First Foods
How Native people are revitalizing the natural nourishment of the Pacific Northwest
Seattle Times staff
Published July 10, 2022
Five or six generations ago, Native people of this region ate a complex diet that changed with the seasons. Called First Foods, these are the staples they always relied on.
Today a movement in tribal communities is promoting First Foods traditions and decolonizing Native diets and taste buds to restore bodily, cultural and spiritual health.
Nettles
Shellfish
Camas
Salmon
Duane Miller, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, uses a hoop net he drops from the scaffold into the Columbia River, hoping to catch a spring Chinook salmon — one of nature’s most luscious and nutritious foods.
For many Native people of the Pacific Northwest, fishing this river and others is a right reserved by their ancestors in treaties signed with the U.S. government nearly 170 years ago.
Promised was the continuation of a way of life, inextricably tied to hunting, fishing and gathering in the lands and waters of their traditional territories.
“It was promised we would have access to these things,” said Valerie Segrest, a Muckleshoot Indian Tribe member and Native foods educator. Under the treaties of Medicine Creek and Point Elliott, the Muckleshoot forever reserved hunting, gathering and fishing rights beyond their reservation at Auburn.
“It was always based on food,” she said of the treaties. “That is what we ceded all our lands for. It was important to us because in our creation stories, our foods teach us who we are. If we didn’t have access to our foods, we would not be a Native person.”
Valerie Segrest, Native foods educator and Muckleshoot tribal member, says decolonizing Native diets and palates is essential to bring back health and wellness. Native people suffer from disproportionately high levels of diabetes and other diseases because of the loss of their traditional foods and the switch to white flour, sugar, low quality fats and other commodity foods.
This spring, The Seattle Times traveled along with Native people gathering their First Foods, to document these cultural practices, their meaning and centrality to the treaty promises.
“People have to understand why we reserved the rights we did, why our people did that,” said Shannon Wheeler, vice chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe.
“It is because of the unwritten laws we have, our obligation to the land and its inhabitants, and our obligation to the First Foods and how we live with the land and interact with the land and treat the land. It is our oldest law. Before the treaty. It is what the treaty was meant to capture.”
A clam sits on a log at the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe’s property on Vashon Island, and Mazzy Ungaro, 9, shows a salmonberry flower. One of the first fresh foods of the year, the flowers have a light, clean taste and are lovely in salads.
Nettles
Spring brings forth the first fresh greens of the year
Birds sang out as Segrest headed down the trail through Vashon Island land purchased by the Muckleshoots to provide access for their people to First Foods and a place to live their culture.
Alders, cedars and sword ferns lined the trail, and the sweet scent of opening cottonwood buds was on the air. The hush-hush of the tide lapped the beach below, and fat alder catkins were all over the ground.
Nettles grew everywhere.
Segrest passed out buckets, gloves and scissors to her daughters, and the three started clipping. They took the top several inches of the plant and left the rest to thrive. They spread out their effort so no part of the patch was depleted.
“It is easy to forget what time it is,” Segrest said as they worked, and it was true. The rhythms of the natural world — the seasons, the native plants and their harvest time — reset the usual mainstream frenetic clock.
“We are not seasonally attuned anymore,” Segrest said. “For the first time in human history, we are so disconnected.”
Spring isn’t supposed to be just months on a calendar, Segrest said. It is the time of cleavers, claytonia and nettles bursting through soil damp with rain. These are among the first fresh green foods of the year, and they deliver the energy to live the dreams from the time of rest and renewal that is winter, Segrest said.
The nettle patches here are among her favorites.
“They call to us to get out here; I crave the feeling of stinging on my fingers,” Segrest said. The sting comes from the plant’s tiny hairs, which are easily removed with cooking. Steeped into a tea, eaten steamed or blanched, nettles deliver more iron than spinach, and a healthy punch of magnesium, calcium and phosphorus. That is typical of First Foods, Segrest said. They are very nutrient-dense.
In her culture, nettles and other plants are teachers, and they like to be visited.
Mazzy Ungaro, 9, left, her mother, Valerie Segrest, a Native foods educator, and sister Gea Ungaro, 7, collect nettles on the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island. The girls’ parents are teaching them how to harvest and enjoy First Foods.
While often considered weeds by people who do not know them, nettles are a nutritious First Food. Among the first fresh greens of the year, nettles provide the vitamins, minerals and strength to live the dreams of a long winter, says educator Valerie Segrest.
