Heart of the Salmon: Spirit of the People
Ethnicity, Pollution, and Cultural Loss
by
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Where salmon is the most important source of life and the outward expression of Creator, the spirit of a whole people becomes wounded beyond expression when that source is annihilated. I have seen that despair in the hearts of many river people who can no longer harvest salmon. The salmon runs are gone, nearly extinct, or so heavily polluted that eating them poses a serious health risk. (Armstrong, 1998, p.182).
There is a parallel between the salmon as they struggle upstream to spawn and the tribes of the Northwest as they struggle to retain their treaty rights to fish. Both continue to meet great obstacles and the most common threat to them both has been politics. When conflicts have arisen over this past century, it is usually the salmon and the tribes that have lost to the more powerful political interests of big business, timber, railroad, mining, farming, and hydroelectric power. (Sandra Osawa/Makah, 1998, p. 134.)
The broad purpose of this book is to examine the role that salmon have played in the initial occupation by humans along rivers in the northwest corner of North America. We approach the loss of salmon and contamination of rivers used by native peoples. We focus on the tribes and nations who depend on this cultural and spiritual resources. We highlight the role that salmon have played in the culture, spirituality, and trade among First Nations and American Indians who settled along the Columbia, Fraser, and Yukon Rivers. We echo how, over time, salmon have weaved their way into tribal stories, ceremonies, and art. We reflect on one of the oldest ecological principles practiced by Indigenous Peoples all over the world, past and present. Namely, if you depend on a place for you life and livelihood, you have to take care of that place or suffer the consequences. This is a lesson that is learned by countless generations (Cajete, 2000). The text is interspersed with native voices and other supplemental materials that describe the early tribes, trading, the culture of the people and how, today, those cultures have been victimized by collisions of cultures where the salmon have been decimated and their habitats polluted.
Native languages have no word for "ethnologist" but may call someone who accepts this responsibility "The Keeper of the Culture". Those who accept this role undergo a long life of study, analysis, deductions and inferences. These activities bring them into the realm of traditional knowledge and native science. In this book, we apply the ethnologist's way of coming into knowing by studying the role of salmon, analyzing reasons why salmon are losing ground to industry and agriculture, and examining how Native Science and Western Science can weave a solution for this monumental problem.
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About the Book
For Indigenous peoples around the world, the food they depend on for life, cultural preservation, and spirit is also medicine. These are so intimately intertwined that many plants we used in one instance as food, while in others, under proper supervision and application by a medicine person, are used as healing components. Food is always a component of ceremony and ritual and is the most basic symbolic representation of how humans depend on other living things for their lifeways. (Cajete, 1994).
The broad purpose of this book is to examine the role that salmon have played in the initial occupation by humans along rivers in the northwest corner of North America. We approach the loss of salmon and contamination of rivers used by native peoples. We focus on the tribes and nations who depend on this cultural and spiritual resource. We highlight the role that salmon have played in the culture, spirituality, and trade among First Nations and American Indians who settled along the Columbia, Fraser, and Yukon Rivers. We echo how, over time, salmon have weaved their way into tribal stories, ceremonies, and art. We reflect on one of the oldest ecological principles practiced by Indigenous Peoples all over the world, past and present. Namely, if you depend on a place for you life and livelihood, you have to take care of that place or suffer the consequences. This is a lesson that is learned by countless generations.
The text is interspersed with native voices and other supplemental materials that describe the early tribes, trading, the culture of the people and how, today, those cultures have been victimized by collisions of cultures where the salmon have been decimated and their habitats polluted.
Native languages have no word for "ethnologist" but may call someone who accepts this responsibility "The Keeper of the Culture". Those who accept this role undergo a long life of study, analysis, deductions and inferences. These activities bring them into the realm of traditional knowledge and native science. In this book, we apply the ethnologist's way of coming into knowing by studying the role of salmon, analyzing reasons why salmon are losing ground to industry and agriculture, and examining how Native Science and Western Science can weave a solution for this monumental problem.
This work is meant to honor Salmon, First Fish, First People, and Native Science as traditional knowledge. It is written by Native voices, men and women, voices for the Earth and Keepers of the Waters. It is written from a health perspective of healthy water, healthy fish, healthy culture, healthy Peoples. It is written from the perspective of First Peoples who speak of the heart of the Salmon and the spirit of the People. This work provides the perspective of Native people as scientists and as Traditional Knowledge Keepers. It voices a deep and meaningful message from American Indian and First Nations people to health care providers, anthropologists, researchers, to citizens who continue to vigorously apply agricultural chemicals, lawn fertilizers, and pesticides, and to any health care professionals who choose to ignore environmental degradation. We all need a healthy planet. In fact, we may not survive to see another century without one.
About the Author
Biosketch for Lori Lambert, Ph.D., RN
An enrolled member of the Abenaki Nation and descendent of Mi'kmaq and French Canadians, Dr. Lambert is an internationally known researcher and lecturer who has presented in Australia, Finland, Norway, Canada, and Russia. Dr. Lambert graduated from nursing school in Boston, Massachusetts. After working in the Philippines for two years, she returned to the States to complete her graduate work. She received the Ph.D. in Medical Ecology: Arctic Studies from the Union Institute of Arts and Sciences, Cincinnati, Ohio, and her Master Degree in Environmental Science Education from Beaver College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She recently completed a post- doctoral certificate in distance education and technology from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
She is the author of numerous articles and three books: Through the Northern Looking: Breast Cancer Stories told by Northern Native Women published by National League for Nursing, 1996
Keepers of the Central Fire: Issues in Ecology for Indigenous Peoples published by Jones & Bartlett in 2000.
Dr. Lambert teaches at Salish Kootenai Tribal College on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana, where she lives with her husband Frank Tyro and their team of Huskies.
Biosketch for Chris Walsh
A member of the Lakota Nation, Chris Walsh graduated from Salish Kootenai College with an Associate Degree in Nursing. She moved on to complete her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Chris has always been interested in environmental health issues for native peoples. Currently, she is the environmental health nurse for the Yakama Nation, Washington, where she is involved in salmon research, pollution, and cancer risk. Her additional trainings include work in bio terrorism, ethical review, pesticide medicine, and nuclear radiation. Chris lives on the Yakama Reservation in Toppinish, Washington and is a member of Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society of Nurses.