Ideas - Salmon depletion in Yukon River puts First Nations community at risk

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Once, there were half a million salmon in the Yukon River, but now they're almost gone. For the Little Salmon Carmacks River Nation, these salmon are an essential part of their culture — and now their livelihood is in peril. IDEAS shares their story as they struggle to keep their identity after the loss of the salmon migration.

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas, I'm Nala Ayyad. Tachan means the fin on the back or the hump on the back of the salmon. And basically at the Tachan area, you would see a whole river of just the backs of the salmon. You can't see that anymore. I think the last count that we had at the Tachan weir, I think that we had one salmon go through. The Yukon River is one of the great waterways of the world,

running more than 3,000 kilometers from its source in the Llewellyn Glacier in British Columbia, north into the Yukon Territory, then curving west into Alaska before emptying into the Bering Sea. The Yukon River is home to the longest migration of Chinook salmon on the planet. Once upon a time, it was also the largest migration, but not anymore. Close to half a million fish used to enter the mouth of this river every summer. They would fight their way some 3,200 kilometers from the Bering Sea across Alaska and into the Yukon, eventually returning to spawn in the streams where they once hatched. Once upon a time, the legend goes, there would be so many salmon in the river

that a person could walk across their backs to the other side. A legend, of course, but a potent image of a resilient resource of infinite value to the people who lived along the banks of the Yukon, the source of their livelihood and their culture. But now, the salmon are mostly gone. A few hours north of the city of Whitehorse lies the community of Carmax on the Klondike Highway. This is the homeland of the Little Salmon Carmax First Nation, one of the four northern Tchony nations in central Yukon. For them, the loss of the salmon has been an economic and cultural disaster.

In the fish camps where the community would gather to catch and process the fish for the long winter ahead, those fish camps are now mostly deserted. It hurts. It hurts my heart. And I know throughout the years we have to adapt, but taking away or not having the salmon to teach our traditions and culture to our younger generation is just devastating. From freelance contributor Genesee Keevil

about the effects of the loss of the salmon for Little Salmon Carmack's First Nation, this is Calling Them Back. It's late summer when the buck brush on the mountains here turns the same rich red as the flesh of the returning salmon. At this time of year, First Nation families traditionally gathered at fish camps along the banks of the Yukon River. Here, they would catch a year's worth of nutrient-rich food in just a few days,

hanging the fillets to dry over wooden poles, like crimson laundry. In September, I went to visit one of these fish camps, on the traditional territory of the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation. This small northern Tshoni community sits nestled amongst the vast spruce-covered hills and the deep river valleys of central Yukon. Following Chief Nicole Tom's big black 4x4 pickup, we bumped down a dirt track covered in yellow leaves to a wide, grassy clearing on the banks of the Yukon River.

We're at Little Salmon Village, so this is a place that our people have been living here since time immemorial. We hold our general assemblies here. We have a lot of family cabins that are around here, and we also have a grave site to the left where a lot of our ancestors are still remaining, and it's right along the river here.

So this is a place where people came to fish salmon. Can you talk a bit about the significance of salmon for Little Salmon CarMax? Yeah, it's our keystone species. So it's our namesake. We're Little Salmon people. And being a keystone species, that means that our whole culture is bound to that species. And so everything is connected to the salmon for us. And then same with the river, so the environment as well as the species. It is what we have done for forever. It is where our ancestors would walk for miles to go every year

to gather for these fish camps and for salmon harvesting. So it is everything to us. At the edge of the forest, a few ramshackle cabins stand alongside some newer plywood camps, remnants of a once-bustling settlement. Over the past few years, salmon stocks have plummeted 95% from historic levels. Now, most fish camps, like this one, sit abandoned,

leaving First Nation families without their traditional winter food. Heritage manager Tony Blanchard is standing under a new salmon cache. It's an open-air structure crisscrossed by slender spruce poles where salmon fillets are traditionally hung to dry before being put away for winter. We're standing under a big blue tarp with the dried spruce boughs. Dried spruce and tarp to keep the rain off the salmon. The salmon cache is not fully enclosed. It's open so the air can go through and help dry the salmon

