Photo: Elyssa Loughlin/KRITFC
Keynote Speech at AVCP Annual Convention
On August 28, our Executive Director Kevin Whitworth gave a keynote speech at the Association of Village Council Presidents’ 61st Annual Convention. A partner since the years before KRITFC was founded, AVCP’s support and guidance has been invaluable in shaping KRITFC into the organization it is today. We are grateful to be recognized by AVCP and to be given the opportunity to speak on the importance of working together for salmon and our communities’ right to steward, restore, and harvest salmon.
Watch or read* the keynote speech below.
KRITFC Executive Director Kevin Whitworth addresses the AVCP delegates at the 2025 AVCP Annual Convention on August 28, 2025.
*Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
KEVIN WHITWORTH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, executive board. Good morning, everybody. I’m Kevin Whitworth, I'll take my note from Mister Chairman. Oh, take a deep breath. Everybody. I just want to say thank you, quyana, for inviting me to be your keynote speaker this morning at the annual convention here at AVCP, the mission of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission aligns closely with the convention's theme of being united during changing times, and I'm humbled by that. My name is Kevin Whitworth. I was raised in McGrath, Alaska. I'm a tribal member of McGrath native village. My late father is Carl Whitworth. He's a retired military who spent 20 years in the Army. He's from the the state of Georgia.
My mother is Marcia Andrews Whitworth, from Holy Cross and McGrath, her her grandparents, or my grandparents, are John and Cecilia Andrews of Holy Cross and McGrath. Some of you guys might know John Cecilia Andrews from Holy Cross. From a young age, I was raised and taught to observe and live from the land and waters of the Kuskokwim. My wife and I teach these values to our children in our hometown in McGrath.
I've been working for the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission since 2018. I started working for Mary Peltola as a fisheries biologist. I did that for about five years, and then I've been now serving as the Executive Director for three years. The Fish Commission works with the 33 tribes to serve the 33 tribes along the Kuskokwim River watershed in management, research and monitoring and advocacy, advocacy that is guided by our traditional Alaska Native values and our way of life.
Our mission is to be the voice of the Kuskokwim, living and sharing our traditional ways of life, and our vision is sovereignty – indigenous stewardship.
This year the fish commission, we're 10 years old. So we're celebrating all year our big milestone of becoming 10 years old. I noticed AVCP is 61… I kind of relate that to, you know, AVCP is our elder, or maybe elder in training, and we're just in our infant stage, but AVCP has been with us from the beginning. This is a huge milestone. We need to celebrate these things, our 10 years of working together [toward] unity and our tribes, working together. And as we celebrate this year, 10 years of working together, … the main message that keeps surfacing is the strength and in unity of our tribes. Early on, our elders, they came together, and they envisioned the Kuskokwim River tribes being united, working together for our salmon, for restoration of our salmon, monitoring stewardship of our salmon, for the protection of our traditional ways of life for us. More than 10 years ago, our tribes came together to bring this vision of working together, of unity and collaboration to life. Some of our founding fathers are, I think they're here now. Our first meeting 10 years ago, which founded this organization, also united our tribal communities from [the] coast to communities up in the headwaters. Some people say they've never seen the Kuskokwim so divided. Us tribes, we don't think of it that way. This is the first time we've all been so united.
Salmon are the core and the heart of our work that the Fish Commission. Salmon have taught our elder advisers, James Nicori of Kwethluk, Nick Alexia Sr. of Nikolai, since they were young salmon, have taught them. They're our elder advisers. We have two.
Salmon guide our seven executive council members. Our chairman, Martin Andrew, Vice Chair, Jonathan Samuelson, Paul Cleveland—he’s our secretary. There's others too that have served Ralph, who served on our Executive Council. Salmon, literally and figuratively, fueled our in-season management team this year. Comprised of Paul Cleveland from Quinhagak, Henry Hunter Sr. from Bethel, Mike Williams Sr. from Akiak, Tracy Simeon from Chuathbaluk, and Betty Magnuson from McGrath. That's our five in season managers. They're at the management making table [and are] advised by our elders, Nick and James. We now have 22 authorized tribes as members in our compact, and we work continuously to bring our outstanding members into the fold.
Last year, … Kwig [Kigillingok] joined us just last year through resolution. That is another thing to celebrate. In our unity, the tribes unity, we've grown the Fish Commission. We have six full time staff. I just had to amend this this morning. We had five until just a few days ago. We're now at six full time staff, two vacant positions. Really soon, we're hoping to hire. Some of our staff are here today. There's Terese and El is somewhere. We have the JV volunteer, which I can never say his name correctly, but raise your hand, staff, there they are…
We're working really hard for our tribe's vision of gravel-to-gravel salmon recovery and protection of our [traditional] knowledge. This gravel-to-gravel vision, we're now moving from more Kuskokwim and out toward the ocean. We'll get to that a little bit. When it comes to salmon research, monitoring and advocacy, especially about protecting salmon offshore, our tribes have never been as united as they are now. However, it is hard to talk about [the] Fish Commission's unity and work without also talking about AVCP – you all.