Afternoon light filters through the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island. The tribe purchased this property as a place for tribal members to live their culture.
Gea Ungaro, 7, explores the Muckleshoot property with her parents and sister on Vashon Island in March. The family harvested nettles and plucked salmonberry blossoms and other early growing First Foods.
The modern world has set up divisions and barriers from these companions in what used to be daily life. The skills to gather and prepare these foods and even a taste for their subtle flavors, have to be recultivated, brought back, Segrest said.
“These are the foods with which our cultures developed over thousands of years.”
Shellfish
Feasting from the Salish Sea
“When the tide is out, the table is set” is a saying in Coast Salish country. Here at the beach of the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island, it is easy to see why.
As the spring season brought daytime low tides, a feast on the beach was planned. For many, this was their first time learning to dig clams on the beach.
In a recent harvest trip to the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island, it was the first time digging shellfish for some, while for others it was a return to precious memories. Muckleshoot staff helped identify species found on the beach and offered harvesting tips.
All around them, the clean gray sand was squirting with the busy siphons of shellfish just below the surface.
It was a day as it used to be every day for Native societies all around Puget Sound, gathering, laughing and passing on harvest skills to the next generation.
“Every time we go out, it’s an exercise in our treaty right, being in our usual and accustomed areas, engaging our culture and spiritual practices,” said Willard Bill Jr., cultural director for the Muckleshoot, who skippered the tribe’s canoe Eagle Spirit over from Redondo for the feast.
“It’s critical for our treaty, to come and do this, traveling like our ancestors did, to come harvest these First Foods, retrain our palates. People 100 years ago were not overweight. They did not have diabetes. It was the first Paleo Diet.”
Lawrence Jerry, left, and Louie Ungaro steam shellfish and salmon for a gathering to teach about and savor First Foods on the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island in April. “You are not really sovereign if you can’t feed your people,” said Ungaro, a tribal council member who is working to build up First Food traditions at Muckleshoot.
Clams, left, and crab, right, are steamed on the beach on Vashon Island. Red sea spaghetti, center, is common in the intertidal zones of Puget Sound.
Camas
The prairie produces beauty and sustenance
The spring storm pushing through this prairie outside Rochester in Thurston County didn’t deter the diggers, who bent to their work in a sea of blue flowers: camas.
It was not the flower, but the bulb they wanted. Cooked, it is sweet, creamy and tastes like baked pear.
Camas are an essential, nutrition-packed First Food and a mainstay of Northwest traditional diets on both sides of the Cascades.
For some, it was their first bulb harvest. Others brought handmade digging sticks and bags passed down by their elders to continue a lifetime harvesting tradition.
As the storm lifted, diggers fanned out over the prairie. They harvested the bulbs by pushing a digging stick with its T-shaped handle into the dirt just to the side of the bulb and giving it a gentle lift. It’s work with a steady rhythm and pleasing repetition.
This is a way of being with their ancestors, said Billie Jo Bray, a member of the San Poil band of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. “I feel that connection when I come out here,” Bray said, “I feel that we are still here. It’s that way of life of our ancestors that they passed on to us.”
Somewhere across the prairie, a digger was singing as she worked.
Muckleshoot tribal member Rosie Arzate James, wearing red, and Port Gamble S'Klallam member Debby Purser, in black, dig for camas during an intertribal gathering at Glacial Heritage Preserve in Thurston County in May. These bulbs were on the small side, about as big as a pearl onion. The prairie is a preserve and open to the public only one day a year, on Prairie Appreciation Day, scheduled at the peak of the bloom in May. Gathering camas bulbs is an increasingly rare opportunity around Puget Sound, where less than 3% of the original prairie habitat remains.
Yaya Odell shows harvested camas at Glacial Heritage Preserve in Thurston County.
Billie Jo Bray, left, a member of the San Poil band of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, harvests camas with Janessa Esquivel, San Poil and Sinixt of The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, at Glacial Heritage Preserve in Thurston County in May. Members from around 20 tribes participated in the dig to share information about traditional harvesting techniques, nutritional benefits of camas and prairie land management. Bray said the harvest is a way of spending time with her ancestors.
Salmon
Healthy rivers are vital to survival of a species
Songs and prayers rang out at the longhouse at Celilo Village along the Columbia River near The Dalles.
