With Vision as Deep as the Ocean

K’asheechtlaa’s approach to protecting the herring by Lee House

Kiks.ádi women in Gaajaa Heen, known also as Old Sitka, where they were part of filming for the documentary Yáa at Wooné (Respect for All Things). PHOTO BY LEE HOUSE

“Aa hei Yaaw hei Yaaw hei” K’asheechtlaa Louise Brady sings across the waterfront lawn in downtown Sheet’ka Kwáan (Sitka, Alaska). She is calling out to the Yaaw (Herring) in chorus with her fellow Kiks.ádi (Frog) Clan members of the Point House. “Yee xatulatsee (we cherish you),” they continue dancing to the beat of the drum. They are singing K’asheechtlaa’s newly composed herring song. The group is joined by our voices, a hundred or so allies, volunteers, and Elders, who are gathered to honor the herring with them. “Aa hei Yaaw hei Yaaw hei” we all sing as the wind and snow whisks the song from our lips out to the schools of herring at sea.

It’s a bitter cold day in April and instead of gathering inside the historic Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall like years past, we are gathered on an outdoor lawn just down the road. All of our faces are adorned with masks as a precaution against COVID-19. In spite of it all, we are here—friends, families, and neighbors together again.

“If you’ve been to the beach in the last couple of weeks,”

K’asheechtlaa addresses the crowd, “you’ve seen and heard the joyful cacophony of the birds and mammals brought together by the herring.” She pauses. “This gathering is our version of that. It’s an opportunity to come together to share the joy of what herring really mean to us.”

Herring are the foundation of all things we love in

Lingít Aaní (Tlingit Country), which is also known as

Southeast Alaska. Starting in late March, the herring school up along the protected shorelines of Sitka Sound to begin their annual spawn. Whales, seals, sea lions, gulls, and eagles congregate to feast on these oil rich and nutrient dense fish. The bays awaken with frenzied symphonies of bird calls and flipper splashes. It is an upwelling of energy and life that marks a new year after a long, dark winter.

Gaax’w (herring eggs) provide the people of these lands with the first fresh Indigenous food in months after the previous season’s harvests of fish, berries, and deer.

Since time immemorial, herring eggs have remained a long-awaited critical food that arrives in spring. When the herring begin to spawn, the ocean mixes into an iconic turquoise with the milt of the male herring. Kelp, rocks, sea grasses, and other smooth, intertidal surfaces are coated with adhesive eggs deposited by the females.

Any eggs that don’t adhere, wash ashore and end up in

Protestors outside of the Alaska Department of Fish & Game offices in Sitka. PHOTO BY LEE HOUSE

the bellies of bears, or decay into the soils of the coast, sending nutrients up to the trees and down to the smallest invertebrates. It is an integral and holistic spawning event.

In the midst of it all, egg harvesters will submerge haaw (hemlock tree branches) to soak in the spawning waters. It is a process of exactness that takes into account the location, the tides, when spawning began, if it will continue, and what type of ocean floor lays beneath. If everything aligns, the harvesters can hope to pull their branches up later with dense layerings of eggs coated onto them.

The eggs are shared among friends, family, and community as a staple food. They are served at potlucks and ceremonies. They are eaten fresh or blanched lightly on stove tops with a side of soy sauce, seal oil, or hooligan grease. Eggs are also shared further afield, as trade for foods from elsewhere. For such small fish, the herring play an enormous role spiritually, culturally, and historically.

K’asheechtlaa recounts the Lingít oral tradition of the herring lady, a story that reaches back thousands of years and serves as the original instruction that bonds the Kiks.ádi Clan to the herring. She begins, “It was the start of spring, and all of the people in the village were coming out to prepare, but there was one young Kiks.ádi woman who would not be working. She would go down to a rock at low tide and sit in the sun while everyone else was busy.”

“The villagers all thought she was being lazy,” she continues with a knowing smile, “and one day, she fell asleep on that rock, and the tide rose, and the herring came in, and when she woke up, she discovered that the herring had laid herring eggs in her hair.”

“But,” she says with a twist, “it turns out she wasn’t being lazy at all. It turns out she was singing to the herring each day. Asking them to come back. Respecting them, and the herring honored that respect—they came back to her.”

This original relationship solidified a union between the Kiks.ádi and the herring. K’asheechtlaa continues, “That is why Kiks.ádi women are known as the Kaxátjaa Sháa, the Flipping Ladies or the Herring Ladies. From then on, we were to always respect and take care of the herring so that they can take care of us.”

K’asheechtlaa’s concern is that our relationship with the herring is out of balance, and she is not alone in that concern. “For the last three decades, Elders, culture bearers, and the Sitka Tribe of Alaska have been speaking out on the decline of the herring in Sheet’ká, in Sitka Sound,” she explains, describing that less herring has translated to increasingly difficult and sparse harvesting conditions for those crucial eggs.

Since the 1920s, Pacific herring have been under heavy commercial fishing pressure in Southeast Alaska when they were originally fished and reduced to oil. It was not until the 70s that the Sitka sac roe fishery began targeting the eggs in response to the needs of the Japanese herring egg (Kazunoko) market, which could not be sustained due to herring population declines in Japan’s own waters. The sac roe style of fishing is particularly wasteful as it gathers enormous net-fulls of male and female herring, kills them, takes the eggs of the most mature females, and grinds the rest up.

The Sitka Tribe of Alaska worked to organize testimony from tribal citizens for a 1997 Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting. Mark Jacob, Jr., a since-passed Elder, summed it

“The herring, which mean so much to our culture and our ecosystem, are being depleted all for what? Money? Greed?

