Eleven-year-old Thomas Montion wanders down the aisle between two long tables covered in dishes of herring egg pasta, tandoori salmon bites, octopus and potatoes, and bull kelp pickles. Two hundred Sitkans line up in the hall, anticipating the many dishes they’ll try at this year’s feast.

They’re here for Sitka Conservation Society’s annual wild foods potluck, where locals share dishes featuring ingredients fished, foraged, hunted, or cultivated in Southeast Alaska. 

“All of this stuff looks so good. I’m going to get some of these black bear enchiladas…black bears don’t live here, so they must have hunted this somewhere else,” Thomas says, as he places a spoonful on his plate. “I’m going to get some of these salmon cakes. Venison, mushroom, meatballs? That sounds good. I’m gonna get one of these. I love deer.”

Thomas is joined by his mom, dad, three siblings, and friend Luke. 

“I’m really excited just to see what different types of food they have that I’ve never heard about before,” Thomas says. 

Thomas’s dad is in the U.S. Coast Guard, and moved with his family from Oregon to Sitka in June. Since then, Thomas started a Youtube channel called “The Wild Tom & Chuck Show,” where he and his brother make videos about “fishing, exploring and messing around outside.” Tonight, he’s using his GoPro to film his experience at the annual potluck.

“Oregon was sort of like here, just not quite as big of a salmon run,” Thomas said. “It used to be really big along the Columbia River, but kind of was overfished and dammed. We had some seafood, but not quite as much as here. So it’s been a really cool experience to have all this wild food.”

Kathleen Montion, Thomas’ mom, says Thomas is known for his adventurous palate.

“We have really good eaters,” she says. “We do a lot of foraging and hunting and fishing. We’re not super good at it, but we try, and they love finding chicken of the woods and all different sorts of things. They’re always up for trying anything.”

Kathleen says Sitka has been extremely welcoming to her family, and she wants her four kids to understand how lucky they are to live in such an abundant environment as the Tongass. 

“I want them to know just what a unique experience that is, and how we’re so blessed to have all of these foods available to us, and definitely how important it is to make sure that the food sources are protected so that we can continue to do this in the future as well,” she says.

SCS has hosted this potluck for about two decades. Deputy Director Katie Riley says this year, the gathering is a celebration of the many ways we connect with the public lands and waters that sustain us — through the foods we harvest, the cultures we practice, the places we explore, and the communities we build together. She says the theme is especially important in light of the Trump administration’s recent efforts to develop and reduce protections for public lands.

Riley says the event is the conservation society’s chance to say thank you to the community, and celebrate all of the effort that everyone puts into protecting this place and caring about their neighbors. And sharing food, she says, is such a great way to do that.

“One of the things that’s so unique about Sitka and about Southeast Alaska is that food is really one of the core reasons that people have been able to thrive here for so long. Like these healthy, abundant salmon runs that provided for Indigenous people to really be able to flourish in this place,” Riley says. “So when I think about food, I think about my connection to place, land. I think about sharing all of these values that we want to instill in current and future generations about how to take care of a place. It’s really how we can take care of the place that nourishes us and provides us with so much.”

Riley says every year, community members bring a variety of dishes to the event, and usually there are a couple of really exciting, novel things that people might not get a chance to try in their everyday lives. One that stood out to her this year? The black bear enchiladas.

“This black bear was harvested this spring in 2025 and we made sure to save enough for the wild foods potluck,” says Jordan Tanguay, who, along with her partner, harvested the bear near Juneau, where they used to live.

This is their second year participating in the potluck.

“It’s great to see the community come together,” Tanguay says. “And understanding what it means to be a conservation society, I think that theme came through really strongly last year. This year, we’re talking about being connected to the land and why it matters to us. And I think during this time, I find myself really finding that joy of being outside, and a lot of our recreation in not only the state of Alaska, but elsewhere, is really based on things like this.”

Wrapping back around to Thomas towards the end of the potluck, I ask him what his favorite dish was, and the answer is no surprise.

“I think my favorite food was probably the bear enchiladas. Black bear enchiladas. That was very good,” he says. “I think it had some sort of jalapeno pepper in there, very spicy, and I loved it.”

But what’s even better than the bear enchiladas, he says, is the community. 

“It’s so fun that everybody showed up, like everybody’s here, almost everybody from around the island,” Thomas says. “A lot of people showed up. So it’s really fun.”

And, he says, he looks forward to trying even more local foods at next year’s event.

Andrew Thoms is the director of the Sitka Conservation Society. SCS is holding its annual Wild Foods Potluck this 5 p.m. Sunday, November 10, at Harrigan Centennial Hall. Food is one of the closest humans have to the natural environment. In addition, the Society will present on some of its work. The event is open to the public.