we also use alder branches and logs to season the salmon some families use rotten wood because there's so much smoke it covers the salmon's and usually flies and bugs can't land on it because of the smoke. We have logs going across and usually we have nails that hang the salmon down so you can hang more. I would say 10 years ago this would be probably full of salmon. Not anymore obviously. The loss of the salmon means a loss of food security. But perhaps of even greater importance, it means a loss of identity for the little salmon people,

whose ancestral ways of life are now at risk. Already, traditional knowledge, passed down through generations, is starting to disappear. After just a few years without salmon, community members find themselves struggling to remember teachings on how to fillet Chinook and how long they need to hang them to dry. How long do they hang?

It's been so long that I've dried salmon. I'm not, probably five days, up to five days. Maybe it depends on the wind and how the weather is. But once it's dry, you put them away for winter. And now it's empty. Yep, empty. We can't fish for any of our salmon, not even chinook. So this is how all our caches look now for the last four or five

years. And you built this new cache in hope that they will return? Yes. We're hoping next year, hopefully, hoping, praying that we, that salmon numbers go up. But if they don't, then it'll just stand here as a historical building. When there were salmon here, how many would be hanging in a cache like this? In a cache like this, say 20 years ago, this would be full in a week. They would be pulling maybe 10, 15 fish a pull. I mean, so you check the fish net in the morning, afternoon, evening, and you would cut it all, hang it. So we usually don't overfish.

We would just fish enough and dry enough to last families until the next season. And it used to be these beautiful fillets. I've seen the images of them with a beautiful red, the crimson hanging there. Yeah. And you would also see like screens below to dry the smaller fillets. Yeah. It's not even one salmon anymore. So it's sad not being able, especially me, I have two children who I can't teach them what my grandmother taught me. And they've never experienced fish camp. There is a crackling fire in front of the salmon cache, where a few children, including Chief Tom's daughter Katana, stand roasting hot dogs.

Chief Tom's daughter, Katana, stand roasting hot dogs. Nearby, a couple of elders are warming up in a canvas wall tent heated by a small wood stove. Little Salmon Carmack's First Nation is running a moose hunting camp here right now. The hope is to bring elders and families and young children together, as fish camps once did. It's hard to imagine a world where they may not get to experience what has made us Northern Shoni people. It's hard to know that that language transfer is going to suffer,

those oral stories, the traditional knowledge, the values, the morals, stories, the traditional knowledge, the values, the morals, the laughter, the singing, everything that comes with it because there are some children who have never gone to fish camp, so they've never experienced it. And the last time Katana experienced it, I think it was four years old. And to know that she was lucky enough to experience that at four she draws pictures of fish camp remember when remember what has become a remember when already and we're a couple of years into into this so it's heartbreaking when she's asking me for dry fish or fish eggs or fish head and I can't give it to her and I've got to say no and I have no remedy for for saying no no solution So that piece is extremely heartbreaking. As a parent, I don't know what we do. On a tarp-covered table beside the empty salmon cache lie the limp bodies of two lean,

glassy-eyed wild rabbits. Elder Angela Johnny is rounding up some kids to teach them how to skin and cut rabbit. Eight-year-old Katana joins them. This is where my family do all the salmon fishing there. This is our fish camp and this is where we cut our river salmon. And then we used to have a lot when I was a little girl, old enough to cut fish with my parents and then my mom. And then we had a lot of fish. But it's pretty sad to see empty cache with no fish on it. A long time ago, there was people who had no food, and they would get rabid, grouse.

I'm just going to give my knowledge to these people who ever want to learn and teach them how to skin the rabbit that was snared. See? Rabbit'sared. I snared with my dad, and we cut two. Then we cut all the fur off, and then we ate the bunny. We made bunny soup. The younger ones, they don't know

because they've never cut salmon before. They've never seen how a salmon is pulled out of the net like they haven't seen from beginning to the end so they don't get to see or experience going on the boat being at camp getting teachings from elders who would be at the camp like you can't do this do, this is the way you do it. They won't get any of that, what I was taught when I was younger. And so how can they see the respect or show the respect of that part of the culture when they can't even experience it? You know what, Come with mommy now.

