Fish Are Friends & Food: Pacific Salmon in Indigenous Communities

Our group originally considered using paper crafts, such as drawing salmon or folding origami, to represent indigenous art. We shifted to a bead-based simulation to provide a professional-looking final product and an embodied crafts activity. We found inspiration for the bracelet format in a shell-and-turquoise necklace from the mid-nineteenth century. This Nez Perce piece is part of the Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection at the Portland Art Museum and provided a historical model for using jewelry to represent cultural identity and sovereignty.

We prepared twenty-one pieces of blue yarn cut to twelve-inch lengths to serve as the rivers. Each table received specific instructions, unaware of the meaning behind their bead counts until the final reveal. \We pre-tied starter knots to ensure beads would not slide off immediately, and provided masking tape to anchor the strings to the tables.

The activity helps students to remember the cultural weight of systemic restrictions. Participants at Table 1 enjoyed a sense of historical abundance with twenty salmon beads representing the twelve thousand-year stewardship of the Pacific Northwest. In contrast, those at Table 2 felt the frustration of the Alaska Limited Entry Act of 1973. Their sparse bracelets represented the dispossession of commercial fishing rights and the empty reservoirs of cultural opportunity that result from institutional racism. Table 3 used black beads to represent twentieth-century dam projects, which fragmented the river and prioritized a capitalist economy over the ecological relationships protected by treaties. Table 4 participants followed a strict repeating sequence of orange, white, and silver beads. This pattern represented the Tlingit Salmon Boy narrative and the logic of reciprocal hospitality. By returning every bone to the water, humans ensure the salmon will return for the next migration cycle. 

We felt the activity was a solid success. One notable bit of feedback came from a student who pointed out that the frayed ends of some yarn strands made stringing beads much more difficult. She compared this to how certain indigenous communities have found modernization more challenging or have suffered more severely from salmon-related issues than others. This unexpected detail added a layer to our simulation of systemic challenges.

A significant limitation is that static beads cannot capture the dynamic spiritual depth of a first salmon ceremony. While we addressed the Martinez and Boldt Decisions through the dam beads, we could not fully represent the legal complexity of treaty violations. Simplifying complex legal frameworks into bead counts risks reducing deep cultural ontologies to a set of game rules. Despite these limits, the activity effectively moved the discussion from theory to an embodied experience of salmon as sentient kin within a social contract.

Colombi, B. J. (2012). Salmon and the Adaptive Capacity of Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) Culture to Cope with Change. The American Indian Quarterly, 36(1), 75. https://doi.org/10.5250/amerindiquar.36.1.0075

In Colombi’s chapter, the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) people’s social and spiritual identity is described as inextricably linked to salmon, which act as a cultural keystone species. Beyond being a food source, the fish are a requirement for weddings and coming-of-age ceremonies, such as the first salmon kill, where they anchor the tribe’s language and social order. This reciprocal relationship means that the health of the watershed is a direct reflection of the health of the people. Ultimately, the Nimiipuu view salmon as a necessary element of their sovereignty and treaty rights rather than an expendable commodity for industrial markets.

Langdon, Stephen J. “Sustaining a Relationship: Inquiry into the Emergence of a Logic of Engagement with Salmon among the Southern Tlingits.” Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian, edited by Michael E. Harkin and David Rich Lewis, U of Nebraska P, 2007, pp. 233-74.

In Langdon’s chapter, Tlingit elder James Osborne explains that the tribe treats salmon as sentient persons, a relationship modeled after the “Salmon Boy” narrative where a boy learns that fish deserve mutual respect. This spiritual kinship is enacted through rituals like the first salmon ceremony and the careful return of bones to the water to ensure the salmon’s rebirth. Even the harvest is spiritually ordered, with fish struck while facing upstream to honor their metaphysical journey. These practices illustrate that the Tlingit recognize salmon as reciprocal spiritual entities rather than just a harvestable resource.

Andrea J. Reid, Nathan Young, Scott G. Hinch, and Steven J. Cooke. 2022. Learning from Indigenous knowledge holders on the state and future of wild Pacific salmon. FACETS. 7: 718-740. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2021-0089

This study sought to consult Indigenous knowledge holders of the Pacific Northwest on the current ecological state of their ancestrally vital Pacific salmon. The lead author of the article is a citizen of the Nisga’a Nation, utilizing connections with fellow citizens to get in contact with various Indigenous knowledge holders. The elders interviewed all had upwards of 50 years experienced in fishing, processing, and stewarding salmon. According to their observations, salmon catches and overall population numbers had significantly decreased to barely a sixth of what they used to be. When asked about stressors across their respective water systems, climate change scored as a top five stressor in all cases.

