As a toddler, I was so excited when I was first allowed to play outside alone without supervision. I practically ran outside but stopped suddenly when I got a certain distance away from our home. Darkness overcame my mind. “What is this? Where is it coming from?” I asked myself. Realizing that it came from most of the people, I asked myself, “Why can’t they see as clearly as I can?” I had an urge to sit and think about it but remembered that it was my time to play the way I wanted to and went on my way, thinking that I would come back to this. Visionary Mark Hamilton’s teachings had allowed me to once again remember that first encounter with the world outside my home.
My testimony will be about the Fish and Game (F&G) regulations, because they affect me and the people around me the most.
The earliest experience I can remember having with the F&G regulations is when I was a preteen, about ten to twelve years old. I overheard my farther asking my mother why we had to pull out our salmon fishing nets at certain times of the day. She had replied it was because they were not catching enough fish somewhere further south of us. A year or two later I heard them talking in concerned tone of voices and asked my mother what was happening, only because I could not speak our language well and my father could not speak English well enough either. I can understand our language to some extent, but not enough to carry a conversation. She told me that the F&G regulation enforcers had cut up a person’s salmon fishing net because it was set during a closure period. I wondered what had prevented that person from pulling out his net because we, at least most of us, are always abiding by the law. Later in life my father had to get rid of his dog team because it became too hard to feed the team. By limiting the amount of fish that my parents were able to catch, they were forced to purchase a snowmobile with what little money my father had and by trading fish and fur with a local western trader/gold miner.
The next I can remember of the F&G is that they were flying low over the walrus herds to scare them off the ice-packs, to make it hard for us to catch them. Another one that hit my heart and mind was from further up north of where I live. There was an eighteen year young lady missing from berry picking. A bear was known to be in the area and the F&G would not allow the local hunters to hunt the bear down. They were told that they would be put in jail if they did.
More recent regulations that affected me were that we were not allowed to catch more than one hundred salmon for the entire year. Most of us did not follow that but only got what we needed for the winter and not the extra needed to trade for other seafood not available in our area. The Caucasians in the neighboring town were allowed to seine further up the river, even if they held the majority of the jobs. I did not see those recent regulations on paper nor did I personally see the Caucasians seining but was told about them by more than a few people in my area. These bias regulations in my area hit me hard. They fueled the desire to get the Twelve Visions Party® launched even more than before.
We can do it, no matter how small we think we may be. All it takes is the need and we have that need for the Twelve Visions Party®. That need for the medical, energy, and all other industries to progress as we have seen happen in the fairly unregulated computer and communications industries.