Crystal Eggemeyer from the Native Village of Port Lions Tribe, Alaska
Port Lions is a community on Kodiak Island, off the southern Alaska coast. Founded by displaced residents of Afognak after their village was destroyed by a tidal wave caused by the Good Friday earthquake of 1964, the spirit and culture of the Alutiiq people remains. Crystal Eggemeyer, a Tribal member of the Native Village of Port Lions (NVPL), shares her experience living and working in the village and advocating for Alaska Natives through the Native Farm Bill Coalition.
As an administrator for the NVPL, Crystal serves a Tribal membership of over 400 people. The village began with only 225 members, and even with their growth and modernization, the small community continues to live a traditional, subsistence lifestyle. The Tribe’s farm came to life with a grant in 2016, and now the village is able to provide eggs for community members with a fully functioning chicken farm operation. “We have a group on Kodiak Island called Kodiak Archipelago Leadership Institute and they actually received an ANA (The Administration for Native Americans) grant which started our farm,” Crystal said “We were one of many communities that were part of this grant.”
With around 160 community members relying on the farm, the demand is hard to keep up with. Eggemeyer explained that with a short growing season that starts in February and March, their first farmers market wasn’t until the end of July this year, saying, “Our product will start dying off in the middle of September. Once it gets too cool, we may have some potatoes that are a little more hardy and can handle the cold weather but other than that the rest of the produce will be done.”
As harvest season quickly comes to a close, additional resources for winter production are crucial to make it through the winter. “This new hydrosystem that’s going in is going to change it,” Crystal said “We will have an abundance of produce to share.” It consists of four forty-foot containers with one being reserved for the kitchen, and the other three will be for growing produce. The Tribe hopes to have them up and running by late fall or early winter so that they are able to produce year round.
As Alaska continues to face unique agricultural challenges, it is essential that their voice is heard in Indian ag policy. Eggemeyer had the opportunity to bring the voice of her Native Village of Port Lions to Washington D.C. during an NFBC fly-in last year, saying, “I enjoyed it so much. I loved that Alaska had a voice … It's getting better, but it seems like the USDA funding is mainly specific to lower 48 farmers where there's livestock.” She emphasized that “the hardest thing on the island here is that this grant paid for the start up of the farm, and paid all the wages through the grant ... but once that grant ended, it became the responsibility of every single Tribe involved to take up the cost of payroll, chicken feed, electricity, water, etc.” Echoing the importance of the Coalition’s work to bring attention to Alaska-specific agriculture issues, Crystal emphasized,
“It's really just the voice for me – Being able to have, not just Alaska, but my small island and my small communities name out there saying, ‘Hey, don't forget about us.’”
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