What? Yeah. Go for a little walk. Chief Tom is heading down to the river and wants Katana to come. Okay, ladies? Okay. She finds her daughter in the back of her pickup truck with a couple of friends playing on their phones. Yeah, put that away. It's beautiful with the river right here running beside and then the

a small mountain up behind the leaves are all changing color right now which is lovely as well and some of the cabins are older log cabins and there's some newer chipboard cabins and a whole variety yeah so traditionally people lived out here so what is known now as little salmon carmax we had six or seven locations where people resided and this was one of them when the highway came in and the infiltration of the gold rush etc we were kind of pushed into one area which is now carmax so we're about six or seven different i guess nomadic people with different dialects and we're we're just all in one spot now and now we're walking down to the river is there a particular spot on the river

you just kind of go until we find something that might like a path that might go off of it but at the end there definitely is an area where we could go closer to the river. So for me, do you want to wait until these guys go by? Sure, on the clock, sure. Yeah. They're going off hunting? I think they're going to pick up wood or they're off doing something, poking around in the bush somewhere. I think it's important to give thanks to the river.

Every time we pass by the bridge or see it in my vehicle, we always say, which means, thank you, big river. So we're doing that almost every day in my family. big river so we're doing that almost every day in my family. I taught my children that so that they can be reminded that it is the big river that sustained us. Like the salmon, the river is a living thing. It's an essential part of the story the Little Salmon people tell about themselves. A story now immortalized in a brightly colored book that lets children know who they are and where they come from. Hlukcho, big fish, makes a river. One day a boy, Dakana, was playing by a small creek. He saw a big fish, Hlukcho, struggling in the water and swimming towards him. He asked Hlukcho,

what is a big fish like you doing in this little stream? I am making it into a river, tege, Hlukcho replied. The fish passed by the boy and kept working his way upstream. and kept working his way upstream. But the boy kept following him and bugging Hlukcho. Finally, Hlukcho had enough, so he swallowed the boy. Luckily, the boy had a knife, mra, tied to his belt, so he cut open Hlukcho's stomach so he could get out. The boy struggled and struggled. He fought so hard to get out of Hlukcho. The boy knocked out two of his teeth. Hlukcho looked at him and then he said, I have your teeth now and I am going to keep them in my brain.

Hlukcho said, you should not bother me when I am doing powerful things. Making rivers is hard work. If you look closely today, when you open the brain of a salmon or a trout, you will see the boy's two teeth. When we get down the broad clay banks to the Yukon, the slate-grey river is moving fast and silent. So this is the river, and we have some boats here for hunting camp that's going on right now.

But it's fall time so there's a lot of yellow leaves everywhere and you can see everything's changing. It's really beautiful. It's really rocky along the river and sandy. We have some fish cutting boards here. And so these are traditionally what we use to gut the salmon, which makes it really easy. You just put a salmon right in there and then you just cut it open and slide the guts out into a pail. And right there is a fish cutting table.

You can see that they're very well used and worn. It looks like it hasn't been used for quite a while. And an old fish bucket there too. Yeah. And these fish cutting boards, it's sort of like almost a sawhorse with a V set up in the middle of it to hold the fish upright or on its back I guess. Yep. And all made out of wood and then our tables are made out of wood too

so that you can just wash it off after. And is this, you come set net all along here? Are there particular spots your family used to set the net? My family used to set net in Carmax, so we have an eddy right in Carmax, and then my grandmas, who we call them the generals, there's Grandma Susie, Grandma Eva, Grandma Grace, and Grandma May. There's a bunch of our grandmas who go to one fish camp.

And it has a huge cache. I remember at one point it had two caches, and they would just be filled with like all these beautiful fillets of salmon and we would go in there and try to steal little pieces that were half dried that were hanging in there but full of kids full of grandmas everybody would stop in there we would even have tourists who would stop in there and uh yeah my memories of fish camp were always, always very joyful, happiness. It was one time that I can remember all of our family getting together at once, where everybody knew that they were welcome.

