Salmon Defense
Salmon Defense
How the Salmon People are restoring the habitats of their sacred relatives
Not long ago, a haunting spectacle hit news headlines. Many of us watched as a grieving mother orca in the Pacific Northwest carried her lifeless calf around the ocean for weeks. This heart-wrenching event served as a harbinger of a deeper crisis unfolding beneath the surface — the declining presence of a keystone species that sustains not only the waters but also the interconnected web of life that thrives in its embrace: the Salmon. These remarkable creatures nourish not only the ecosystems they inhabit but also the intricate relationships between water, plants, animals, and human communities. Their lifecycle, from the mountain streams where they spawn to the vast ocean where they mature, leaves an indelible mark on the landscape, shaping the very fabric of the Pacific Northwest.
Yet, in recent decades, this intricate dance of life has been disrupted. Massive whale deaths, shorter fishing seasons, and the diminishing presence of Salmon signal a profound imbalance. The consequences of this decline ripple through the entire tapestry of the region, impacting not only the marine environment but also the livelihoods and cultural heritage of the communities that have relied on Salmon for sustenance and spiritual connection for generations. Today, as declining Salmon populations cast a shadow over the delicate balance of nature and the communities that have flourished in the region since time immemorial, a group of Indigenous communities, known as the Salmon People, are fighting tirelessly to restore the habitats of their sacred relatives.
For the first time in approximately 15 years, the semi-federal Pacific Fishery Management Council has officially closed the Salmon season across the majority of waterways along the West Coast. This decision comes after reports of historically low numbers of Salmon returning upstream to spawn. However, the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC), representing 20 treaty Indigenous tribes in western Washington, asserts that such measures, without addressing the root causes for the decline in Salmon populations, only continue to curb the rights of Indigenous people.
The Salmon People hold deep cultural connections to the fish and recognise that the health of the larger ecosystem is intimately tied to the health of the Salmon, which is a keystone species. The marine-derived nutrients from Salmon have a ripple effect, nourishing streams and enriching the surrounding forests. This, in turn, sustains a diverse array of species through various interconnected food web pathways, fostering the flourishing of local biodiversity in the region.
The NWIFC maps how Salmon populations have severely declined after decades of irresponsible policies that disregarded Indigenous knowledge and were incompatible with the natural environment. These policies encompassed detrimental practices such as promoting commercial overfishing, allowing unregulated development that encroached upon riverbanks, impeding the upstream migration of Salmon through the construction of dams and bridges, employing toxic chemicals, and implementing destructive land management practices that harm Salmon habitats. In addition, the Marine Mammal Protection Act has exacerbated the situation by causing an overpopulation of pinniped seals, which in turn has led to a significant decline in Salmon populations; this act makes it illegal for Indigenous communities to harvest seals to maintain the predator-prey ecological balance. This is all compounded by the changing climate that has decreased water levels during the Salmon spawning season.
Washington tribes are guaranteed access to 50% of fish harvests in the state, and the state and federal governments are required to protect Salmon habitats, according to the Boldt Supreme Court decision established in 1974. However, Salmon habitats continue to be degraded faster than they can be restored, and tribes' have had to fight for their ability to exercise their already threatened treaty rights. In this critical time, NWIFC serves as a central coordinating body for tribes to speak with a unified voice on shared concerns.
Salmon Defense is an Indigenous coalition working to unite communities in restoring and preserving the Salmon habitat in order to increase sustainable Salmon runs. They advocate for sustainably harvesting pinniped seals, and also call for the resourcing of Indigenous-led Salmon hatcheries, as a last resort to bring Pacific Salmon back from the brink of extinction. The tribes in the Pacific Northwest are calling not for a return to the past, but for a future where the region's landscape and interconnected natural resources thrive, supporting abundant health and sustainable harvests for all.
In our recent Peasant and Indigenous Press Forum, we were fortunate to speak to Glen Gobin and Lisa Wilson, who work with Salmon Defense.
Glen is a lifelong fisherman and Leader of Ceremonies from the Tulalip Tribes, the successors in interest to the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish, and other allied bands. Although he claims to be semi-retired, he is very active in restoring the ecological balance and harmony of the PNW. He is also Co-Chair of the Billy Frank, Jr. Salmon Coalition.
Lisa is a council member for the Lummi Nation, the original inhabitants of southern British Columbia in Canada and the northernmost coast of Washington. She is also Vice-Chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, where she ensures that the decisions taken by the State of Washington on issues like renewable energy are made with the full and fair consultation of Tribal Nations.
Here are excerpts from our many conversations with Glen and Lisa, leading up to, and during the forum. We hope you learn from them as much as we did.
We often hear from you and your members, “When the Salmon are healthy, we are healthy.” You speak of how integral Salmon are — not only to your people, but the trees, the bears, and the greater watershed. Can you please share how your traditional belief system is rooted in interconnectedness?
