Point Hope caribou trial comes to a close

Three Point Hope hunters were found guilty Thursday of wasting meat from two caribou during a 2008 hunt, but the judge refused to issue sentences or impose fines.

Aqquilluk Hank had been charged with killing the caribou and failing to harvest the meat as required under state hunting regulations. Two of his hunting companions -- Roy Miller and Chester Koonuk -- were accused as accomplices.

Alaska Superior Court Judge Richard Erlich, who found the men guilty in a makeshift courtroom in the Point Hope community center, declined to sentence them for what amounted to a traffic violation in the hunting world. He said their actions were far different than the crimes committed by a group of five other Point Hope hunters who were also accused of wasting caribou meat in 2008.

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In the latter group, four of the hunters took plea deals in recent months for wasting meat from at least seven caribou after investigators linked them to carcasses and kill sites. On Thursday, Erlich sentenced Lazarus Killigvuk, Randy Oktollik, Koomalook Stone and Brett Oktollik to fines ranging from $850 to $2,200 and ordered them to perform community service ranging from 50 hours to 120 hours. In December, the case against a fifth was dismissed outright.

Thursday brought an end to an emotional case that had pitted one of Alaska's oldest Inupiat villages against state prosecutors and troopers, who had initially claimed that some 100 caribou had been recklessly killed, the meat left on the tundra, in July 2008. That number was later reduced to 37. Most of those animals allegedly left unharvested were never connected to any suspects. For many Alaskans, questions remain over just how many caribou were actually killed and who was responsible. Those facts may never be known.

In addressing the defendants and those attending the trials, Erlich said making sure such an act never happens again won't necessarily be easy. "Folks, it is going to take a couple of generations of community education to change the values of a changing world," he said.

Absent from the trials this week were the dramatic images of calves attempting to suckle from dead mothers, clusters of caribou carcasses, and video footage of the Arctic crime scene captured during the investigation by the cable TV show "Animal Planet." And for good reason: The images had no direct connection to Hank, Koonuk or Miller, a point the judge underscored Thursday.

The state had no physical evidence against the men, instead relying on their own admission of failing to harvest two caribou. Also, there was no evidence that the two caribou the trio admitted leaving on the tundra were among the three dozen documented in the state investigation. Erlich, who flew from Kotzebue to preside over Point Hope's first-ever trial, commended the men's choice to resist plea deals from the state and their determination to spend time and money to defend not just their futures, but their honor.

Disappointed in the guilty verdicts but glad the case was coming to an end, the defendants embraced friends and family members, some of them crying, after the trials ended. Roy Koonuk Sr. beamed with pride as he considered what Miller, his nephew, had gone through and how he stood up for himself in the trial.

"I think he became twice the man he was now, and without his father," he said. "I'm real proud of him."

Miller, 20, works at the village gas station to support his mom and seven younger siblings. During the trial, he testified about his inexperience as
a hunter -- the result of years spent away from home at a Sitka boarding school -- and yet his desire to provide for his family through subsistence.

After three days of testimony that included a battle between a wildlife veterinarian and a cardiologist over the risk posed to people by bacteria-carrying caribou, closing arguments reduced the case to its core.

"Ever since the constitution of Alaska was passed, there has been a consistent disregard for Native customs and tradition, and a refusal to incorporate them into our laws," Hank's attorney, Jon Buchholdt, told the judge. "So we find ourselves here with a continuing, consistent clash of cultures, values and traditions."