And to listen to the stories, learn about our traditional values, our morals. They were all taught at fish camp as well as our language. And, you know, we would always share the first salmon and have a big feast of fish all together. And my aunties and my mom, they would make it a point for all of us to learn how to cut fish and dry fish and everything that comes along with it so there's there's a duties and respects that you have to pay to the salmon while you're while we're harvesting and so those things were all really important to learn and there was always you know tea and bannock and fish and there was just, it was a feast for our family. Yeah. And we played games out there. We got water from the spring,

so we would haul water in from the spring. And of course, you know, playing by the river, playing with the rocks and touching the waters and really just being connected to everything. While Chief Tom is speaking, Katana is playing on the riverbank, just like her mom once did at fish camp many years ago. Katana is making lovely cakes from the dark damp sand, decorating them with yellow leaves and sticks. Oh, look at the beautiful cake you made out of the sand. A nice sand lollipop, I like it. Katana, can we talk some fish, we smoked it, and then we cut it apart, and then we went boating, and we put down a fish net.

You probably enjoyed all of it. Was there anything in particular that you really loved? I loved going fishing. Fish eggs, too. And it has been a while now since you've been? Mm-hmm. Because the fish, the earth took it away. Before we had final agreements or treaties or anything

with any other government or culture, we had original agreements with the salmon. And because they came from such an ancient part of the northern Tshoni people, it's important that we not forget that and the relevance of those agreements before the modern Western government's way of looking at agreements and respect.

This is our governance, which is different than government. And I think in terms of modern governance, which is different than government. And I think in terms of modern governance, a lot of people wouldn't consider having an agreement with fish or having an agreement with land, which is, I think, a big part of the problem. Yeah, in our original agreements with the salmon, it was considered another culture. And so we, as people, are bound to respect that culture.

And so we're bound to respect that relationship. And we consider them as family and friends and we want to see them again. And we want to make sure that we have that continuous cycle. And so when we look after the salmon, the salmon are going to look after us. You're listening to Calling Them Back, a documentary from freelance contributor Genesee Keevil about the Little Salmon Carmack's First Nation in the Yukon

and the effect the loss of the salmon run is having on them. You can hear ideas on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. Also on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on US Public Radio and Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goldtar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast, Crime Story, comes in. Every week, I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime.

I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley. The list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. Only took four or five days. You had all that fish. Now it'll take you 10 years. I don't know. Life is going to be canned salmon.

For the small community of Little Salmon Carmack's First Nation in central Yukon, the salmon are an important part of both their livelihood and their culture. the salmon are an important part of both their livelihood and their culture. Freelance contributor Genesee Keevil spent a day with the First Nation at the site of one of their traditional fish camps on the banks of the Yukon River, where the community would gather to catch and dry salmon for the winter, and also to pass on the generational knowledge about how they have always lived and who they are. Now all of that is under threat. The salmon are almost entirely gone,

and the community is forced to look for new ways of living and being. But will the salmon ever return? This is Calling Them Back. With global politics and everything that's happening, you know, where does the voice of the salmon come through when you've got critical mineral strategies and you've got climate change and wars and, you know, all of these global issues that are massive

and this is just a piece of the puzzle but it's a warning it's definitely a warning to the human race do you remember when you first noticed the salmon disappearing yeah well i mean i could definitely see it happening throughout my life. So, you know, me being, as far as my memory could remember, I'll say like 10 years old, I remember there being an abundance of fish in the net. Then year after year, it became less and less. But significantly, we could see it, I would say, our family in the last 10 years. For First Nation communities further upriver, the salmon have been gone even longer.

