When Global Warming Kills Your God – The Atlantic.

I went to the Delta to cover the trial of 23 Yup’ik fishermen who had violated a ban on the fishing of king (or Chinook) salmon.

The Yup’ik believe they have an obligation to continue their ancestral traditions. As Jim Davis summarized it, in a brief submitted before the trial: “If Yup’ik people do not fish for King Salmon, the King Salmon spirit will be offended and it will not return to the river.”

An amicus brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union elaborated further:

A Yup’ik fisherman who is a sincere believer in his religious role as a steward of nature, believes that he must fulfill his prescribed role to maintain this ‘collaborative reciprocity’ between hunter and game. Completely barring him from the salmon fishery thwarts the practice of a real religious belief. Under Yup’ik religious belief, this cycle of interplay between humans and animals helped perpetuate the seasons; without the maintaining of that balance, a new year will not follow the old one.

Sigh……