About 600 Lummi Indian Tribe members and guests gathered Thursday, May 14, at Lummi Nation School to celebrate the arrival of the first salmon - a celebration marked by both hope and fear for the future of the fish that defines tribal identity."When I was a young boy, I heard my grandfather say, when he was eating a salmon, 'This is good medicine,'" said Merle Jefferson, the tribe's natural resources director.The First Salmon Ceremony is a key cultural observance for the Lummi and other Coast Salish tribes. For generations, the tribes have conducted these ceremonies to honor the salmon and assure their return. KATIE BARNES THE BELLINGHAM HERALD Lummi's First Salmon Ceremony Jefferson noted that the first local salmon run, the spring chinook that return to the Nooksack River, is listed as threatened under federal law."Our first salmon is in trouble," Jefferson said. "The spring chinook is in trouble. ... The habitat is going to take many years to fix."Each year at about this time, the tribe has been conducting a limited harvest of the spring chinook for use in the traditional first salmon ceremony and feast. This year, Jefferson said, Lummi fishers netted 27 fish in just three hours, giving possible evidence that the beleaguered run may be strengthening.Meanwhile, the late summer harvest of Fraser River sockeye that once provided a decent living for both tribal and non-tribal fishers of Whatcom County has dwindled to near nothing, partly due to environmental factors and partly because of changes in the way the fish harvest is divided between U.S. and Canadian fishers."I used to gross probably $40,000, $50,000 a year on sockeye," said Richard Finkbonner, 79, a Lummi gillnetter. "I got one last year."The collapse of the sockeye fishery received an official disaster declaration from the federal government in 2008, and the tribe is now seeking $24.4 million in federal disaster aid to help in a variety of ways. Some of the money would be made available to help individual fishermen with grants or loans. About $17 million would be invested in salmon and shellfish hatchery improvements.But economic and political concerns faded Thursday as Lummi elder Jack Cagey beat his drum and led a procession of red-and-black-costumed youngsters into the school auditorium, escorting a wheeled cart carrying the roasted first salmon. It was covered with feathery green cedar fronds and wrapped in aluminum foil. Everyone at the ceremony got a morsel of the first salmon in a small plastic cup, but every bit of bone was saved for the final portion of the ceremony, in which the uneaten remains of the fish were returned to the waters off Lummi Peninsula.After the ceremonial consumption of the first fish, tribal cooks rolled out a lavish feast that included not only alder-roasted salmon but fried halibut, prawns, clam fritters, fry bread, rice and potato salad.Heather Leighton, school principal, took the microphone to get her young charges organized for food service. They trooped out of the bleachers to pile plates with food for the elders and guests seated at long tables on the auditorium floor."I don't want to see any food in your hands until all the elders have been served," Leighton said.Finkbonner said he expects to be out on the salt water off Sandy Point again this year, hoping to net enough silver salmon to get him through another season. But he doesn't recommend that Lummi youth try to follow in his footsteps."Tell the young people to get out of it," Finkbonner said. "There's nothing left anymore. Go to school and learn a trade."But Lorraine Loomis, the Swinomish Tribe's fisheries manager who attended as a ceremonial witness, struck a different note."If we didn't believe that our salmon would come back, we would not be here today," Loomis said. "We're not going to give up."
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