Here once thundered Celilo Falls, thronged with millions of salmon, drawing Native people from all over the Northwest and beyond for trade, for marriages, for gambling, and to fish and dry the salmon that would be their winter stores.
Pounded into pemmican and traded, salmon was currency, survival and harvested in colossal abundance.
Even into the 1850s, after the horrific waves of diseases, the river still supported as many as 5,000 Indian fishers at about 480 sites at Celilo, according to historian Katrine Barber in her book “Death of Celilo Falls.”
That ended in 1957 with the building of The Dalles Dam, which drowned the falls and destroyed the fishery at Celilo.
And so the mood at a gathering of salmon tribes at the Celilo longhouse on a recent spring day was somber. Instead of coming together for a harvest, as they once would have this time of year, the purpose was to unite around restoring what has been lost.
Victor Jim, 6, left, and Cody Meanus, 8, play atop a totem pole at the Celilo Village longhouse. The pole, carved by Jewell James of the Lummi Nation, is part of the Spirit of the Waters journey, a Native-led movement for the removal of four Lower Snake River dams to rebuild salmon runs and to help the southern resident killer whales.
From left: Nancy Shippentower, of the Puyallup Tribe; JoDe Goudy and Wilbur Slockish Jr., of the Yakama Nation; and Bruce Jim, of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, are honored for their lifetime of work in defense of salmon.
Jefferson Greene, top left, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, sings during a gathering at the Celilo longhouse in Celilo Village, Oregon. Greene is the executive director of the Columbia River Institute for Indigenous Development Foundation. Làatis Nowland and Keyen Singer, top right, members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, listen while Children of the Setting Sun Productions filmed testimonies and songs during the day. Victor Jim, Conrad Jackson, Caiden Johnson, Mason Martínez and Cody Meanus converse on bottom right. The Celilo Village longhouse, bottom left, is a new building constructed as part of a renewal of the village by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Amid the songs and oratory, the work of the cooks went on, as it always has and as it must, said Melinda Jim of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation.
At 72, she had been up since 6 a.m. for a day on her feet, preparing a feast for the longhouse gathering of salmon nations. Cooking for tribal community gatherings is her art and her work. She has 27 aprons, some from her mother and grandmother, and a lifetime of cooking experience. Jim commands a kitchen.
Stirring this, checking that, she directed helpers setting out the foods for the feast: There was biscuitroot, bitterroot, oven-roasted deer, baked salmon and huckleberries preserved last summer.
“It keeps us healthy,” Jim said of these First Foods. “We don’t get sick as much when we eat our own diet.”
Melinda Jim, center, cooks during a gathering at the Celilo Village longhouse. First Foods are essential to the identity and wellness of Native people.
Access to traditional foods including roots, left, and salmon was reserved forever by tribes that signed treaties with the U.S. government in return for ceding more than 100,000 square miles of Native territories. Yet today access to First Foods is severely limited as salmon decline, root-digging grounds are lost to development and agriculture, and environmental degradation has destroyed and polluted shellfish beds.
Ruby Jim and Maria Jim dish out lunch during a gathering at the Celilo Village longhouse. First Foods on the menu included biscuitroot and bitterroot, venison, salmon and huckleberries.
Culture keepers
Tribal gatherings honor victories and actions vital to salmon recovery
Across salmon country, dam removal and fish passage have long been central for tribes fighting to preserve their First Foods and cultures.
From left, Alyssa Macy, of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation and CEO of Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters; Chairwoman Frances Charles, of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe; and Amy Cordalis, attorney for the Yurok Tribe, have all been at the center of dam removal efforts on the Lower Snake, Elwha, and Klamath rivers, respectively.
Frances Charles, chairwoman of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, was honored in the longhouse ceremony at Celilo for her leadership in dam removal on the Elwha River, the largest ever dam removal project in the world. It was the work, she stressed, of elders and tribal leaders before her that also helped bring the $325 million federal project to completion in 2014.
“It took 100 years, but we saw those tears of joy in the elders’ faces,” Charles said.
That success is inspiring for Yurok tribal member Amy Cordalis, attorney for the tribe, as she helps lead the removal of four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon, expected to begin in 2024, for salmon recovery. The treaties demand it, Cordalis said.
“Treaties are the supreme law of the land. In light of that, how is it that these populations of salmon in the Columbia River and the Klamath River are down to single-digit percentages of their historical size?
