The salmon runs of the Northwest Coast face multiple stressors in the contemporary world: warming ocean temperatures that affect prey availability in the open ocean, altered freshwater conditions in spawning streams, competition with hatchery fish, overfishing at various points in their range.

The specific salmon runs that Shuká Káa’s community depended on, and that the Northwest Coast peoples have depended on across 10,000 years, are under pressure that did not exist in the early Holocene.

The connection between the ancient world of Shuká Káa and the contemporary challenges facing Northwest Coast Indigenous communities is real and specific.

The ecological systems that supported 10,000 years of coastal human life are the same ecological systems that are now under anthropogenic stress.

The people whose ancestors have depended on those systems for 10,000 years have a specific stake — a stake documented across 10 millennia — in their continuation.