CLARENCE “BUTCH” LAITI

SOUND: Eagle calls.

NARRATOR 1: 

Here we are. Marine Way and South Franklin Street: Juneau Voices #2. Eagle is looking for fish on the waterfront.

BUTCH:

There aren’t as many as there used to be. 

NARRATOR 2: 

This is Butch Laiti. Generations of Butch’s family have commercially fished the Taku Inlet, south of here.

BUTCH: 

This was the center of Juneau’s fishing fleet. 

SOUND: Eagle’s call and a musical phrase send us back in time.

NARRATOR 1:

1959

NARRATOR 2:

1959

NARRATOR 1: 

This is Juneau Cold Storage. Four large buildings on pilings. They’re blasting the whistle announcing that it’s break time. 

NARRATOR 2:   

Fish, king crab, and tanner crab are all coming here on boats. Bigger boats haul 50,000 pounds of halibut.

NARRATOR 1:  

Butch Laiti is cutting halibut cheeks on the docks.

BUTCH: 

I’m thirteen years old.  Cutting cheeks is fun. All my friends are here, too. Those two men, over there, are each holding a hook with a gutted halibut. With their machetes, they whack the head off, and toss it to the side of the butchering table. All of us kids scramble for the head. If I’m lucky, I’m the one who gets it. I cut out the two cheeks, drop them into my bucket… and push the rest of the halibut head into the hole in the table. It falls into the water under the dock. One day, I cut 50 pounds of halibut cheeks. 

The fire station buys them all, for 50 cents a pound.

NARRATOR 2:   

That’s $25. Soda pop costs 10 cents… and movies cost 50 cents. …

BUTCH: 

…So $25 is a lot of money, for 13-year-old me!

NARRATOR 1:

1965

NARRATOR 2:

1965

BUTCH:

I’m a teenager, and I’m working in the Cold Storage cannery, cutting the heads and tail-fins off salmon. My mom was Tlingit…Lena Lillian Peters Laiti. My dad is a Finlander… Alex Laiti. And it’s easy for me and other Alaska Native kids to get jobs.

NARRATOR 2: 

That’s because more than half the fishing fleet is owned by Alaska Natives, with Native skippers and crews.

BUTCH:

There are so many boats:

NARRATOR 1:  

The Katherine S.

NARRATOR 2:

The St. Peter

NARRATOR 1:  

The Arlene

NARRATOR 2:  

The Alert

NARRATOR 1: 

1971

NARRATOR 2:  

1971

BUTCH:

My Dad dies. I inherit his 36-foot gillnetting boat. But… The state starts a new system Limited Entry Permitting. It’s a point system. It restricts the number of fishermen who can fish. They’re trying to stop some of the Outside fishermen from the lower 48. But it doesn’t work out like that–and it makes it harder for locals to keep our livelihood.

NARRATOR 2:   

Fewer boats… fewer canneries… fewer jobs.

BUTCH:

The history of fisheries in Alaska, like so much of our history, is a history of theft. My dad has all the points he needs, but the permit doesn’t get issued. So I inherit the boat, with no permit. 

I decide to fight. I’m not gonna let anyone tell me I can’t commercial fish. I come in with a stack of papers this high. I use their weapons against them. 

NARRATOR 2 (as an Agent from the Alaska Dept of Fish and Game):

Mr Clarence Laiti? …Fine. Your limited-entry permit is approved.

BUTCH: 

I guess I’m a fisherman now.  

Generations of Yanyeidí fishermen. 

My grandfather, Willie Peters… My uncle James Peters… My father, and me. 

And now my grandson, Philip Andres Cadiente, who’s fished with me since he was five.

I hope the salmon always return to the Taku River. I hope that people protect the watershed from more pollution. I hope, as Tlingits, we will once again have our fishing fleet back.  

SOUND: Eagle’s call and a musical phrase bring us back to the present.

NARRATOR 1:  

Hey, it looks like Chʼáakʼ is flying toward the corner of Admiralty Way and South Franklin Street. 

NARRATOR 2: 

That’s where Juneau Voices Number 3 is. Find it on the map or on your device. Let’s meet there.