“This will not stand. The treaty right was not given to us, it is a reservation of an inherent right that the tribes got from the Creator. We reserved that right in the treaties. And that absolutely meant having salmon in the river.”
Alyssa Macy, of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, left, and Amy Cordalis, of the Yurok Tribe, seen gesturing, speak during the “Women of the River Talking Circle,” hosted by Children of the Setting Sun Productions at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center & Museum in The Dalles, Oregon, in May. Cordalis says in Native cultures rivers are living beings with whom they have reciprocal relationships that are being reclaimed by Native people, who are still here – though they are often presented as gone or extinct, just like the salmon.
In Washington, the region is considering dam removal on the Lower Snake River. A draft report on replacing benefits of the dams is out for public comment, with a final report and recommendation expected from U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Jay Inslee later this summer. Among their considerations is the impact on tribal treaty rights and cultures from the loss of salmon. Also to be weighed: the legal obligation to protect 13 runs of salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act; the feasibility and cost of replacing hydropower from the dams, which produce enough electricity to power a city the size of Seattle; providing alternatives to transportation on the Lower Snake through locks at the dams from Pasco, to Lewiston, Idaho; and reworking infrastructure that provides irrigation for growers from the reservoir behind Ice Harbor Dam.
The presence of the salmon’s absence is overwhelming, and is a reality that must be reversed with dam removal on the Lower Snake River, said Alyssa Macy, CEO of the Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation. Living cultures require living salmon.
A season begins, a tradition continues
Fishermen return to the banks of the Columbia
After a long winter, the first few weeks of spring bring the river’s biggest, most succulent salmon, spring Chinook.
Duane Miller, 39, left, and Little Bear Frank, 14, both enrolled with Confederated Tribes of The Warm Springs Reservation, fish for salmon with hoop nets on scaffolds at the Lone Pine In-Lieu Site near The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River.
Miller stood on his family’s fishing platforms along the Columbia in cold rain, even snow this year, to catch them.
He smokes his catch and savors the rich and healthful fat. He gives the first fish of the year to the longhouse, where a ceremony is held to honor their First Foods.
“It’s a joy for sure,” Miller said. “Everyone’s happy when those fish come.”
Little Bear Frank, 14, and Duane Miller, 39, of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, fish for salmon with hoop nets on scaffolds near The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River. Frank and Miller identify as Kamilth (Yakama), Wasco (Warm Springs), Walla Walla (Umatilla) and Nez Perce.
Duane Miller, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, uses a hoop net he drops from the scaffold into the Columbia River, hoping to catch a spring Chinook salmon — one of nature’s most luscious and nutritious foods.
For many Native people of the Pacific Northwest, fishing this river and others is a right reserved by their ancestors in treaties signed with the U.S. government nearly 170 years ago.
Promised was the continuation of a way of life, inextricably tied to hunting, fishing and gathering in the lands and waters of their traditional territories.
“It was promised we would have access to these things,” said Valerie Segrest, a Muckleshoot Indian Tribe member and Native foods educator. Under the treaties of Medicine Creek and Point Elliott, the Muckleshoot forever reserved hunting, gathering and fishing rights beyond their reservation at Auburn.
“It was always based on food,” she said of the treaties. “That is what we ceded all our lands for. It was important to us because in our creation stories, our foods teach us who we are. If we didn’t have access to our foods, we would not be a Native person.”
Valerie Segrest, Native foods educator and Muckleshoot tribal member, says decolonizing Native diets and palates is essential to bring back health and wellness. Native people suffer from disproportionately high levels of diabetes and other diseases because of the loss of their traditional foods and the switch to white flour, sugar, low quality fats and other commodity foods.
This spring, The Seattle Times traveled along with Native people gathering their First Foods, to document these cultural practices, their meaning and centrality to the treaty promises.
“People have to understand why we reserved the rights we did, why our people did that,” said Shannon Wheeler, vice chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe.
“It is because of the unwritten laws we have, our obligation to the land and its inhabitants, and our obligation to the First Foods and how we live with the land and interact with the land and treat the land. It is our oldest law. Before the treaty. It is what the treaty was meant to capture.”
A clam sits on a log at the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe’s property on Vashon Island, and Mazzy Ungaro, 9, shows a salmonberry flower. One of the first fresh foods of the year, the flowers have a light, clean taste and are lovely in salads.