Bingham JA, Milne S, Murray G and Dorward T (2021) Knowledge Pluralism in First Nations’ Salmon Management. Front. Mar. Sci. 8:671112. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.671112

This article was authored by researchers of both PNW Indigenous and Western settler-colonialist cultural backgrounds and sought to identify a pluralistic approach to turning the modern dichotomy between Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and Western quantitative science into a collaboration. A seminar was held to spotlight Indigenous perspective on approaching this “integration”, in which Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations (TFN) citizens were given primary directive control over the development of research questions and scope of the discussion. It was overwhelmingly indicated that TFN citizens value their ancestral knowledge as equally credible and “scientific” as Western quantitative analysis. The push for adoption of a TFN relational worldview founded in ancestral practices in a Western society is an ongoing tension of the knowledge divide.

Whyte, K. P. (2018). Food Sovereignty, Justice, and Indigenous Peoples. In A. Barnhill, M. Budolfson, & T. Doggett (Eds.), Oxford Handbooks Online. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199372263.013.34

In the chapter, “Food Sovereignty, Justice, and Indigenous People,” Kyle Whyte (2018) discusses how theories of Indigenous food sovereignty and injustice, specifically the conservation of foods such as salmon, illustrate the processes that underpin the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty occurring in settler frameworks, with a focus on the Karuk people in the Klamath River Basin of Oregon and northern California. Whyte explains the relationship between Indigenous food systems and his concept of collective continuance, which refers to a society’s degree of adaptive capacity through systems that mutually support one another through Indigenous cultural practices, such as the potlatch ceremony to allocate resources, including salmon. Likewise, food systems promote collective continuance by serving as a collective capacity, through which trust and redundancy cultivate resilience and adaptive capacity in the context of societal threats, by drawing on lessons from history and organizing widespread efforts to confront these challenges. Importantly, an understanding of food sovereignty as an indicator of collective continuance frames food injustice as both a form of limited access to healthy food as well as a product of efforts by settler colonial states to erase Indigenous ways of being through the disruption of relationships between Indigenous groups and their ecologies, thereby minimizing the collective continuance of these groups. 

Carothers, Courtney, Jessica Black, Stephen Langdon, Rachel Donkersloot, Danielle Ringer, Jesse Coleman, Erika Gavenus, et al. 2021. “Indigenous Peoples and Salmon Stewardship: A Critical Relationship.” Ecology and Society 26 (1). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11972-260116

The article “Indigenous peoples and salmon stewardship: a critical relationship” (Carothers et al., 2021) utilizes work done by the State of Alaska People and Salmon project to examine the critical ecological and sociocultural role of the 12,000-year relationship and stewardship systems between the Indigenous Peoples of Alaska, specifically the Tlingit, Ahtna, and Central Yup’ik, and the keystone species salmon. Carothers et al. also examine policy inequities created through legislation, such as the Alaska Limited Entry Act of 1973, that threaten these relationships and systems as well as Indigenous sovereignty itself through the marketization of commercial fishing rights, as well as by targeting Indigenous fishing and hunting traditions, lifestyles, and rights, ultimately leading to the loss of fish camps and economic prospects for Indigenous youth. Eurocentric settler colonialism, which is exhibited by U.S. fisheries management focused on maximizing profit and is based on implicit separation and the preeminence of humans, contrasts with Indigenous governance systems, which are largely overlooked and center on reciprocal, spiritually-based relationships with beings of all species that entail the active management of ecosystems and the view of salmon as nonhuman kin.

