Nora Zimmerly first came to Haines in 2017. It was a stop-off during a journey to Skagway to work for Sockeye Cycle.
“I really enjoy it,” she said. “I feel like a lot of the things that brought me here in the first place, or a lot of things that I was drawn to, about visiting, have remained, you know, I feel like the community really shows up for each other and is really positive and supportive, and active in a lot of different ways, whether it’s outdoor adventure or artistic pursuits or community activism.“
For the last few seasons, Zimmerly has gravitated toward working in the commercial fishing industry.
“It has been really awesome to get to explore other parts of Southeast, but I feel like I always come back to Haines and really love it here,” she said. “I think this is a really unique place on the planet that still has a really thriving, viable fishery that – you know, if, if we can protect it and manage it in an appropriate way could potentially last forever, in theory.”
Zimmerly has what she called an unconventional educational background. She grew up in a forestry family, co-managing a small forest with several other groups.
“That informed a lot of my values and experience,” she said.
At first, Zimmerly went to college for forestry management. But she said institutionalized learning wasn’t a good fit. So, she left and became a full-time touring musician.
“That was a pretty formative experience as well,” she said. “I got to see a lot of parts of the country that I maybe wouldn’t have gone to on my own.”
When she stopped touring she went to school to be a bike mechanic and during the pandemic she started attending college classes again – both general education requirements and following an interest in bioremediation. She also took a number of Alaska Native studies courses at UAS.
“[I] was trying to explore how what we think of as resource management has been practiced and is part of the culture of people who lived here for thousands of years,” she said. “It seemed important to me that if I’m going to be focusing on trying to do any sort of bioremediation or rehabilitation that it really should be informed by the agenda and principles of the people who have been here far longer than [me].”
Zimmerly said a combination of academic education around conservation and working in the commercial fishing industry has helped her understand how important it is to approach each issue with an understanding of its nuance.
“We put these blanket terms up like ‘fishing’ or ‘mining’ or ‘forestry’ and, there are so many different ways you can approach these topics,” she said. “It’s like what we’ve been seeing with the lawsuit against the troll fleet. Many people who live here are aware of how unfounded that was, how much of an impact that would have on small communities in Southeast Alaska and how low of an impact that fishery has. But, if you lump the troll fleet in with the trawl fleet, that causes a lot of people confusion.”
That lesson can be applied to other extractive industries as well, Zimmerly said.
“Do I think all mining is bad? No, I don’t. I think that there are ways that you can look for things underground that aren’t going to have a wildly massive long-term impact on things that are above ground or on the hydrological cycle of the area that you’re exploring,” she said.
If elected to the assembly, it will be Zimmerly’s first foray into local politics though she said she has been in a lot of collective decision-making situations.
She said she has the ability to be efficient and concise, to balance nuanced conversations with avoiding getting lost in the weeds on the issues.
And her life experience has helped her see both sides on a lot of issues that Haines faces with land use and resource management.
“You know, I want to prioritize conservation … of all of the things we depend on to live,” she said. “But also, again, I recognize that we’re going to have to cut some trees down. We’re going to have to use water resources. We might be digging holes somewhere,” she said. “I know that if we’re conscious of the consequences of the actions that we’re taking, then it’s possible to find some balance and some middle ground.”
Ultimately, Zimmerly said one of the main reasons she is running for office is that in a rapidly shifting global and local world, she thinks it’s important that younger generations are given the opportunity to have a voice about decisions being made that are going to impact them for a long time.
“I think that there is a certain amount of wisdom that does come with time and experience, but I also think it’s really important that new perspectives and new energies be allowed to come forward and that people… bring something new to the table,” she said.
If elected, she said she would prioritize maintaining the resources the borough does have, including its financial reserves. For her that includes thinking about the Lutak Dock and the potential costs of maintaining it.
“I think it’s important to look around and see how infrastructure has been maintained in Haines in the last 50 years. How much infrastructure did we inherit that we haven’t been able to perform routine maintenance on?” she said. “Maybe routine maintenance isn’t something that we’re into as a community.”
She looks at the now-closed Letnikof Dock as an example.
“It needs some maintenance,” she said. “So looking at, what do we have the capacity for? What are we willing to do? And, you know, if we can be honest and unwilling to take unnecessary risks or pass the buck to the next generation, then maybe we can still get all of our needs met as a community.”