Carl Sidney, former chief of the Teslin Tlingit Council, has been calling attention to declining salmon stocks for decades. We haven't fished for like 30 years now. Pretty sad, eh? We've got 30 year old adults here that haven't been to fish camp yeah having a fish camp I think

you don't just learn about salmon and fish you learn a lot of life skills you know survival and looking after yourself out on the land and having a relationship with the land this time of year right now we'd be putting up meat and berries and stuff but that's still done in the fish camp even though it's called a fish camp but there's still not lots of knowledge shared there with elders and

lots of kids, for sure. And that's how the kids learn, right? Working together. Today, it's not there anymore. Long ago, the northern Tshoni were a nomadic scattering of people spread across a vast swath of what is now Yukon Territory. Today, they live in small settlements throughout central Yukon. territory. Today, they live in small settlements throughout central Yukon. Little Salmon Karmak's First Nation has settled along the dusty North Klondike Highway. Like most Yukon First Nations,

they are self-governing. This means they can develop their own constitution and pass their own laws on their settlement land. They no longer live out in the bush, as they once did, but their wild, remote territory, and the animals, plants and fish that call it home, remains an extraordinary source of strength. There's an emotional, spiritual, physical and mental components to fishing and the all-around well-being of a northern Tshoni. Physically, you're hauling water, getting wood, setting the net, getting the poles, fixing the net, putting it in. You're cutting fish and drying fish and turning it over and watching it so you're constantly busy so physically you're really active and mentally it's grounding because you

know that you're doing something that's so important for your family for the next year and you know you have to be sober to do all these things because you're putting yourself into what you're processing for your family so you want to be in a good mind space and um and then uh emotionally you know you're connected to the land you're connected to the land, you're connected to the waters, you're connected to this completely other culture, which is the salmon. So you know that you're paying the respects and you know that you're contributing to our original agreements with the salmon. And then spiritually, you're following the processes that were handed down to you from your ancestors for time immemorial. So you're spiritually connected to everything. And it allows for yourself to be whole.

So a wholeness is what it creates, all of these components. Last year, the Yukon saw more drug-related deaths per capita than anywhere else in Canada. Like many First Nations, Little Salmon CarMax is struggling to cope with the devastating loss of so many of its young people. Because we're in an opioid crisis right now, and in the pandemic, we've done some assessments and some surveys, and the number one thing that people felt

that kept them connected to a good mental health and well-being was fish camp. So seeing that was a little bit heartbreaking because here we are in the middle of an opioid crisis with high substance abuse where people are literally passing away and the one thing that brings them joy and happiness is the one thing that we can't practice right now wearing blue rubber gloves angela johnny is holding a slippery skinned rabbit working her knife along the sinewy joints cutting roughly through the cartilage. Yeah, you gotta get all this out. Same thing here. You could really rip it off, you know. If it kind of

hurt, you use your knife and then you slit it. As she works, she's reminiscing about fish camp. The stories, the cutting of fillets, the fresh grilled salmon, the fun. Fish camp, they got all their family all together. It was fun. Everybody was out learning and a lot of cutting all day. Something was always be cooking. And the fish would be dry and then there's a big pot cutting all day. Something would always be cooking,

the fish would be drying in the big pot on the stove, and it was enjoyable for everyone. Angela can't teach the younger generation how to fillet salmon anymore, but at least she can still teach them how to cut up a rabbit. Where's those girls now? I just tell them what my mom showed me I like showing little children

my knowledge what I learned for myself everybody got their own knowledge but I got this is my way of cutting a rabbit that's what I'm going to do ok see look that's a guts my way of cutting the rabbit. That's what I'm going to do. Okay.

Okay, see, look. What is that? That's a guts. We all got guts. You know, you know, you can't really make fun of any animals. Don't make fun of it. We got to respect it.

Creators give us food. Okay. Somebody could do that one. It's been some years since Angela last skinned a rabbit. And as she gets to the front legs, she calls over elder Bill Johnny for advice. Bill. What?

You got to take this right off, cut it right off, eh? Yeah. That one is very nice. Is it? Yeah, that one is very nice. This one? Yeah, watch your hand. Because it comes right out like that. This one got cut. Yeah, you could just break it.

