Respect

By Amy Gulick, Safina Center Senior Fellow

“Waste Not” Utilizing every part of the salmon is one of the many ways that Alaska Native people show respect for the fish. Photo by Amy Gulick / amygulick.com

Standing in shin-high water in Iliamna Lake in Alaska, I help Michelle Ravenmoon unload sockeye salmon she just caught in her gill net. She places each fish on a plywood cutting table. With a sharp knife and expert precision, she separates the salmon into parts—head, guts, roe sac, fillets, and backbone. Every part of the fish will feed her family, including five sled dogs.

Michelle is Dena’ina Athabascan. Her people have lived since time immemorial with, by, and on wild salmon during times of plenty and times of scarcity.  I ask Michelle if there are lessons that she’s learned from growing up in a salmon-filled life. She tells me a story that she was told as a child: “The elders tell the story of a little girl, the Chief’s daughter, who saw a dead salmon on the beach, kicked it, and said, ‘Eew, that’s disgusting!’ She was disrespectful to the fish and the people decided that she had made a bad choice with her behavior and that she would bring something bad to them. The next day it started snowing, and snowed and snowed and turned colder and colder. Everyone knew it was the little girl’s fault, that she had caused it by being disrespectful to the fish. They decided they would have to kill her. The Chief begged and pleaded, but as it continued to snow and get colder, he knew it was for the good of the people. And so she was killed because she had disrespected the fish.

“The elders talked about that little girl as if they had lived during that time. Perhaps they were told the story. I remember going into elders’ homes when I was young, and I wasn’t used to the strong smells—beaver, porcupine, boiling fish heads. My mom would make me eat the food because it was disrespectful to say ‘no’ or wrinkle my nose and say ‘yuck.’ I was taught that food is nourishment and you should always be grateful for it regardless of what it looks or smells like. That is the biggest lesson my mom and elders taught us as kids.”

Amy Gulick is a photographer/author and Safina Center Fellow. Her award-winning books include: The Salmon Way: An Alaska State of Mind and Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska’s Tongass Rain Forest. Visit www.amygulick.com.