The annual Sitka Conservation Society Wild Foods Potluck and annual meeting is coming up, promising dishes that feature ingredients foraged, hunted, or grown in Sitka. SCS Executive Director Andrew Thoms and board member Adrienne Wilber joined KCAW’s Brooke Schafer to talk wild foods, conservation, and community. Listen to the full interview here:

The 2023 Wild Foods Potluck will be held Sunday, November 19 at 5 pm at Harrigan Centennial Hall. For more information, email info@sitkawild.org or call 907-747-7509.

Downloadable audio.

If you think your Thanksgiving is the biggest, most mouth-watering meal of the year, then you haven’t been to Sitka’s Wild Foods Potluck. Long tables covered with casserole dishes of all shapes and sizes fill Harrigan Centennial Hall. Smells of soups and stews, cakes and cobblers waft through the air.

“It’s our opportunity to say ‘Thank you,’ to the community,” explains Sophie Nethercut.

Fish pie, featuring rock fish, pink salmon, homegrown potatoes, and organic carrots. (Emily Russell/KCAW Photo)

Nethercut is the community organizer for Sitka Conservation Society, an environmental nonprofit. SCS has hosted the Wild Foods Potluck every November for the last fifteen years.

“Who doesn’t  love the idea of bringing a dish and coming to a space where their taste buds can go crazy all night?” asks Nethercut.

And go crazy they most certainly will. Hundreds of people carry in platters of food they’ve either hunted or harvested. There are jars of stringy green beach asparagus, plates of shiny black cod tips, and, of course, no shortage of salmon dips.

The dishes are just as diverse as the crowd. Fishermen and their families fill chairs, kids crawl underneath tables, and couples mingle in line.

Venison meatballs with homegrown cabbage, kale, and hand-picked chanterelle mushrooms. (Emily Russell/KCAW Photo)

Zoe Trafton is in line, but she’s not mingling. She’s 10 and her plate is almost full.

Trafton explains what she has so far: “A meatball, herring egg sushi– my family made it– some ribs, some venison stew, I’m not totally sure what that is, some mac ‘n cheese, pumpkin bread, and gnocchi,” 

Along with a wide variety of foods, there’s also a full spectrum of flavors, from sweet applesauce, savory stews, and even some spiciness thrown into the mix.

“Would you like some kelp fries?” asks a mother to her young daughter.

She says her daughter’s first food was salmon eggs, so spicy kelp fries don’t scare her.

Behind them in line is Ellen Frankenstein. She’s here with her husband, Spencer, and says the potluck is one of Sitka’s best events.

 “It is really wonderful, because one thing we can still do is share food and protect our resources and be connected to each other and what we care about.” And, Frankenstein adds, “look for what is actually common between us.”

Frankenstein is referring to the recent election, because what’s a holiday without some talk of politics. But tonight the focus is on food.

Frankenstein’s plate is already piled high.

“I have some Chicken of the Woods curry, I think I have some black cod, I have some caribou sausage, I have some chowder I think made by high schoolers,” Frankenstein says.

Moses Wiseman, from Chefornak, and Christian Charlie, from Marshall, are students at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. (Emily Russell/KCAW Photo)

Moses Wiseman is a student at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. ” I’m from Chefornak. It’s far away,” explains Wiseman.

Wiseman says the food here is pretty fancy, but really good, he says. He smiles when he thinks about how food is prepared in his home village.

 “When somebody catches a bearded seal they take their guts out and the boy starts biting on it,” Wiseman explains. “When they come home the mother or the girls start cleaning it. After it’s really clean, then you rinse it. You cook it or you can eat it raw,” Wiseman says.

Wiseman is sitting next to his friend Christian Charlie. Charlie is also a student at Mt. Edgecumbe High School and is from Marshall, a village north of Chefornak on the Yukon River.

“The food here is different, but it’s really good,” Charlie says. “It makes you think of home.”

He’s chewing on fry bread at the moment, a staple in many Alaska Native villages.

A few tables away, Nelson Frank gears up for dessert. Frank is from Sitka and grew up subsisting off the land and the sea. He’s 70 now, so knows good smoked salmon when he tastes it, and says tonight it was perfect.

Nelson Frank is from Sitka and grew up subsisting off the land and the sea. (Emily Russell/KCAW Photo)

But there were a few things Frank was missing.

“I only wished that they had some more traditional food, like fermented eggs,” says Frank. Mixed with berries, Frank says, it make for a delicious dessert.