Glen: We're well beyond warning signs of what's happening around us. And these are things that are actually taking place. When I think about our beginnings, our elders will tell us the stories of our creation. Before man walked on Earth, we were once part of the Salmon people that lived out in the ocean. And each year, we celebrate the first returning king Salmon that comes back to feed our people. And it comes as a scout — a scout to the Salmon people to see how well the people will receive him. Will they give him a place of importance? Will they show him respect? Will they bring him ashore and share what he's offering of himself, with all the people around him? And when we're done doing that, we turn him back to the water, back to where he came from. So that he will inform his people whether or not we are worthy enough to have the rest of his people come and take care of us throughout the year.
That's become a real question today. Are we worthy enough any longer? Are we giving him that place? We certainly do within our ceremonies. But when you look at the surrounding area, and what's happening in the environment, it becomes uncertain. All these things were taught to us by our elders — how we treat and respect those things that come from nature, and never take them for granted. And it's becoming more and more challenging all the time, as we see the diminishing runs, the environmental degradation that is taking place. But we continue to move forward in a positive way, bringing these issues of the environment and trying to find solutions, because we can't give up. Because for us, it's not just about today, it's about our next generations, and what they will have, what we will have preserved for them.
News headlines and scientific reports have all documented the declining population of Salmon. In your opinion, what do you consider to be the cause of such a historically low number of Salmon in the Pacific Northwest?
Lisa: In order to figure out where we're at today, we've got to go back a little bit in history. My people, the Lummi Nation, have always been the Salmon people. And it's been stated that Salmon are as important as the air that we breathe. It's always been said when the tide is out, the table is set. Pre-contact, it's been said, there was such an abundance of Salmon that you could walk across the backs of them in the river. And we've always been stewards of this land since time immemorial.
Post-contact, we signed the Point Elliott treaty in 1855. We've been fighting ever since to make sure that those promises were upheld. In the treaty, it was stated that we would always have the right to fish and hunt and gather in our usual and accustomed areas. But ever since then, we've been fighting multiple factors. The invention of canning took a big toll on our Salmon stocks, because Salmon became a commodity. To us, Salmon is spiritual: We use it in our ceremonies, our funeral gatherings. In any gathering that we have, Salmon is our main staple.
And so years of habitat degradation caused by various industries such as logging, farming, the oil sector, illegal water users who pollute our rivers, and most recently, climate change — there are a lot of different factors that have gotten us to where we are today.
Salmon populations are at an all-time low. One major predator of the Salmon are the pinniped Seals. What can you tell us about the relationship between Seals and Salmon? What is the biggest public misconception when it comes to the problems caused by the pinniped (Seal/sea lion) populations?
Glen: We have to go back in history, to some of the legends and stories that were passed down by our elders. They tell a story of a time when the seals came and camped out at the mouth of the river. And the people who used the river for food were starving, because there were no more fish able to go up the river as the seals were devouring them all. The people were crying and wailing and shouting out. The killer whales heard the cries of the people, which is why our tribe is so closely connected with the killer whales. When the whales heard the cries, they came in and took the seals and started to eat them, threw them up on the shore to feed the people, and drove the remaining ones away from the mouth of the river so the Salmon could return again.
Now that story talks about management in a natural habitat. No longer are there enough killer whales to maintain the population of pinnipeds that are out there today because of the environmental deterioration that has happened.
In 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act was put in place to protect pinnipeds because of mismanagement prior to that, where people were shooting and killing seals, and their populations were driven to a point where they were extremely threatened. But since that time, there's been no management whatsoever, other than to protect the species, which today are so overpopulated that they're decimating the Salmon runs. There has to be true management of the pinniped population so that they can thrive, without getting out of control, as they are today. And this is quite the struggle given that, in the public eye, these are cute furry little creatures, but they’re destroying the Salmon habitat in ways that I don't think people can truly fathom.
And would management of pinnipeds include hunting?
Glen: Absolutely. It has to if we're going to see any immediate impact. The population level needs to be managed. Nobody wants to see this go back to pre-1972, before the enactment (before the Marine Mammal Protection Act), but it is so disproportionate now, and it's threatening everything. It needs to be dealt with in whatever way is the quickest, and harvesting is part of that.
What are your views on the increasing presence of Atlantic Salmon farms in the region? How much are they hurting Pacific Salmon?
I think that we're right, not to continue with Salmon farming in our Puget Sound region. Science has shown that they increase sea lice infestation, the droppings or waste are disposed in concentrated specific areas which pollute our waterways, and the quality of the product is not the same. We see it as a real threat, and the potential of losses with crossbreeding in the river systems is immense, and it would change the whole cultural world that we live in.
The impact of Salmon can also be felt in your language, and your traditional practices. Can you share a little bit about how the declining Salmon population is affecting your community?
