This July, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins spent four days and 450 miles (725km) wending his way down the Yukon River in a 24ft Alweld skiff, a flat-bottomed aluminum boat built for shallow Alaska rivers.
Starting in Koyukon Athabascan country, he passed through Indigenous Deg Hit’an communities like Anvik, before ending among the Yup’ik villages of the lower river, Russian Mission and Pilot Station among them. The boat carried him through 11 villages – some only reachable by water or small plane, and most with fewer than 300 residents, and fewer still who could recall the last time they had seen a candidate for Alaska governor, Republican, Democrat or independent.
