Though life on earth is the history of dynamic interactions between living things and their surroundings, certain powerful groups would have us believe that nature exists only for our convenience. One consequence of such thinking is the apparent fate of the Pacific salmon--a key resource and preeminent symbol of America's wildlife--which is today threatened with extinction. Drawing on abundant data from natural science, Pacific coast culture, and a long association with key individuals on all sides of the issue, Joseph Cone's A Common Fate employs a clear narrative voice to tell the human and natural history of an environmental crisis in its final chapter. As inevitable as the November rains, countless millions of wild salmon returned from the ocean to spawn in the streams of their birth. In the wake of an orgy of dam building and habitat destruction, the salmon's majestic abundance has been reduced to a fleeting shadow. Neglect is the word the author uses to describe more recent losses, "by exactly the ones--state and federal fish managers--who should have acted." To signal a new awareness that action is needed, scientists charged with restocking the Columbia River Basin are receiving significant support, while ordinary citizens are beginning to recognize the relationship between cheap power and the absences of chinook, coho, sockeye, and other species from the coasts of Oregon and Washington and from Idaho's Snake River. As desperate as the salmon's future appears, the book is not an elegy for a lost resource. Instead, it bears witness to hope. In addition to concrete plans for the wild salmon's renewal, the reader will hear a growing chorus of informed individuals of differing values and beliefs who recognize that our fate is inextricably bound to the salmon's; for many it is a new understanding.

In The Fishermen's Frontier, David Arnold examines the economic, social, cultural, and political context in which salmon have been harvested in southeast Alaska over the past 250 years. He starts with the aboriginal fishery, in which Native fishers lived in close connection with salmon ecosystems and developed rituals and lifeways that reflected their intimacy. The transformation of the salmon fishery in southeastern Alaska from an aboriginal resource to an industrial commodity has been fraught with historical ironies. Tribal peoples -- usually considered egalitarian and communal in nature -- managed their fisheries with a strict notion of property rights, while Euro-Americans -- so vested in the notion of property and ownership -- established a common-property fishery when they arrived in the late nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, federal conservation officials tried to rationalize the fishery by "improving" upon nature and promoting economic efficiency, but their uncritical embrace of scientific planning and their disregard for local knowledge degraded salmon habitat and encouraged a backlash from small-boat fishermen, who clung to their "irrational" ways. Meanwhile, Indian and white commercial fishermen engaged in identical labors, but established vastly different work cultures and identities based on competing notions of work and nature. Arnold concludes with a sobering analysis of the threats to present-day fishing cultures by forces beyond their control. However, the salmon fishery in southeastern Alaska is still very much alive, entangling salmon, fishermen, industrialists, scientists, and consumers in a living web of biological and human activity that has continued for thousands of years.

Different versions of the Salmon People legend have been told for centuries by many tribes of Northwest Coast Indians. Though the tellings may differ in detail from tribe to tribe and era to era, all versions express the Indian belief that animals have spirits and can move freely between animal and human realms, choosing to feed humans when approached with proper respect and ceremony. Claire Rudolf Murphy's thought-provoking tale about the interdependence of humans and animals is based on anthropologist Franz Boas's accounts and on interviews with Tsimshian elders and craftsmen. Acclaimed Northwest Coast artist Duane Pasco enlivens the myth with his striking drawings. Claire Rudolf Murphy is the author of ten books for children including Children of the Gold Rush and Caribou Girl.

It’s the day of the first salmon ceremony, and P'ésk'a is excited to celebrate. His community, the Sts'ailes people, give thanks to the river and the salmon it brings by commemorating the first salmon of the season. Framed as an exploration of what life was like one thousand years ago, P'ésk'a and the First Salmon Ceremony describes the customs of the Sts'ailes people, an Indigenous group who have lived on what is now the Harrison River in British Columbia for the last 10,000 years. Includes an introductory letter from Chief William Charlie, an illustrated afterword and a glossary.

A photo essay describing a young native Alaskan boy fishing for salmon on Kodiak Island as his ancestors have done for generations.

Winner of the George Perkins Marsh Award, American Society for Environmental History

On October 20, 2001, a crowd gathered just east of Salmon, Idaho, to dedicate the site of the Sacajawea Interpretive, Cultural, and Education Center, in preparation for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. In a bitter instance of irony, the American Indian peoples conducting the ceremony dedicating the land to the tribe, the city of Salmon, and the nation?the Lemhi Shoshones, Sacajawea?s own people?had been removed from their homeland nearly a hundred years earlier and had yet to regain official federal recognition as a tribe. John W. W. Mann?s book at long last tells the remarkable and inspiring story of the Lemhi Shoshones, from their distant beginning to their present struggles. Mann offers an absorbing and richly detailed look at the life of Sacajawea?s people before their first contact with non-Natives, their encounter with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the early nineteenth century, and their subsequent confinement to a reservation in northern Idaho near the town of Salmon. He follows the Lemhis from the liquidation of their reservation in 1907 to their forced union with the Shoshone-Bannock tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation to the south. He describes how for the past century, surrounded by more populous and powerful Native tribes, the Lemhis have fought to preserve their political, economic, and cultural integrity. His compelling and informative account should help to bring Sacajawea?s people out of the long shadow of history and restore them to their rightful place in the American story.

As the new chief of the Michigan Department of Conservation’s Fish Division in 1964, Howard A. Tanner was challenged to “do something . . . spectacular.” He met that challenge by leading the successful introduction of coho salmon into the Michigan waters of the Great Lakes. This volume illustrates how Tanner was able to accomplish this feat: from a detailed account of his personal and professional background that provided a foundation for success; the historical and contemporary context in which the Fish Division undertook this bold step to reorient the state’s fishery from commercial to sport; the challenges, such as resistance from existing government institutions and finding funding, that he and his colleagues faced; the risks they took by introducing a nonnative species; the surprises they experienced in the first season’s catch; to, finally, the success they achieved in establishing a world-renowned, biologically and financially beneficial sport fishery in the Great Lakes. Tanner provides an engaging history of successfully introducing Pacific salmon into the lakes from the perspective of an ultimate insider.

Shanyaak'utlaax: Salmon Boy comes from an ancient Tlingit story that teaches about respect for nature, animals and culture. The title character, a Tlingit boy, violates these core cultural values when he flings away a dried piece of salmon with mold on the end given to him by his mother. His disrespect offends the Salmon People, who sweep him into the water and into their world. This book is part of Baby Raven Reads, an award-winning Sealaska Heritage program for Alaska Native families with children up to age 5 that promotes language development and school readiness. Baby Raven Reads was awarded the Library of Congress's 2017 Literacy Awards Program Best Practice Honoree award.