A Kodiak Island resident has been honored with a national award for environmental leadership. One of eight awardees, Natasha Hayden was recognized for her work advocating for Alaska Native fishing rights.
When the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska contacted Natasha Hayden to tell her she’d won a national award, she said she almost thought it was a scam.
“It was really ironic timing, there were some other things that had been going on that were very challenging at the time," Hayden said. "And then also in today’s climate of, where people are reaching out to you, to try to get you to send them money and to send your personal information; there was quite a bit of skepticism about it, just like, oh somebody is cold calling me basically to say you’ve won this award.”
But the award was real. It acknowledges a range of advocacy work Hayden has been doing for Alaska Native people on Kodiak Island, including her tribe of the Native Village of Afognak, for years.
Over those last ten years as a tribal council member of the Native Village of Afognak, Hayden has focused on fisheries advocacy and stewardship of marine mammals around Kodiak Island. She said this involves navigating Alaska’s complicated layers of state and federal fisheries management.
“I served on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council's advisory panel. I currently serve on the Federal Subsistence Board’s regional advisory committee, so the Kodiak Aleutians area," she explained. "And then I was nominated and appointed to the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee, which is also a federal advisory committee.”
Hayden is also part of the Kodiak Island Tribal Coalition, which represents the Kodiak Archipelago’s ten tribes. She said various villages in the region have lost 50 to 100% of their commercial fishing permits in a larger outmigration from those communities over the course of a few decades.
“Seeing this severe negative impact and working towards restoring access to those fisheries that are right outside of our back door has been primary, and it's intertwined with everything," Hayden said.
Hayden pointed out that she is building on the resource management work that was done by generations preceding her, which she said future generations will take up as well.
“And I take a lot, I mean, a huge amount of comfort from the belief that the Alutiiq people have been here for thousands of years, and that we're still going to be here in a thousand years," Hayden stated. "And that these unprecedented events are going to happen, but the continuous thread that will weave through this region is the Alutiiq people.”
Hayden will receive $25,000 as part of her 2024 Environmental Leader award. Other awardees include a Meskwaki artist and farmer from Iowa, an Indigenous food sovereignty advocate in Louisiana and a Diné environmental scientist in Arizona.
