the full PBS digital Studios Earth Month playlist.
In the description.