Bill is sitting by the fire, watching Angela cut rabbit. But it's the giant salmon of times long past he's dreaming of. Before even I was born, even before any trucks or vehicle was on the road, and there were so many salmon in the river. People used to go down the river with spear to catch salmon, they catch salmon. Big king salmon. Used to be more bigger than now, salmon, almost five feet.

And my mom tell me they used to drag people. They have to hang onto it. Almost dragged them into the river. Yeah not anymore. What does that mean for you in the winter and with not Oh, we all go to Superstore now. Speaking with some of the elders, they're saying that their bones are missing salmon. And so to me, that's really worrisome also because we already have a significant loss of our elders. It's very important to look after them in the utmost health and this is what they're used to. This is what they were raised on. The vitamins that come from the salmon are extremely important. It's the omegas which help you in all sorts of ways and then it's actually

full of vitamin d and so when we go into 24 hours of darkness traditionally you would take out your salmon your dried fish and you would get you know these shots of vitamin d that were natural and that's really important because then that if you don't keep up with your vitamin d you get cabin fever you get depressed you have all these mental health issues that arise from 24 hours of darkness and so we can see that happening and so it's really heartbreaking to hear you know my bones are missing salmon it's like they can they can feel it somewhere different that that's that's hindering their health and that's the whole coming back to how salmon are part of you yeah part of who we are

and we're part of who they are but we could see what's happening with the salmon as we can see what's happening with our people. All of the old, big, huge, wise salmon are disappearing and not there. All of our wise old elders, they're leaving us quickly. There's diseases that are killing off the salmon. There's diseases that are hurting the people. And then there's the drugs and the contamination there's diseases that are hurting the people and then there's the drugs and the the contamination that's happening in the ocean and to the salmon and then we can see that with our people with the opioid crises and so it's like it's all coinciding as to the disappearing of the salmon and the nation so it's it's scary to me to think like that,

but I think it's a warning for the rest of the world because that effect that those salmon have on the bears and the wolves and the people and the river streams, the microbacteria, the plants, the waters, everything is connected to that ecosystem. What do you think is causing this rapid and devastating decline? Well, it's cumulative effects. It's a whole bunch of different things added into one. It's, you know, environment and contamination. You've heard about the sewage,

the dams, there's mining effluent, there's climate change and the decline of glaciers and, you know, forest fires that increase the temperatures, the water temperatures. There's the isobito effect in the ocean. There's overfishing in the ocean. International water is not being mitigated. So there's an abundance of accumulative effects. There's the introduction of fish farming and parasites, diseases. Yeah. Outside the community hall next to a muddy ATV, River Ranger Doug Billy is sitting with a couple other men in ball caps and muck boots.

They're just back from a morning on the river, moose hunting. Oh, just one second here, I've got to think. What does salmon mean to us? It means a lot. It means our life. It means our livelihood, our culture, and it's depleting. So is all the wildlife. Like, we just came back from hunting and didn't see nothing. Just a bunch of white hunters.

Yeah, the salmon is depleted. And I don't think it'll ever come back. That's what I think. What do you think happened? Why do you think they've gone? A lot of things. Climate change. Mining.

You don't know what they're using. And down in that Alaska side, I think they're overfishing, and they're throwing away that fish that's just a byproduct when they're after something else. That's it. Anything else?

Yeah, I guess I just want to know how it makes you feel now, seeing the younger generation and their experience compared to what it was for you when you were young. I feel sorry for them. That's it. Because we're not going to see that population ever again. They're not going to know what salmon is unless they buy it in store. Some communities had chosen to bring in frozen fish. Can you speak about the option of bringing in frozen salmon to teach these teachings? Yeah, we did do some of that frozen bringing in different salmon and a lot of our people

it's not river salmon so the need or the want for it wasn't the same. And so in respect to that animal, we have to practice our Doli law also. And so we chose not to purchase it again due to our people's preference in the Yukon River salmon, our people's preference in the Yukon River salmon, as well as the fact that if all of the nations in the Yukon are purchasing salmon for their people, then there is money to be made in the Yukon for fisheries. And so once you start contributing to fisheries in a large amount, we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, then it's favorable for them to keep selling the fish that they're catching, that we should be catching, that they should be allowing to go up the river.

