Hoonah

Um, and you do feel like you're, you know, in the woods and getting a, a really close to nature experience there.

We, for the first time, walked to Hoonah, which is the, the original fishing village.

It's about a three-mile round trip walk.

Very flat.

And there was no prior notice that this was going to happen.

When it started in Hoonah, one of my grandmothers had her and her husband was coming down from the mountain and saw the first clear cuts.

And she was crying, touching her heart and saying, see what they're doing to us.

And she repeated it again.

It was

1980,

81, when I uprooted my daughters from Juneau and moved to Hoonah, where, you know, is my village.

I had been working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal government, so I was pretty aware of of the federal law and understanding how the federal laws work and how they impact, you know, the communities.

By then it was late November, and Victor came into the club and said that the promoter had an opponent for me.

This young man was from the village of Hoonah.

He was a high school basketball star who had gone on to be a wrestler in college, an exceptional athlete who'd won a couple fights already.

Victor looked at me and said, "You don't have to fight him.

And he said, "You know, this next fighter, he paddled a sea kayak all the way from Washington State up to Sitka, Alaska." And there was a mix of cheers and bullshit and whistles and boos, 'cause no one likes Sitka.

And, uh, he said, "Jade 'The Stone' Coffin." You know, I remember raising my fist and just realizing that, like, no one really cared who I was or was paying attention to who I was.

Then it was time to fight The Hoonah Hooligan.

He looked like a badass, and he carried himself with a swagger that I didn't have.

Southeast Alaska villages, the village areas, the small communities h- were attacked, so our hunting and fishing grounds were literally clear-cut, and there was no prior notice that this was gonna happen.

When it started in Hoonah, one of my grandmothers had...

Her and her husband had, was coming down from, um, the mountain, and saw the first clear-cuts, and she was crying, touching her heart and saying, "See what they're doing to us?" And she repeated it again, "Do you see what they're doing to us?" And that's how, how I became aware of the fact that nobody knew what was going on.

I was baffled why nobody had said anything, you know, locally.

But there hadn't been an outlet for anybody to, um, nobody knew how to go about it.

It was 1980, '81 when I uprooted my daughters from Juneau and moved to Hoonah where, you know, is my village.

I had been working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal government, so I was pretty aware of the federal law, and understanding how the federal laws work and how they impact, you know, the communities.

And the State of Alaska was in on it, too.