(babbling brook)
(foot steps)
-Yeah, there's a carcass
laying around.
(chirping birds)
It looks like a
it looks like a Coho,
a jack.
And it's uhm
it's been drug up from the
from the stream, from the river.
A predator like a raccoon or
a possum or coyote,
drug it up and didn't finish it.
It just ate out the heart.
You can see the where the
where the creature just opened up the salmon
just below the gills and took out the heart
and left all the rest.
A bird has has taken the eyeballs.
Probably a seagull or an eagle.
But the predator opened up here
and dug out the heart and ate it.
And it's going to leave the rest of the salmon here,
the rest of the carcass to decompose, to break down
and to feed the plants. To see this come to fruition,
to see this one jack salmon here
is evidence of a lot
of good work.
♪♪
-Check, check.
Welcome.
Donnie Stevenson (speaking Lushootseed)
My name is Donny Stevenson
and I am Muckleshoot.
Again, welcome.
(speaking Lushootseed)
Just want to offer a few words
in way of welcome.
The beauty
that I feel in my heart
as I look out upon each and every one of you,
it's something that I have a hard time being able
to articulate, express, and to put into words.
The power of tribal peoples
coming together with one heart
is a thing of incredible beauty and incredible power.
When you
talk about the First Salmon Ceremony,
it's us as a peoples honoring that scout,
that first representative of the Salmon Peoples
who come to visit our respective homes and villages.
We place them on high,
and we do that by treating them with generosity
and a welcoming spirit
so that that spirit travels back to the Salmon People
that’ll speak of us with good words
and the generosity that we share.
My hands are raised to each and every one of you
who have put
forward the energy to make the pole here today.
You are our people.
You are our past and our history.
And just as importantly, you are our future.
Hands are raised.
Thank you. (speaking Lushootseed)
(cheering, whistling and applause)
(boat motors)
-Our ancestors fished for the salmon.
They treated the salmon like I would treat
any other human being: with respect and dignity.
The salmon was a mainstay of their life.
That was their primary,
one of their primary food sources.
Protecting that primary food source was protecting
not only themselves, but their future generations.
The salmon are on the same plane as we are.
They give up their life - so that we can live - in a net.
We honor them.
How do you pay respects to salmon?
Make sure that they have a good home to come to.
We take care of the water that they rely on
like they take care of us because we rely on them.
And so by taking care of the water and their home,
they have a place to come back to.
We understood as well that this world
that we live in was made for us by the Creator,
and he didn't give it to us so we could call it ours.
This land was made for us to take care of,
not for us to possess.
That's the difference
of the mindset that everyone
seemed to have when they came to our lands,
we valued the resources on that land,
but we maintained them.
You can't just take it all.
You can't destroy it.
The salmon are an indicator species.
The salmon being an indicator species,
is the gauge that science
looks at to determine how healthy the waterways are,
how healthy the environment is in the environment
they live in.
If they are dying, that tells them
there's something wrong with the water,
there's something wrong with what's going on with the land.
Our people knew that spiritual values can be like science.
They would look at the resources and the connections,
and they would find ways why those things are happening.
They didn't need science to do it.
They were very observed.
It's spiritual.
(river babbles)
-Food sovereignty is the
inherent right of a people to collectively decide
what they want to eat.
And when we collectively make that decision,
we are essentially voting for that thing to return.
We are able to feed ourselves.
And to be a sovereign nation,
the power of being able to feed yourself is what
strengthens sovereignty.
♪♪
When I first heard the term food sovereignty,
I felt that it had a different weight
for tribal communities in particular,
and for Muckleshoot in particular,
because in our creation stories,
our foods are our identity.
And this is not separate from like food culture globally.
The foods that you eat are what identify
you as that culture and that people.
The difference is when there have been
intentional severing from that food system,
when there have been federal and state and local policies
and laws that have separated us
from a food system that has fed us since time began.
And the return of those things,
we're turning back to that is what helps us
strengthen our sovereignty, helps us
continue to be who we are as Muckleshoot People.
(fire crackles)
(river ripples)
-My name is Leo John LaClair
born here at Muckleshoot. (laughter)
I wanted to jump to what kind of got my roots
into a tribal, spiritual life.
When I was a youngster, I went in with my grandmother.
She took me down to
see her, her son down the river.
At that time, there was no dam.