Nettles
Spring brings forth the first fresh greens of the year
Birds sang out as Segrest headed down the trail through Vashon Island land purchased by the Muckleshoots to provide access for their people to First Foods and a place to live their culture.
Alders, cedars and sword ferns lined the trail, and the sweet scent of opening cottonwood buds was on the air. The hush-hush of the tide lapped the beach below, and fat alder catkins were all over the ground.
Nettles grew everywhere.
Segrest passed out buckets, gloves and scissors to her daughters, and the three started clipping. They took the top several inches of the plant and left the rest to thrive. They spread out their effort so no part of the patch was depleted.
“It is easy to forget what time it is,” Segrest said as they worked, and it was true. The rhythms of the natural world — the seasons, the native plants and their harvest time — reset the usual mainstream frenetic clock.
“We are not seasonally attuned anymore,” Segrest said. “For the first time in human history, we are so disconnected.”
Spring isn’t supposed to be just months on a calendar, Segrest said. It is the time of cleavers, claytonia and nettles bursting through soil damp with rain. These are among the first fresh green foods of the year, and they deliver the energy to live the dreams from the time of rest and renewal that is winter, Segrest said.
The nettle patches here are among her favorites.
“They call to us to get out here; I crave the feeling of stinging on my fingers,” Segrest said. The sting comes from the plant’s tiny hairs, which are easily removed with cooking. Steeped into a tea, eaten steamed or blanched, nettles deliver more iron than spinach, and a healthy punch of magnesium, calcium and phosphorus. That is typical of First Foods, Segrest said. They are very nutrient-dense.
In her culture, nettles and other plants are teachers, and they like to be visited.
Mazzy Ungaro, 9, left, her mother, Valerie Segrest, a Native foods educator, and sister Gea Ungaro, 7, collect nettles on the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island. The girls’ parents are teaching them how to harvest and enjoy First Foods.
While often considered weeds by people who do not know them, nettles are a nutritious First Food. Among the first fresh greens of the year, nettles provide the vitamins, minerals and strength to live the dreams of a long winter, says educator Valerie Segrest.
Afternoon light filters through the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island. The tribe purchased this property as a place for tribal members to live their culture.
Gea Ungaro, 7, explores the Muckleshoot property with her parents and sister on Vashon Island in March. The family harvested nettles and plucked salmonberry blossoms and other early growing First Foods.
The modern world has set up divisions and barriers from these companions in what used to be daily life. The skills to gather and prepare these foods and even a taste for their subtle flavors, have to be recultivated, brought back, Segrest said.
“These are the foods with which our cultures developed over thousands of years.”
Shellfish
Feasting from the Salish Sea
“When the tide is out, the table is set” is a saying in Coast Salish country. Here at the beach of the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island, it is easy to see why.
As the spring season brought daytime low tides, a feast on the beach was planned. For many, this was their first time learning to dig clams on the beach.
All around them, the clean gray sand was squirting with the busy siphons of shellfish just below the surface.
It was a day as it used to be every day for Native societies all around Puget Sound, gathering, laughing and passing on harvest skills to the next generation.
“Every time we go out, it’s an exercise in our treaty right, being in our usual and accustomed areas, engaging our culture and spiritual practices,” said Willard Bill Jr., cultural director for the Muckleshoot, who skippered the tribe’s canoe Eagle Spirit over from Redondo for the feast.
“It’s critical for our treaty, to come and do this, traveling like our ancestors did, to come harvest these First Foods, retrain our palates. People 100 years ago were not overweight. They did not have diabetes. It was the first Paleo Diet.”
Lawrence Jerry, left, and Louie Ungaro steam shellfish and salmon for a gathering to teach about and savor First Foods on the Muckleshoot property on Vashon Island in April. “You are not really sovereign if you can’t feed your people,” said Ungaro, a tribal council member who is working to build up First Food traditions at Muckleshoot.
Clams, left, and crab, right, are steamed on the beach on Vashon Island. Red sea spaghetti, center, is common in the intertidal zones of Puget Sound.
Willard Bill Jr., center back, cultural director for the Muckleshoot, laughs while skippering the tribe’s canoe Eagle Spirit to Vashon Island. Living their culture is how the tribe exercises its sovereignty.
Camas
The prairie produces beauty and sustenance
The spring storm pushing through this prairie outside Rochester in Thurston County didn’t deter the diggers, who bent to their work in a sea of blue flowers: camas.