“Kanéegwál’. Salmon– fermented eggs– and highbush cranberries,” Frank explains.

For all you fishing and foraging out there, Frank is looking at you to round out the dessert table at next year’s Wild Foods Potluck.

The Wild Foods Potluck, hosted by the Sitka Conservation Society at ANB Hall, brought over 150 Sitkans together for an evening of sharing – and taste testing – wild foods. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Every year, the Sitka Conservation Society hosts a Wild Foods Potluck. It’s an edible celebration of all that can be picked, plucked, hunted, fished, grown, and gathered in Sitka. This year, over 150 people attended and brought dishes to the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall.

Downloadable audio.

There was a long table running down the middle of ANB hall, like the ultimate prelude to a Thanksgiving-sized feast. And every one of those dishes had one, or several, ingredients that never saw the inside of a grocery store.

Charlie Wilbur: We brought some spot prawns from local waters. They’re great eating and we caught em!

Jasmine Shaw: I led a 4H cooking class and we made currant biscotti and potato gnocchi. The potatoes we grew in our garden.

Pat Heuer: We brought herring eggs which is my daughter Emma’s all time favorite. And then we also brought Sitka black tail kabobs with a little imported antelope from Wyoming.

KCAW: That sounds delicious. I haven’t eaten anything yet.

Heuer: Well, you gotta get to the herring eggs before Emma because she loves them.

KCAW: Emma, what do you like about them so much?

Emma Huer: I like that they taste like the ocean and that they’re really crunchy.

Wild Foods Potluck 2015: A Slideshow

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Volunteers son peeled back the tin foil on these dishes and elders were given first access to the bounty. Harriet Baleal is the granddaughter of two of the founders of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, Chester Worthington and James Johnson. I asked her what was on her plate.

Baleal: Herring eggs and then I got Japanese made sushi and salmon dips and crackers and goose tongue.

KCAW: How many nutrients do you think are on that plate?

Baleal: I don’t know, I don’t keep track of that!

I asked Baleal whether the subsistence lifestyle was alive and well in Sitka. She said it’s taken some hard hits in the age of grocery stores. “What I think is now that there are less people going out and due to the change over to the cash economy, a lot of people can’t afford to go out and get their own.”

Despite the challenges, Baleal says the easiest fix is simply to gather what is in your own backyard. “I went up on Harbor Mountain last summer and got blueberries,” she said. “That was fun.”

Jeff Arndt is a subsistence gardener in his fourth year. I asked him what he thought of Sitka’s soil when he first arrived. Arndt said, “It was some of the worst soil I ever started with. There was no nutrients in it. A lot of volcanic ash. I’ve been hauling in massive amounts of seaweed and manure from the Fortress of the Bear. I’ve also been putting a lot of wood chips and shavings in there, so it’s really starting to come into it’s own now.”

Now? He said, the soil is “starting to feel really loamy. It’s got a lot of texture instead of being compressed.”

Arndt also feels that Sitka is on the cusp of a renaissance in home gardening. “There’s a lot of energy in town to produce our own food and be sustainable, so I think we’re entering a golden age of home gardening in Sitka. That’s my observation.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a potluck without something sweet at the end. Chris and Steve Warren won best dessert for a cheesecake with homemade graham cracker crust topped with spruce tip ginger marmalade.

The spruce tips were gathered on the far end of Kramer Avenue. Steve Warren wasn’t afraid to divulge his harvesting spot and said, “I’m only telling you this because this isn’t like mushrooms, where, ‘This is my secret spot. Are you crazy? I would never tell you that.’ There’s abundant spruce tips there and many people could get more than they could possibly eat spruce tips anything.”

Warren thought the spruce tips would nicely complement the bite of ginger.

Warren: It’s really sweeter than something you would expect to come from a conifer tree. It’s almost cloyingly sweet. There’s something that gets changed when you simmer it all day to the get the flavor out of the spruce tips. You literally spend half a day with it simmering slowly and end up with all things, a pink liquid.

KCAW: It is very labor intensive food. All of this probably took much longer compared to most dishes.

Warren: Compared to what though? That’s the question. Labor intensive compared to going to work and buying something and paying $16/lb for beach asparagus?

It was a fair point. And I soon after put down my microphone and scooped myself a big serving of salmon dip.

Judges awarded the following prizes
Best Dish: King’s Curry (Mariah and Chris Leeseberg)
Most Creative Dish: Smoke Goeduck (Paul Rioux)
Best Dessert: Spruce Tip Cheesecake (Chris Warren)
Most Abundant Dish: Venison Tamales (Estella Hernandez)