How is it I have been troubled in mind? If your mothers were here in this country who gave you
birth, and suckled you, and while you were suckling some person came and took away your
mother and left you alone and sold your mother, how would you feel then?
This is our mother this country, as if we drew our living from her.
From copy of 1855 Treaty at Walla Walla
quoted in Slickpoo and Walker, p. 114.
Salmon are believed to lead a life very similar to the those who catch him. A chief leads salmon
upstream. The First Salmon Ceremony honors the leader.
Cut salmon lengthwise, not crosswise so as not to insult the salmon. Do not allow the heart to be
eaten by a dog or otherwise mutilated.
Barbecue don't boil to allow the spirit of the salmon to rise with the smoke of the fire.
After eating, return the bones to the river with the head pointing upstream, so the salmon will
spawn and return a thousand fold.
From Erna Gunther 1928:150 & Vine Deloria 1977:28-29.
My words are like stars. They do not set.
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore,
every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and humming insect is holy in the memory and
experience of my people.
We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters the deer, the
horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the
body heat of the pony, and man--all belong to the same family.
Perry version, see "Chief Seattle's Speech(es): American Origins and European Reception in Recovering the Word, pp. 497-536.
Buy our land! But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us.
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sand shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are Holy in the memory and experience of my people.
This we know: The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.
Spokane Expo version, see "Chief Seattle's Speech(es): American Origins and European Reception in Recovering the Word, pp. 497-536.
Two and a half million increase is an excuse for man's limitation, and
yet somebody along the way
decided that what was natural, what was Creator given, could be best handled by man himself.
So here we are, one kind of mankind talking to another. We come from different worlds. We
don't expect that you will ever fully understand or accept what we are all about. Yet we are here
as friends and as neighbors.
Northwest Power Planning Council Round Table, October 5, 1989
When Ted Strong ended his tenure as Director of the Columbia River
Inter-Tribal Fish Commission he said,
My heart and mind will always be on the side where the salmon are
loved and honored.
I pray for a peaceful and prosperous Columbia Basin with peoples of
all walks of life living in equality, living in harmony with the majesty
of nature, and living in respect for the rights of all creatures.
Wana Chinook Tymoo, Winter 1999:3
The salmon is the ultimate symbol of the Pacific Northwest. These stalwarts have fought all the
obstacles we've put before them in order to return to the spawning grounds of their birth. We
ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we can't save them
NEW YORK TIMES, 1/1/91, A9
Salmon are part of the way we define ourselves in the Northwest.
THE OREGONIAN, June 3, 1991
p. A10
Our love of fish is almost in our chromosomes.
NORTHWEST ENERGY NEWS
Sept/Oct 1991. p. 10
They are part of our heritage and part of our cultural fabric; we have a feeling that things are OK if salmon are in our streams. . . .
NORTHWEST, 2/24/91, p. 10
Fish are to the Northwest what wheat is to Kansas.
Fish are this great integrator. They spawn 900 miles inland and they travel to the ocean all
along the coast. They bind this region together.
HIGH COUNTRY NEWS, April 22, 1991, p. 13
If the lands and waters of the Northwest, their ancestral home, are no longer fit to sustain the
salmon, how bright and interesting can our own future be?
HIGH COUNTRY NEWS April 22, 1991, p. 17
If the salmon could speak, he would ask us to help him survive. This is something we must tackle together.
HIGH COUNTRY NEWS, April 22, 1991, p. 18
The Pacific Northwest salmon is an amazing fish, whose existence has been considered a
precious gift by our people for thousands of years.
. . . salmon are critical to the economy.
Salmon also provide spiritual strength to our people.
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission News 2(1993):2
To see those chromers (silver salmon) come back and know they're a heritage that is a
millennium old blows my mind. I think the wild stocks should be saved, but at what cost?
Oregonian 4/10/94:A19
Salmon, bright and sleek, were once the most potent symbols of the region's endurance and vigor.
Oregonian 4/10/94:A18
The salmon is a symbol of the majesty of the Pacific Basin, as it were, a symbol of the power of the planet and its an indicator species of the health of the whole system that we must restore in order to survive, in order to keep in tact the weave of creation, and in order to live the kind of lives that we set out to try to live. It has fallen to those of us who love the salmon and who love the place we live, beyond other affections we have, to act out this responsibility by helping to guarantee that thhat which we love will survive.
Portions of the ending quote from the film, Last Chance for the Pacific Salmon, 1995.
Corvallis Gazette-Times 2/5/95:A3
Before the City Club of Portland, October 3, 1997, quoted from Oregon Public Broadcasting recording of program.
There is an almost mythic connection with salmon among the people who live in the Northwest. It is a powerful connection that cannot be overestimated--the power of history, the power of identity, the power of the past's promise to the future.
At Oregon State University, January 6, 2000, Corvallis Gazette-Times 1/7/2000:A1.
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