It was not the flower, but the bulb they wanted. Cooked, it is sweet, creamy and tastes like baked pear.
Camas are an essential, nutrition-packed First Food and a mainstay of Northwest traditional diets on both sides of the Cascades.
For some, it was their first bulb harvest. Others brought handmade digging sticks and bags passed down by their elders to continue a lifetime harvesting tradition.
As the storm lifted, diggers fanned out over the prairie. They harvested the bulbs by pushing a digging stick with its T-shaped handle into the dirt just to the side of the bulb and giving it a gentle lift. It’s work with a steady rhythm and pleasing repetition.
This is a way of being with their ancestors, said Billie Jo Bray, a member of the San Poil band of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. “I feel that connection when I come out here,” Bray said, “I feel that we are still here. It’s that way of life of our ancestors that they passed on to us.”
Somewhere across the prairie, a digger was singing as she worked.
Muckleshoot tribal member Rosie Arzate James, wearing red, and Port Gamble S'Klallam member Debby Purser, in black, dig for camas during an intertribal gathering at Glacial Heritage Preserve in Thurston County in May. These bulbs were on the small side, about as big as a pearl onion. The prairie is a preserve and open to the public only one day a year, on Prairie Appreciation Day, scheduled at the peak of the bloom in May. Gathering camas bulbs is an increasingly rare opportunity around Puget Sound, where less than 3% of the original prairie habitat remains.
Yaya Odell shows harvested camas at Glacial Heritage Preserve in Thurston County.
Billie Jo Bray, left, a member of the San Poil band of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, harvests camas with Janessa Esquivel, San Poil and Sinixt of The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, at Glacial Heritage Preserve in Thurston County in May. Members from around 20 tribes participated in the dig to share information about traditional harvesting techniques, nutritional benefits of camas and prairie land management. Bray said the harvest is a way of spending time with her ancestors.
Salmon
Healthy rivers are vital to survival of a species
Songs and prayers rang out at the longhouse at Celilo Village along the Columbia River near The Dalles.
Here once thundered Celilo Falls, thronged with millions of salmon, drawing Native people from all over the Northwest and beyond for trade, for marriages, for gambling, and to fish and dry the salmon that would be their winter stores.
Pounded into pemmican and traded, salmon was currency, survival and harvested in colossal abundance.
Even into the 1850s, after the horrific waves of diseases, the river still supported as many as 5,000 Indian fishers at about 480 sites at Celilo, according to historian Katrine Barber in her book “Death of Celilo Falls.”
That ended in 1957 with the building of The Dalles Dam, which drowned the falls and destroyed the fishery at Celilo.
And so the mood at a gathering of salmon tribes at the Celilo longhouse on a recent spring day was somber. Instead of coming together for a harvest, as they once would have this time of year, the purpose was to unite around restoring what has been lost.
Victor Jim, 6, left, and Cody Meanus, 8, play atop a totem pole at the Celilo Village longhouse. The pole, carved by Jewell James of the Lummi Nation, is part of the Spirit of the Waters journey, a Native-led movement for the removal of four Lower Snake River dams to rebuild salmon runs and to help the southern resident killer whales.
From left: Nancy Shippentower, of the Puyallup Tribe; JoDe Goudy and Wilbur Slockish Jr., of the Yakama Nation; and Bruce Jim, of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, are honored for their lifetime of work in defense of salmon.
Jefferson Greene, top left, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, sings during a gathering at the Celilo longhouse in Celilo Village, Oregon. Greene is the executive director of the Columbia River Institute for Indigenous Development Foundation. Làatis Nowland and Keyen Singer, top right, members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, listen while Children of the Setting Sun Productions filmed testimonies and songs during the day. Victor Jim, Conrad Jackson, Caiden Johnson, Mason Martínez and Cody Meanus converse on bottom right. The Celilo Village longhouse, bottom left, is a new building constructed as part of a renewal of the village by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Amid the songs and oratory, the work of the cooks went on, as it always has and as it must, said Melinda Jim of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation.
At 72, she had been up since 6 a.m. for a day on her feet, preparing a feast for the longhouse gathering of salmon nations. Cooking for tribal community gatherings is her art and her work. She has 27 aprons, some from her mother and grandmother, and a lifetime of cooking experience. Jim commands a kitchen.
