The Helping Issue

Salmon help us & we help salmon

HELPING: SALMON & CULTURE

“This is my culture!” yelled one excited nine-year-old, as she watched three small chum crisp and char next to a blistering fire at the Tla’amin Salmon Hatchery.

The Grade 4 Westview Elementary School class was there on October 28 – the first wave of the over 300 preteens who learned about salmon at Cross- Cultural Days that week. Students visit the hatchery, then learn a handful of traditional Tla’amin skills at the Salish Centre – a reconciling effort from before anyone had thought of “Reconciliation.”

The pride in this girl’s voice is unmistakable, but as for the fish, the news isn’t great. Hatchery technician Scotty Galligos looked across the river, which should be bustling with fins and ladder-jumping fish right now. Instead, it’s nearly empty. Just a few coho and chum swim in the current.

“This is the worst I’ve seen, this shortage of fish, since I started working here in 1988,” he said, noting that he’s hoping for loads of rain and wind to “push those fish up the river,” where they can be counted and their eggs collected.

Salmon returns have been in decline, generally. But the story of the Tla’amin Hatchery is a good one: not only do they release nearly 200,000 fry per year, but those fish are caught as far away as Alaska and the Bering Straight. Scotty explains that the other mission is awareness and education; visitors come from all over the world and learn about salmon there. Tla’amin children and families often drop by and pitch in to the work of filleting and smoking the fish, part of the Nation’s cultural revival.

WANTED DEAD AND ALIVE: From top left: Hatchery Technician Scotty Galligos teaches his third classroom of Grade 4s Monday morning about the work of the hatchery and the Tla’amin words for salmon. Westview students try gyotaku, the Japanese art of printing from fish; students learn to identify fish genders at this station. Above, Joanne Williams and Troy Mowat tend the barbecue.Student Marlina Hanson. Shawn Galligos cuts kindling. The federally-funded hatchery was built in 1977. A live fish swims in the river, near a dead one. Once they come to the river to spawn, they live for about two weeks. Bannock, by Mugsy

Around the fire, Joanne Williams said she is particularly pleased her grandchildren are being introduced to salmon. She grew up on it; in a family of nine children, the local protein was a staple with boiled potatoes. Her “firekeeper” Troy Mowat grew up in Lund, also on salmon and other seafood. Most kids now, Joanne said, “prefer McDonald’s.”

“Fish is the best thing for you, but I don’t know if it will ever come back. It’s hard to fight fast food,” said Joanne. “They are learning, here. You think they’re not, but it’s going in there.”

As if on cue, the Grade 4 student claims she’s a vegetarian; still, her eyes don’t waver from the flames and the fish.