AVCP has been with the Fish Commission since the beginning, and in the years leading up to our official 2015 establishment, AVCP [and] Tanana Chiefs Conference [TCC] worked in close step to establish the Kuskokwim River Inter -Tribal Fish Commission, as well as our sister organization, [the] Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
AVCP provided staff, technical staff, financial support, members of the staff that helped us work with our tribes on our vision of unity to provide fiscal sponsorship for our young organization. To document our early days, they worked with the Secretary of Interior at the time, our congress people, other federal state leaders at the time to pave the way for our salmon co-management agreement that we have with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. AVCP is a signer of our MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] that we have with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as TCC, thanks to the leadership of AVCP, this year also marks the 10th year that tribes have been co-managing the salmon fishery, not as advisers, not as recommendations to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, but actually as managers at the table, making management decisions. Those five in-season managers that I mentioned plus our elder advisers.
As managers, our people have a say in what happens to our salmon and fisheries. Our tribes are bringing a unified vision of river-wide, ecosystem-wide salmon conservation and restoration to fish today, tomorrow and into future generations. This would not be possible without the vision of and dedication to unity that AVCP and its tribes have brought, you all.
Thank you, AVCP for always working hand in hand with the Fish Commission in all we do in trying to protect our salmon and salmon people. Our work… doesn't end within the Kuskokwim, however. You know, we talk often about what is going on offshore… Now, we're focusing offshore. You know, our salmon, they spend 80 to 90% of their life out in the ocean environment. So, it doesn't make sense to not be involved out there. We have to be involved if we want to get our salmon back into these rivers. We have to be involved out in the ocean. So, we're shifting a lot of our focuses offshore in the ocean environment.
In 2022 the Fish Commission joined AVCP, TCC, Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and we came together back then in [a] renowned vision of working together for cross-regional salmon restoration advocacy as the Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim Tribal Consortium [AYKT TC]. So, the four groups [began] advocating and working together offshore. There's a lot of overlap in that offshore environment. Yukon River fish go out to the offshore area. Kuskokwim River fish as well. That's where we overlap. All the four organizations overlap in the ocean environment, and we can't do it alone as one tribe or one organization. We have to work together. There's 98 tribes in between those two [fish commissions].
Just this past May, staff from the four organizations gathered to reaffirm our collective mission to protect, restore, and conserve the health and biodiversity of the Bering Sea and North Pacific ecosystems, rivers to seas, with our focus on the health of the wild salmon to sustain our way of life, our native way of life, for this and future generations.
The impacts of the trawl boats intercept fisheries, the waste that's happening out there, the ecosystem collapse that we're seeing, our people are disproportionately affected [by it].
There are no dedicated seats at the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council… We don't have a tribal seat there. That's what I meant by disproportionately. That's only one example. There’re many examples, [including the] Board of Fish. There are many examples where [sic] our voices are not at the table, at least at the management making table. We are ready to use our knowledge to recover salmon and protect our traditions. United, the Fish Commission, along with AVCP other regional Corp[orations], tribes, tribal consortia, [and] federal agencies signed the MOU for the Gravel-to-gravel Keystone Initiative to work together on tribal-led, ecosystem-wide salmon research and restoration… It's a big deal. Jonathan, our chairman at the time, signed that MOU. United, we are elevating tribal voices and knowledge locally, statewide, federally and internationally.
We're telling our stories. Our elders taught us to tell stories. We've been trying to tell the stories to more than just within the state, within the country, within international bodies, [we] tell of the story of this humanitarian crisis we're seeing with the salmon collapsing, or the collapse in our way of life.
We are now telling stories to tell our decision makers and the public how to live in support of our restoration of our salmon, in support of the restoration of our tribal ways. The salmon crisis we are facing is bigger than just the Kuskokwim, or the Yukon Delta, or the state of Alaska. This crisis is global, and together, we are telling this story to the world, so the world knows our collective power as tribes united, working together as salmon people. For us to overcome these challenging times, tribes cannot be alone. We must be united.
And I want to close by just celebrating a couple things. I already mentioned, you know, AVCP is 10 years or six, excuse me, 61 years [old]. The Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, we're 10 years old now. And the last thing I want to make, make sure, you know, a lot of times in our line of work, we go to Board of Fish, we get rejected [our proposals get rejected]. We go to North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and there's a lot of negativity there. We have to take these times to celebrate—when we can celebrate—our birthdays, celebrate our milestones, these little celebrations we kind of continually celebrate.
And this last week, the Ninth Circuit Court decision to uphold our system, subsistence ways, ANILCA, to uphold the ANILCA, the Katie John cases… [and] we have to celebrate, that. It's going to change. It probably will change. We don't know, but we now need to celebrate when we can. So, celebrate. These are huge milestones we're seeing.
And thank you very much.
Quyana.