Stirring this, checking that, she directed helpers setting out the foods for the feast: There was biscuitroot, bitterroot, oven-roasted deer, baked salmon and huckleberries preserved last summer.
“It keeps us healthy,” Jim said of these First Foods. “We don’t get sick as much when we eat our own diet.”
Melinda Jim, center, cooks during a gathering at the Celilo Village longhouse. First Foods are essential to the identity and wellness of Native people.
Access to traditional foods including roots, top, and salmon was reserved forever by tribes that signed treaties with the U.S. government in return for ceding more than 100,000 square miles of Native territories. Yet today access to First Foods is severely limited as salmon decline, root-digging grounds are lost to development and agriculture, and environmental degradation has destroyed and polluted shellfish beds.
Ruby Jim and Maria Jim dish out lunch during a gathering at the Celilo Village longhouse. First Foods on the menu included biscuitroot and bitterroot, venison, salmon and huckleberries.
Culture keepers
Tribal gatherings honor victories and actions vital to salmon recovery
Across salmon country, dam removal and fish passage have long been central for tribes fighting to preserve their First Foods and cultures.
From left, Alyssa Macy, of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation and CEO of Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters; Chairwoman Frances Charles, of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe; and Amy Cordalis, attorney for the Yurok Tribe, have all been at the center of dam removal efforts on the Lower Snake, Elwha, and Klamath rivers, respectively.
Frances Charles, chairwoman of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, was honored in the longhouse ceremony at Celilo for her leadership in dam removal on the Elwha River, the largest ever dam removal project in the world. It was the work, she stressed, of elders and tribal leaders before her that also helped bring the $325 million federal project to completion in 2014.
“It took 100 years, but we saw those tears of joy in the elders’ faces,” Charles said.
That success is inspiring for Yurok tribal member Amy Cordalis, attorney for the tribe, as she helps lead the removal of four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon, expected to begin in 2024, for salmon recovery. The treaties demand it, Cordalis said.
“Treaties are the supreme law of the land. In light of that, how is it that these populations of salmon in the Columbia River and the Klamath River are down to single-digit percentages of their historical size?
“This will not stand. The treaty right was not given to us, it is a reservation of an inherent right that the tribes got from the Creator. We reserved that right in the treaties. And that absolutely meant having salmon in the river.”
Alyssa Macy, of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, left, and Amy Cordalis, of the Yurok Tribe, seen gesturing, speak during the “Women of the River Talking Circle,” hosted by Children of the Setting Sun Productions at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center & Museum in The Dalles, Oregon, in May. Cordalis says in Native cultures rivers are living beings with whom they have reciprocal relationships that are being reclaimed by Native people, who are still here – though they are often presented as gone or extinct, just like the salmon.
In Washington, the region is considering dam removal on the Lower Snake River. A draft report on replacing benefits of the dams is out for public comment, with a final report and recommendation expected from U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Jay Inslee later this summer. Among their considerations is the impact on tribal treaty rights and cultures from the loss of salmon. Also to be weighed: the legal obligation to protect 13 runs of salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act; the feasibility and cost of replacing hydropower from the dams, which produce enough electricity to power a city the size of Seattle; providing alternatives to transportation on the Lower Snake through locks at the dams from Pasco, to Lewiston, Idaho; and reworking infrastructure that provides irrigation for growers from the reservoir behind Ice Harbor Dam.
The presence of the salmon’s absence is overwhelming, and is a reality that must be reversed with dam removal on the Lower Snake River, said Alyssa Macy, CEO of the Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation. Living cultures require living salmon.
A season begins, a tradition continues
Fishermen return to the banks of the Columbia
After a long winter, the first few weeks of spring bring the river’s biggest, most succulent salmon, spring Chinook.
Miller stood on his family’s fishing platforms along the Columbia in cold rain, even snow this year, to catch them.
He smokes his catch and savors the rich and healthful fat. He gives the first fish of the year to the longhouse, where a ceremony is held to honor their First Foods.
“It’s a joy for sure,” Miller said. “Everyone’s happy when those fish come.”
Little Bear Frank, 14, and Duane Miller, 39, of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, fish for salmon with hoop nets on scaffolds near the Dalles Dam on the Columbia River. Frank and Miller identify as Kamilth (Yakama), Wasco (Warm Springs), Walla Walla (Umatilla) and Nez Perce.