Without herring there is nothing supporting the ocean. The whales. The salmon. Without herring, there is nothing supporting us.”

up well in that meeting, “Sac roe is one of the worst kinds of waste for the purposes of commercial greed,” he said to the board members. “It’s worse than taking a whole herd of deer, killing them all, and taking only the liver—from the doe only.”

K’asheechtlaa was involved in helping with that 1997 advocacy effort. She has seen, time after time, many of her people levy their concerns in sweeping critical testimony. She has seen commercial herring fisheries throughout Southeast Alaska and beyond collapse and close. Despite this, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game continues to manage a commercial fishery that pulls tens of thousands of tons of herring from the waters of Sheet’ká each spring.

“This, like so many extractive industries, is an extension of colonialism.” K’asheechtlaa makes clear. “The herring, which mean so much to our culture and our ecosystem, are being depleted all for what? Money? Greed?” She pauses. “Without herring there is nothing supporting the ocean. The whales. The salmon. Without herring, there is nothing supporting us.”

Today, K’asheechtlaa continues her work towards restoring balance in our relationship with the herring. That’s what brings us to that chilly waterfront gathering in early April 2021. It is the third herring event that K’asheechtlaa has poured her heart and soul into creating with the help of many supporters, and her fellow Kiks. ádi Clan members. Tents with info booths, catered food, and artist displays are spread across the field rippling in the breeze. “Protect the Herring” banners fly taught overhead. People bustle around a large table full of donated herring eggs with a sign reading, “Take some eggs!”

The Kiks.ádi are in their traditional regalia dancing at the front. In the center, six Kiks.ádi herring women dip and swish in bright blue robes. These robes are newly crafted at.óow (ceremonial objects) of the Kiks.ádi Clan that have just been revealed. Five of the robes are the Kaxátjaashaa X’óow (herring lady robes) and one is the Kaxátjaa X’óow (herring robe). They feature the shapes of herring, cut from metallic fabric, and designed by a local Northwest Coast Formline artist, Charlie Skultka, Jr.

The entire composition of fabric, buttons, and cutouts is the design and layout work of the Lingít artist Jennifer Younger. She composed the shiny school of herring to span across the robes in an intertwined double helix, referencing that herring are a part of Lingít DNA. The herring converge on a portrait of the herring lady on the middle robe. Her head of hair resembles a forest of kelp, with pearl beads adorning the locks in reference to the eggs laid in the hair of the Herring Lady.

The robes wouldn’t be possible without the help of countless, loving volunteers. In the weeks leading up to the gathering, Carol Hughey, a local ally and textile artist, opened her apparel studio for volunteers to assist in assembling the robes. Through the work of Carol’s textile craftsmanship, the artistic vision of Jennifer Younger, and hundreds of hours of volunteer time, the robes came to be.

Jennifer Younger shares on the robe making process, “I was at a loss of how to support the cause, but being asked by the Kiks.ádi to use my art to help create these robes and bring more attention to the issue is such an honor.” She continues, “It goes to show that it takes all of us. We all have something we can contribute.”

And it’s true. As the volunteers are busy at Carol’s studio, another house a couple miles up the road is full of volunteers working away at making gifts for the attendees of the upcoming gathering. In between those two houses, another group picks herring eggs off recently harvested branches to freeze in zip-lock bags and share with Elders later on.

The sum of our parts add up to a flowing amalgamation of people known as “Herring Protectors,” all of whom share the concern for herring and the Indigenous ways of life that are at risk. The Herring Protector efforts have spanned over four years and have included protests and demonstrations. We have assisted in getting resources to harvesters, be it people to help pull branches or some money to fill up the gas tank. In 2018, the group organized over one hundred people to deliver pro-herring testimonies at that year’s Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting. The group was founded by K’asheechtlaa with a few early members in late 2017. We sat in a downtown community space circled up over potluck dishes. We had just recently wrapped up co-organizing a community fundraiser in support of the Standing Rock movement. “What do we do next?” one of us asked. It was K’asheechtlaa who eventually responded “A Koo.éex’—we should do a Koo.éex for the herring.” Those of us less acquainted with the Lingít term asked what a Koo.éex’ was. She said—again with that knowing smile—“you’ll just have to wait and see.”

It turns out, the Koo.éex’, a traditional Lingít ceremony meaning ‘to invite,’ has become the keystone of Herring Protector efforts. K’asheechtlaa’s contemporary vision for these gatherings that last deep into the night has been an “all are welcome” invitation for Natives and non-Natives to come together in ceremony and share in honoring the herring as a whole community.

“By sharing food, serving Elders, and dancing together,” K’asheechtlaa explains, “we are caring for each other deeply, and in doing so, we are enchanting our relationships with the land, the herring, our ancestors, and each other.”

“It is the act of ceremony as sovereignty,” she says, reflecting on the years of inaction by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Board of Fish. “There comes a time when you haven’t been listened to for three decades, and you understand that you need to do it on your own terms. Instead of having three minutes to testify on the importance of herring, we have as long as we need.”

“So,” K’asheechtlaa says before posing the only question that remains, “it’s not a question of if there will be a Herring Koo.éex’ next year, but instead, it’s a question of ‘will you be there?’” ■

Lee House lives and works with gratitude on Lingít Aaní. He shares stories of social and environmental good through writing, video, and design. House has been a Herring Protector member since the creation of the group.