He would hook me up to a rope.
She showed me how to dip fish from that scaffold.
And it was all Indians are on that area
and the thunder of the river.
you could hardly, hardly hear her.
It's just so loud and scary.
And the water spinning.
Oh, I had a long pole with a round
at the end and there was a net.
And so you just put it in where the river was, where
it would be swirling down like this,
and the fish would come through
and then you could feel them jerk, and then you'd pull up.
These were like 30, 40-pound fish.
Took all my strength
to be able to get them up to the where I was standing
and then put them into the potato sacks.
(giggles) I was about seven years old,
but I felt safe and
that other tribal members are around me on their scaffolds.
And my uncle says, “Well, if ya falls in
then they'll catch you in their net.
Don't worry.”
Of course, I finally got into it and
got to know the other fishermen.
That was my kind of like my roots of learning
the spirituality of the salmon.
And that
was really,
you know, my upcoming and
the the Indian spirit
way of life.
♪♪ ​
(salmon splashing)
♪♪ ​
-Today, we're at the Keta Creek Hatchery.
You see behind me is Coho salmon,
which will be spawned out here in the next week or two.
In 1980, I was elected to the Fish Commission
and began serving when I was 20.
A number of years ago, I coined the phrase
“We are the Salmon People.”
For generations, it sustained our way of life.
Now we must do what we can to sustain the life
of the salmon.
So we took it upon ourselves to begin a Chum program.
They’re one of the few salmon that are in abundance.
And so it's become one of our top
fisheries for our fishermen.
As we've grown into the facility that
you see today,
we're now producing upwards of 6 million Chum
in the
neighborhood of 1.5 million Coho.
You know, we not only participate
in the enhancement programs in producing fish,
but we also participate in in the harvest management,
and when they return as adults.
We at Muckleshoot are the only tribe
within the state
that has developed three different agreements
in protecting minimum stream flows for salmon.
It's unprecedented.
You don't see that anywhere.
And water without water, you don't have salmon.
You don't.
It's it's the main portion of the habitat.
The tribe is not the only beneficiary.
The entire ecosystem benefits from what we're doing here.
The ecosystem includes the orcas, the sea lions, seals.
Now the state of Washington benefits.
The recreational fisheries they benefit as well.
And so the benefits far outweigh
the costs that go into producing these facilities.
And so we'll always participate in fisheries.
We’ll continue to provide enhancement
so that our fishers can take part in the culture
that's been established.
♪♪
-During the
assimilation era with the tribes,
they had to assimilate, otherwise
they were punished, punished physically or mentally.
So that was kind of forced upon us.
And fishing
and gathering our resources were so important to us.
During the treaty negotiation process,
we included those lands that we traveled to
to gather the things that we needed
for hunting and gathering fishing.
And that's why it was in the treaty.
They signed the treaties with the understanding that
they guaranteed those rights to us.
But after they were signed,
there was no guarantees.
They they didn't exist anymore.
And those things were denied
us, even though they were in the treaty.
(boat motors)
-It's illegal gear and it's going to be taken.
(river roars and motor boat)
(inaudible)
-Your both under arrest... (inaudible)
-The treaty right was secured
with the United States in 1854 and 1855
under Medicine Creek Treaty
and the Point Elliott treaties.
And so those treaties outlined, specified that we were able to
to fish in usual and accustomed grounds.
And so these fishing wars that we've seen take place
was individuals
participating and
exercising those rights that were reserved
under the treaties for the tribes.
A lot of the fish wars that took place when I was 19
years old in late ‘60s and early ’70s, and
a lot of the
meetings would take place in our home.
And as a young boy, you know, I would watch
different individuals volunteer to go to jail.
We watched this take place and watched
the community come together and surround those families
and help provide for them.
And these individuals that were arrested,
you know, they believed our people,
you know, for generations harvested the salmon.
The treaty secured their right to harvest them.
It was a way of life.
And so when the state
seen that the tribes were participating
in what they termed illegal fisheries, you know, they
they felt that they had a duty and a responsibility
to the general public
to arrest these individuals for what they deemed poaching.
But to us, it was our way of life.
At the time, a lot a lot of the other tribes
cases would go into a local district court,
but the goal was to get it into a federal court.
And so we finally here at
Muckleshoot got into the federal district court.
And so that that's how Boldt was initiated.
