The Salmon And The Sea

The salmon in Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi’s stomach is the single most evocative piece of physical evidence from the entire discovery — a small biological fact that immediately conjures the larger world he inhabited.

Salmon, in the cultures of the Northwest Coast and the subarctic interior, is not merely a food.

It is the foundation of an entire system of relationship between people and the natural world — a system that includes the practical reality of salmon as the most abundant and reliable source of protein and fat in the region, the ceremonial acknowledgment of the salmon as beings who return willingly each year to feed the human community, and the specific knowledge of when and where different species appear in different rivers and at different elevations.

The five species of Pacific salmon — Chinook, coho, sockeye, pink, and chum — each have their own timing, their own habitat preferences, their own specific quality as food.