So it's contrary to the whole grand idea of what's happening here. There are many reasons salmon are struggling, but the elephant in the room is overfishing, especially in the ocean. In the Pacific alone, commercial fisheries harvest more than 2 million tons of salmon and steelhead annually. That's the equivalent weight of six Empire State buildings each year. Commercial hatcheries in Russia, Japan and America are also releasing millions of salmon into international waters every year. These fish compete with wild stocks for food and because they were raised in hatcheries, these salmon don't return to spawn in rivers like the Yukon.

These salmon don't return to spawn in rivers like the Yukon. You cut around the joint, all the joint. The leg, you see this part, all the joint? You cut it. This part, the arm too, same part, and then you have this part. Then you cut it. Auntie would have tell us more if it was there. I never cut this rabbit for a long time. You know, I enjoy this harvest. Even though we don't have that much salmon to hang up in our casks, I enjoy this hunting harvest camp because there's a lot of other things you can do, like rabbit and grouse.

It's lunchtime and in the kitchen they're dishing out steaming bowls of hamburger soup with bannock. It should have been moose stew but the moose are proving hard to find this year. Hopefully we'll get a ball pretty soon, but quicker. Probably maybe today. I think a lot of good hunters out there. Who's a hurt? Ooh. I want to make it into a smaller piece so everybody can have a little portion of it. Huh?

You know what I mean? Everyone sits down together at picnic tables and around the fire, talking, laughing and sharing stories. It's not just Yukon First Nations that need to work together to protect the salmon. Chinook, born here, eventually swim through Alaska and into the open ocean to live out most of their life. And then, seven years later, they've returned from international waters through Alaska back to the Yukon to spawn. You know, if we were to mobilize all together,

we've seen amazing things get done. And that's what needs to happen here. We need to be coming together as one. We need to be uniting. And we need to say, hey, look, what is happening is not okay. And what are the solutions? You had talked a bit about too, having traditional law and the traditional agreements. How could that tie in? Well, in a perfect scenario, if the world were to adhere to our traditional laws in salmon catching and the respect for salmon, we wouldn't see things in the ocean that we see now. So we have traditional laws of not messing with fish.

So that means that there's no fish farming that would have been allowed. We have traditional laws against dragging nets. That means that there would not be nets being dragged, taking all sorts of massive amounts of species and disrespecting the salmon in that way. So taking only what you need, that's simple. And if we could follow a traditional law in international waters, we would solve all of these problems that we have. It's listening to the people who come from these areas. It's Indigenous knowledge. It should be respected equally as to scientific management knowledge.

We can study the fish all we want, and we can do all of these tests and all of these assessments, but when you're just logical, it's protection of water and revitalization of the salmon, so it's leaving them alone, and that means in the ocean also. the salmon, so it's leaving them alone. And that means in the ocean also. Until recently, Alaska's commercial fishery, as well as subsistence fishermen along the Yukon River, harvested unlimited numbers of Chinook heading upstream to Yukon spawning grounds. A moratorium on Yukon River Chinook fishing was finally put in place in 2021. I feel, and I've always advocated this, that they have to shut the fishery down, even if it does come back,

they have to shut it down completely and just let the fish rebuild themselves. So I'm talking 20, 30 years. It's either that or it'll be gone. The Yukon River Panel was established to co-manage salmon stocks with the state of Alaska. Despite that, it's proving incredibly challenging to protect wild species that cross international boundaries. Carl Sidney sat on the Yukon River Panel for many years. He brought his traditional knowledge to the table, but felt nobody listened. Yeah, I guess the bottom line is these people that get these degrees

and make all the decisions in management don't listen to the people that are actually out on the land until it's too late. The same thing with climate change and global warming. Our elders knew about this 50, 60, probably 100 years ago our elders knew about it. And nobody listened. The same thing happened with the salmon.

But we all got to work together. We're all in this together. The fish know no borders, so. A few summers back, after the salmon disappeared, Chief Tom and her community turned to ceremony to honour and call back these fish. First Nations from all along the Yukon River were invited to one of Little Salmon's traditional fishing spots, Atachin Creek. Honouring the salmon, the Little Salmon people lit a sacred fire.

