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Alaskans Weigh the Cost of Gold
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But no one has a deeper stake in salmon than the natives. Twice a year, families haul sockeye out of the water by the hundreds, split them in half and hang them on lodge poles to dry for canning.
"When they first come up in July, we get what we need," Delkittie said at the shore of Six-Mile Lake, a dozen miles from where Pebble helicopters swarm between exploratory wells drilled into tundra too squishy to support a road.
"When October comes, it's time to go fishing again. We eat so much salmon, we have a way to prepare it for dessert."
Native opinion is far from monolithic, however. Long-standing rifts based on tribal and regional politics have been aggravated by Dynasty's largess.
The firm pays premiums to rent lodges and homes around Lake Iliamna and this year flew natives for weekends in Anchorage, handing out envelopes of $600 in cash as spending money.
"Pretty good money once you get used to it," said Garrett Anelon, who has earned $6,000 a month before taxes as a Pebble employee. He was seated in front of a TV set with his brother and a friend, playing Halo 3 while weighing the traditional against the modern.
"Traditional life is pretty good," Anelon said. "Save you a lot of money. You just go out and get some gas and a dollar a bullet."
The gas fuels the ATVs that native youths drive down the few paved roads and into the bush to hunt.
"Yeah," said Garrett's brother, Gerald Jr., who goes by "Moose." "The mine helps you out with little things like that. But we don't have as much time to shoot when you're working."
On long winter nights the brothers find video games a better pastime than the drinking that "a lot of folks do." Their mother, who manages local hires at Pebble, spoke with moving understatement about seeing residents move off welfare.
But cash vs. freedom is a tension that favors part-time work. Officials at Bristol Bay Native Corp. say they expect few of the 1,000 promised Pebble jobs to be filled by natives, who have scant appetite for living weeks at a time in job-site dorms.
"I don't care for it, but I work for them," said Dwight Anelon, 20, a driller helper shopping at Iliamna's only store.
June Balluta, who rents the only hotel room in nearby Nondalton, said tourism makes a better fit. "We're on the doorstep of God's country," she said in a lakeside log cabin with a spectacular view. "We just have to get motivated."