And then in 1974, when the Boldt cases won,
you know, having having seen that transpire,
I was able to begin fishing with my father in 1974.
And so you know, those memories
are, you know, are very vivid.
-There was a lot of work.
There is a lot of work that has to go into
keeping that right.
But without that
salmon being in a river, we don't have any rights.
The right dwindles with that salmon.
And so it doesn't matter how many years have gone
by, the cost, the struggle is always there.
We're just like the salmon.
We're trying to sustain our living, our life.
That's what
we do.
♪♪
-We're at the Ballard Locks
We've got a lot of problems
with Sockeye surviving in the lake.
And so we developed this
last program, which is the Ballard Locks
Adult Sockeye Transfer. From 2000 to 2004 and 2006,
we had runs over 400,000.
Now we've got runs at the Locks around 25,000.
And then after they go through the pretty small mortality
in the lake
we've got now,
we're down to 3 to 4000 the last three years.
And so what we're doing here with this
pilot project is taking the fish from the ladder,
outside the ladder, transporting em live on a boat
then and then taking that
boat, transported upriver to a landing station
and then taking the fish out of there,
transporting them on another live tank, on a truck tank,
and then taken on to the Landsburg Sockeye
Hatchery up at Landsburg Dam and on the Cedar River.
You know, it's a huge uphill battle
when you're working with literally only 1000 salmon,
you know, thousands of salmon,
when you got
millions of these predators out there
that are predating on the young fish.
But the tools we do have, we've put to use to try
to stop the decline and start to rebuild these stock.
This program, the blast program, is probably
the best news saying we can do this.
And and and for Sockeye it's huge news,
if if we can get this done and the fish
rear up there safely for the next two months,
then the sky's the limit.
Tribes committed, you
know, they're fishers, hunters and gatherers.
And that's where they're
putting a lot of investment back into that, because it's
not only for now, it's for seven generations.
♪♪
-So we were here
on this side channel.
And again, we're seeing more evidence
of some of the good things that are
that are happening because of
what Mother Nature does mostly
and with some help from humans,
evidence of of the elk utilizing
this area
and evidence of
salmon also
using this area,
using the water system.
What a great feeling it is to
to know that the beneficiaries are accepting the gift.
They're accepting all the efforts
that were done here to help improve their home
in a place we call (Native American word).
The word (Native American word)
literally translates as bringing it to the water.
That's what the term (Native American word)
means, bringing something to the water.
We selected the name to serve to remind people
that this area wasn't always farmland.
It wasn't always a tree farm.
It wasn't always a cornfield.
Now, this was a home to the First Peoples of this
area for 14,000 years, for over 14,000 years.
And so it's with, it's a great honor to be able to
to remind people of that word and of that place.
(Native American word)
(bird chirping)
Yeah.
Hear the eagle in the background there.
That was beautiful.
So salmon are a staple food for us even today.
You know, they fed our people 14,500 years ago
and they're still feeding our people today
in 2022.
So that gives you an idea of how valuable
the these this resource is.
It's invaluable. It's priceless.
And so it really is something special to to stand here and
see this
success story,
to see the of the salmon
come home, to see the
cool, clear water provide this
this home for our for our relatives, (Native American word).
And I look forward to several more of these generations,
several more of these years of salmon returning back.
♪♪
-The Salmon People are the most
honored traditional food. For thousands of years,
the Chinook dog, Sockeye Coho and Pink
have held their rightful place
as cultural keystone pillars of the Muckleshoot people.
Archeologists date the use and management of salmon back
10,000 years.
But for any Coast Salish Native,
we have been in relations with the Salmon People
since time began.
This is reaffirmed in our creation stories,
where salmon is the first food to be gifted to our people
and they are more than just food.
They are our teachers and our relatives
weaving together
the social fabric of our community
as we organize our lives around their
existence and their returns.
Every year, the Salmon People journey,
the ocean waters eating and tonifying
their bodies with the richness of the seas.
Upon return to their ancestral rivers,
they make the ultimate sacrifice
as they spawn and die for the next generation.
And as Coast Salish People, as Muckleshoot people,
we see this as an act of love,
a demonstration of abundance and generosity.
And we ask how we might live a life so full
and so committed to life eternal.
In many ways, the salmon reminds us
of what it takes to be an advocate for the land.
♪♪