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Heart of Our City: Arnie’s kitchen

Arnie Nagy opens his doors for feasts, salmon canning and smoking lessons

They call him Tlaatsgaa Chiin Kiljuu, or Strong Salmon Voice.

“I spent my whole life fighting for the fishing industry and the resource in the Skeena River, so they felt that was an appropriate name for me,” Arnie Nagy said as he filleted a sockeye salmon on his kitchen counter.

He’s referring to his many years on the executive board and as vice president for the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union. He was the local president in Prince Rupert for 25 years. A member of the Haida Nation, Nagy’s whole family has been involved in the fishing industry. His grandfather in Masset owned the Chief Weah and was part of B.C.’s largest seine fleet at the time. Nagy himself worked at the canneries for 37 years, and as a millwright for 27 years. To say he knows what to do with salmon is an understatement.

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His advocacy extends from salmon to humans. In May, Nagy began working as a housing advocate at the Prince Rupert Unemployment Action Centre.

“I think it’s pretty neat to be able to help people who are having problems being able to navigate things from housing to income assistance and being able to help them get over those hurdles. A lot of the clients we deal with are unable to speak for themselves. You’re being their voice to assist them in getting their lives back on track,” Nagy said.

“You feel rewarded at the end of the day when you’re going home, knowing that you’ve helped some people get over hurdles that were really starting to affect them emotionally, mentally.”

When he’s not working, Nagy can be found in his kitchen. He’ll often have someone by his side, learning from his more than 50 years of experience preparing food in the traditional ways. Years ago, Nagy was approached by the Friendship House to teach youth and elders how to smoke and jar fish.

“What you’re teaching is a way for them to re-identify with how to process food and be able help their families prepare food for the winter. It’s putting them back in touch with something a lot of them hadn’t been able to do. What it does is re-identifies them with their culture,” he said.

The whole process takes about five hours from filleting the first salmon to stacking the jars to cool. The whole time, Nagy shares stories of learning to jar from his mother, of working in the canneries and many, many feasts he’s hosted in this kitchen. He always takes one of the sockeye and cooks it, sharing a meal while the jars are cooking the rest of the fish.

He was taught by his mother, he said, learning how to cut a fish before he learned how to walk. He’s standing in his mother’s kitchen, in the house he now owns, where his mom designed the counters and placement of the stove (in the middle of the kitchen) especially for jarring. In the corner sits a photograph of his late mother, positioned below a taxidermied bald eagle, to watch over the work done in the kitchen.

“From the spirit world she can look in and watch as her legacy is still being carried on,” he said. “When we grow up, we’re always taught ‘you share the fish, you share the knowledge.’ First Nations people never ever wrote things down. It was always passed on through stories, oral history. This is the way that we carry on is by talking about it as we do it, so people understand what’s going on and learn to respect the creature that we’re working on.”

In the many years Nagy has been jarring food fish, this counter has served as the classroom for hundreds of people learning the process. From curious newcomers to children, youth at the Friendship House to anyone willing to lend a hand, Arnie’s kitchen is often kept busy.

“We do everything in this kitchen from jarring fruit to salmon, making jams, you name it, there’s always something going on in here.”

During the All Native Basketball Tournament (where you can see Nagy proudly wearing a ball cap that says HAIDA in all caps), Nagy hosts feasts here, filling his house with dozens of guests.

Once the jarring is done, the goods are handed out to elders in the community, who were unable to fish or prep their own salmon this season. They’ll drive around to homes in Prince Rupert, handing out fish for free.

“We don’t charge for it. It’s our constitutional right to be able to go out and food fish, but it’s our cultural obligation to make sure the elders get theirs before we get ours… It was actually pretty amazing to see how many of these people wouldn’t have gotten anything.”

They’ll ask for three, he’ll give them a dozen. He says when you catch a bounty of fish, it’s because it’s meant to be shared. It’s important every piece of the animal gets used or returned to nature — nothing is wasted.

“You don’t do it for the pat on the back, you do it because that’s the way it was done and that’s the way it was supposed to be done. Not for paper,” Nagy said. “You can have all the money you want, but you’re not going to be able to have the lifestyle we have being so close to a resource that you’re able to utilize and be able to be a part of what’s been going on for tens of thousands of years.”

Read weekly Heart of Our City profiles here.



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