In traditional regalia, some danced, others drummed, and together they prayed, remembering a time when spiritual agreements with salmon were more powerful than politics, treaties, and scientific panels. Can you talk a bit about the ceremony where you called them back last year? Yeah, we had a gathering and we had some drumming and some singing and a fire and just paying respects to Tege Cho, which is the big river, it's the Yukon River, and to the salmon. We had elders and youth and the Northern Tshoni tribe do a calling back ceremony where, again, there was singing and prayers. And it's calling them back and saying, you know, we do love you and we do respect you.

And we remember our original agreements. Do you have hope that they will come back? Yeah, absolutely. You have to have hope. That's all we've got. Angela passes Chief Tom the second rabbit to cut up. Okay, so I didn't watch her do this, but... It's been a couple of years. I'm trying to get the the thighs off. Okay Angela I didn't

see how you did this part. You're gonna have to rub the bones there. My teeth. Like this? All the way? You see you could feel it. A little bit like that, and then break the bones. This way? Yeah. Chief Tom is not afraid to get her hands dirty. And she's not afraid to speak out. What really terrifies her is a future without salmon. It's a loss that she refers to as a soul wound.

Then we cook it and eat it. My Grandma May, going back to her, had given the advice before leaving to concentrate on happiness. And, you know, this is a piece of grief that we're going through. It's grief for the salmon. It's a soul wound. It hurts deep, deep down.

And it's hard to describe, and it's not going away. And we can't keep ripping the band-aid off and talking about it and we have to because that's just going to make us more sad so what we have is we have happiness and so it's bringing happiness to the community it's bringing happiness to the people it's bringing happiness to ourselves it's bringing happiness to our families And that was the advice that she had left. And I truly do my best to follow that because I believe in what she said. How are you doing that with bringing the happiness? Is it things like this heritage hunt camp?

Yeah, it's hunting camp. It's aunties' retreats. It's uncles' retreats. It's dances. It's more community events. It's getting together with the three northern Tshoni tribes and you know having people go places and visit each other for these different events that we're holding. It's having anything

that we can do to bring joy into the hearts of the people is where we're at. We try to move on. My First Nation, we try to do stuff to keep moving even though we don't have that much salmon. Like what we're doing now, we try to find other ways to do stuff to keep our traditional ways of living going. Not pouting, we're doing stuff. Hopefully one day we'd like to see full cash and teach our young people to cut and dry

and put in their freezers and eat some fresh fish head and stuff like that. We miss our salmon. We grasp on hope because this is the backbone of our nation. And so, you know, what is Little Salmon Carmex without salmon? On Ideas, you've been listening to Calling Them Back, freelance contributor Genesee Keevil's documentary about the Little Salmon Carmack's First Nation in central Yukon and their struggle to maintain their identity after the loss of the salmon migration. Special thanks to Chief Nicole Tom and the people of

Little Salmon Carmack's First Nation for their generosity in sharing their stories. Thanks also to Kenina Holmes and Ross Bragg at CBC in Whitehorse. The program was produced by Philip Coulter and Genesee Keevil.

Technical production Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Acting senior producer, Lisa Godfrey. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayed. Crow builds a fish trap. Long ago, before the Hodehudan,

when the world was young, Crow decided to build a fish trap on the Yukon River. He tried one place but got no fish, so he tried a second place at Ti Cho Na Deji, Big Rocks All Standing Up, also called now Five Finger Rapids. He built his trap a different way the second time, but it went right across the river, and he got no fish. So he followed the river down to its mouth at the ocean, and there he met Salmon Woman. He married her and brought her and her slave back to the Tshoni country. She made salmon appear in the water with her fingers and toes, and that is how salmon came to the Yukon River. with her fingers and toes, and that is how salmon came to the Yukon River.

From this, Crow learned that it is doli to build a salmon trap right across a creek or river. You must always leave a channel for them to pass further up. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.