First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North

John Steckley teaches in the Human Studies Program at Humber College in
Toronto.

In the words of the editors, this book is “an informative and personal
inquiry by literary artists. In memoirs, poems, folktales, stories,
ancient chants and modern essays, they bring to life a world centred on
salmon.” In recording the writing of indigenous peoples from Canada,
the United States, Japan, and Russia, First Fish, First People provides
an international sharing of respect for salmon, a refreshing alternative
to the national grasping for a mere resource and to the multinational
corporate monopolization of what may become a luxury food.

Readers will learn what it is like to be a “salmon people,” a
people for whom salmon are irreplaceable aspects of maintaining
identity. As Nora Marks Dauenhauer (Tlingit) writes, “The importance
of salmon goes beyond the question of calories. It is part of our
identity. We need salmon to continue as physically, mentally and
spiritually healthy people.”

The essays by Dauenhauer, Sandra Osawa (Makah), and Jeannette C.
Armstrong (Okanagan) are strong, well-documented discussions of the
policies and practices that have severely reduced the salmon populations
while at the same time attempting to separate indigenous peoples from
the being they so respect. Also strong and instructive are the
traditional tales of the Nyvkh of Siberia and the Ainu of Japan, as well
as the moving poem by Ainu Mieko Chikappu, which ends: “The single act
of love, / risks all. / The salmon die, / Ahh, so tenderly.”

No journalist should write about salmon issues, and no politician or
fisheries official should make a decision concerning salmon policy,
before reading this book.