Jack Kellogg: Tlingit Reciprocity and the “Salmon Boy” Narrative

What does it mean to have a truly “reciprocal” relationship with animals? In the Tlingit peoples of the Yukon, the “Salmon Boy” narrative (Langdon, pg. 238) serves as the ethical foundation for Tlingit fishing. The story begins when a boy insults a piece of moldy salmon skin. He is subsequently pulled underwater into the “forts” of the salmon people, where he discovers they live in a society identical to humans. This experience teaches him that salmon are sentient beings who voluntarily visit the human world. The essence of the narrative is the transforming of fishing into a social contract of reciprocal hospitality. It dictates that humans must welcome the fish with ceremonies and return every bone to the water so the salmon can re-embody and return the following year. This perspective is also seen in the practice of striking a fish on the head only while it faces upstream, ensuring its spirit continues its journey. Understanding this ontological perspective of kinship versus simply seeing fish as ecological “stock”  is vital to understand as we work to bridge the gap between traditional ecological knowledge and modern conservation efforts. 

Isabella Moss: Ontologically Divided Responses to a Changing Pacific Northwest        

While the Western scientific method has only recently quantified that we are in a worldwide ecological decline, Indigenous First Nations have long had this understanding informed by their intimate, lived relationships with the land. The self-identified “Salmon People” of the Pacific Northwest forged this title through generations of fishing, processing, honoring, and acting as stewards to Pacific salmon, passing down knowledge through customs and oral tradition. They were some of the first to notice when salmon numbers began to thin, the knowledge of the bountiful catches of their ancestors informing the threat of lesser and lesser yields. They also presently compose the frontline of salmon conservation, funding research and working with the land to holistically preserve this sacred species. Each year, First Nations such as the Nisga’a leave salmon bones in the spawning waters to encourage the old generation of salmon to return to the familiar scent and “rebuild” themselves. Each year, fewer salmon seem to regenerate. Reconciling the Salmon People’s sovereignty, born of reciprocity with Pacific salmon, with its apparent ontological differences from Western settler-colonialist backgrounds remains a key tension as salmon conservation progresses (Bingham et. al, 2021). These frameworks are often dichotomized to a high degree, exacerbating gaps in both passive knowledge and active understanding (Cannon et al., 2024). As a result, the ontological relationship that informs the Salmon People’s conservation efforts and provides highly credible insight into the rapidly changing Pacific salmon landscape remains critically underrepresented and underutilized.

Margaret Norsworthy-Edghill: Indigenous Epistemologies, Fishing Rights, and Treaty Management

Tensions have arisen between Western fisheries science, education, and management, and Indigenous epistemologies through criminalization, regulations, and incongruent conservation demands, such as the dispossession of commercial fishing rights through the Alaska Limited Entry Act of 1973, which limited the number of fishing permits issued on the basis of mitigating overfishing (Carothers et al., 2021). These conflicts seated in institutional racism have had a multitude of deleterious economic, cultural, and social implications for Indigenous communities through trends towards depopulation, financial stress, and psychological hardship. There is likewise a contrast between viewing traditional Indigenous foods as static and archaic, and recognizing them as a form of collective continuance, serving as a food system that performs an adaptive function for Indigenous groups that use them (Whyte, 2018). It is still unclear how protective measures for Indigenous groups can be legally instantiated, such as through the creation of treaties that address shared conservation objectives, and how violations of these measures may consistently be rectified within existing settler frameworks, which prioritize industrial development over ecological relationships protected by treaties, as seen in the Martinez and Boldt Decisions (Blumm and Steadman, 2009).

Yulee Kang: Indigenous Science and Ties to Salmon and Environment in Culture and Practice

Science and Indigenous sovereignty have been placed at odds many times in the past. However, recent efforts to center Indigenous practices, namely those centering the Nez Perce, Yakama, Umatilla, and Warm Springs Tribes in restoration efforts in conjunction with the U.S. government addresses the ecological and cultural damages previously caused by Western development such as the dam projects following the great depression. The shift from state-led engineering projects to Tribally-owned renewable energy initiatives and habitat restoration shows a shift in our previous understanding of conservation and an essential rebuilding of trust and treaty obligations between Indigenous tribes and the State/Federal government (Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative). Another such example is the “stronghold strategy” focusing on proactive approaches to conservation for the long term health of model watersheds that serve as safe grounds and models for conservation efforts rather than waiting for a species to be pushed to the edge of extinction. This aligns with cultural understandings and emphases of salmon as a symbol of interconnectedness, reciprocity, and life cycles and integrates nations to new policies and potentials of ecosystems resilient to climate and policy change while ensuring food security and spiritual connection and continuity (Rahr et al., 2025).