Nancy Lord - Made of Salmon: Alaska Stories from the Salmon Project

Salmon and Alaskans. We have danced with one another for millennia. For thousands of journeys around the sun, for more than three million spins of the earth, for hundreds of thousands of turns of the seasons, we have shared a rhythm. Each year, a great number of the hundreds of millions of salmon that mass and swirl in the currents of the North Pacific point their noses homeward and return to us. And we, in turn, move toward riverbanks, lakes, the ocean shoreline. We point our bows toward fishing grounds and travel to meet the fish on their return. As they surge toward us, we surge toward them. They help shape the rhythm of our lives.

The Salmon Project exists to tell the stories of the places and ways that Alaskans and their salmon come together. To help us learn about and see one anothers salmon connections across the great distances of our state. To create the moment where we recognize our salmon-ness, and where we discover the bonds we all sharewith the salmon and with each other.

Our salmon experiences are rooted in our home rivers, our family histories. In the landscapes where we have seen, harvested, heralded, mourned, celebrated, and welcomed home these beautiful creatures. We know the stream riffles and tiderips like the palms of our hands. Our young children can tell the difference between a chum and a coho. Our pantries are full of cans, our freezers of fillets and jerky. When we speak the word salmon, an image comes up in each of our mindsof the river, harbor, setnet site, bay, rod, creek, deck of the boatthe place that is home for salmon in our minds, in our personal experiences. Try it now. Close your eyes. Speak the word salmon. Where does it take you?

When we began The Salmon Project we hosted a series of a dozen focus groups in communities around the state. People came blind to the groups, not knowing that the conversation would be guided to salmon. They werent selected because they had salmon connections. They were pulled from the general population to meet basic demographic characteristics. Rooms full of strangers, often with very little in common, would warily enter into conversations about their values and what it means to live in Alaska. Eventually, salmon would come up, and the conversation would begin to follow that path. Invariably, the results were the samein these rooms full of attorneys, teachers, young fathers, municipal employees, homemakers, retired professors, all would lean in. They would begin to share their own salmon stories. And they would paint clear, bright lines tying their values as Alaskans to the presence of salmon in their lives. Values connected to their families: This is how my wife and I taught our children the importance of hard work. Values about freedom: Being able to be out here, harvesting this resource, providing for ourselves. Values about culture and tradition: My family and I have been coming to this beach every year for generations to harvest fish for the winter. And many more.

As we reviewed the results of this research, the thing that made the greatest impression on us was how quickly people could go from uncertainty about salmons connection to their own lives to absolute engagement and realization of its role. An image emerged. It was that of scratching the skin and revealing scales beneath.

We are salmon people. And what a blessing! How many other places in the developed world maintain seasonal rhythms tied to a living natural resource? Salmon nourish our lives and our spirits. In our research and engagements with Alaskans about salmon in their lives, one word comes up again and againlifeblood. People find salmon so vital to their lives that to be separated from it would cause irreparable harm.