Lisa: We always say, “What happens to the Salmon happens to our people”. And over the years, with the Salmon getting sick, along parallel, our people have been getting sick. And the reason they’re getting sick is because they’re not able to practice our Sche'langen, which is our way of life. Fishing for Salmon is who we are: We are the Salmon people. Over the years, the generations that are coming aren’t able to fish like our ancestors did, or even fish like we did when we were younger. We’re losing our identity, and when we don’t have that identity, we have to reach for things to help us cope with losing our languages and our ways of life. So we do have a lot of drug and alcohol use and poverty, and those are ways in which our people are sick because our Salmon are sick. We’re just trying to hang on to what we have as a way of life and also do what we can to heal our people.
Glen: It becomes an even greater struggle for the next generations. We’re losing the ability to exercise the treaty rights to fish and gather, because of habitat loss and the Salmon not returning. But yet we strive to restore them, to bring them back. How do we continue to pass on the value of that to a generation that has not actually had the ability to exercise those cultural teachings, those cultural ways? And when does that start to diminish to the point where our culture changes because our people don’t know what a Salmon is any longer? When they don’t know what it is to harvest, let alone eat, a Salmon, and what it’s meant to our people who have been sustained by it for thousands of years?
Can you explain a little bit about what kind of solutions you and the Salmon Defense are promoting to help turn the tide for Salmon?
Lisa: As I’ve stated, we’ve always been stewards of the land. And so, fortunately, we do have our hatchery through which we’ve been bringing our Salmon runs back. We stopped fishing on our Salmon in 1978, and we made a concerted effort to bring our Salmon runs back in 2015. We had 7, Southwark spring Chinook, and we brought them back to 3,000. But then 2,500 of those died because the habitat could not sustain them. That's why it's vitally important that we get support for our hatcheries because we know we can bring our stocks back, but the problem we're facing right now is the habitat. So, we are actually fixing the habitat too, meaning we are upholding the treaty obligation to ourselves. We're doing all of the work. And we're not getting the resources needed to do this.
The outside society keeps monopolising all this money and not directing it to our tribe. We know what to do. We can bring the fish back with our hatcheries, we can fix the habitat, we work with engineered logjams to cool the water down, and we are working on water adjudication for the Nooksack River because we need to quantify our water so that there is an adequate amount for our salmon to survive. And then, we have to really uphold those regulations with the timber and agriculture companies and make sure that the illegal water users are regulated. So, there are a lot of different things that we are doing, like Glenn had mentioned, with the pinniped management, the holistic approach from the headwaters down to the Delta. There are a lot of things that can be done, but we've got to have the political will to do it.
Glen: I think it takes a general understanding of the overall population, of the importance of what Salmon means to the Pacific Northwest. And it’s not just going to be tribes or just one user group that can fix this. It’s going to take all of us coming together, recognising the impact, understanding what little resources we have left to sustain the Salmon, and how to best protect it.
The habitat is the core issue. There has to be clean and cool flowing water, with the right gravel beds for the Salmon to spawn.
There also has to be pinniped management. Pinniped management, in my opinion, is the single thing that could take place that would increase Salmon runs immediately. Albeit unpopular in the general public, it needs to be dealt with if we are going to save the Salmon, which in turn, saves all the other food cycles that feed the rest of the animals and fish, including the killer whales.
As these things are taking place, we still need hatchery production, to produce fish to continue on [until we can repair the habitat]. And it's not just the tribes’ responsibility — it's also the state's. And it's the federal government's. And we need to do this working together. Tribes did not create this problem, but we're here, as we always have been, to stand up and protect this resource, so we have it for our next generations.
What would full self-determination and autonomy look like for you in your tribal communities?
Lisa: Just to be able to practice our Sche'langen and our way of life, of what we always have done since time immemorial. We are heavily regulated right now with the Endangered Species Act. It was supposed to help the tribes, but it's the biggest tool they use against us to try to regulate our hatcheries and then almost reduce our harvests down to zero. If they would just look at the science that we have, that shows that we can bring the species back, and that we know how to restore the habitat. But we're up against so many different issues with bureaucracy, regulation, and resources needed to fix everything.
This animated short by Salmon Defense, featuring native american leader Billy Frank Jr., that takes the viewer up the river through the eyes of the salmon showing its pristine environment, its connection to the Pacific Northwest People, the arrival of the settlers, habitat degradation, the unification of people throughout the world working together to save salmon and salmon habitat.
This article by Leonida Odongo, where she denounces the power of transnational corporations in African countries and highlights grassroots alternatives based on agroecology. Leonida confronts the devastating impacts of corporations on labour, food, and the environment, and the violence faced by environmental defenders. The article also emphasises the importance of community education and agroecology as resistance against corporate influence.
This podcast collaboration between Shado Mag and A Growing Culture, Larissa and AGC staff member Justin Sardo explores why the global industrial food system leaves people hungry and how it fractures our relationships with communities and the environment. Justin highlights the unifying potential of food and stresses the importance of standing in solidarity with farmers, land workers, and indigenous-led land and food rights campaigns for a more sustainable and equitable food system.
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