Salmon Burial

The Columbia River once provided a habitat that allowed Salmon-parents to spawn sixteen million Salmon-children annually; its synergistic formations of rapids and pools - to which salmon are especially adapted to - no longer exist downstream from its human fortified dams. The River’s winding side-streams and vast shoreline wetlands have been drained for land or flooded for power; the Salmon and their Indigenous partners lost millions of acres of promised and cared-for lands when the Bonneville Dam was constructed in 1934, flooding its uplands.

While foraging for native Willows to weave with, I came across a fish jaw washed up on the rocky shore; this piece began by working with feelings of anger and the deaths of Salmon and their violent decline as species, but turned into a burial; a memorial. Giving care for and spending time with this once living Salmon became important to this piece and to me personally; it became a being who helped me through the act of processing my internalized grief for the Salmon. 

I buried the Salmon and decorated their resting place - a spot which once was submerged and could be again, if the states of Oregon and Washington would allow for the removal of the dam, as called for by the Yakama and Lummi Nations. I prepared the site with my hands, Willow, song, and hope. A hope that my re-planted and watered Willow branches will take root in the sandy soil and grow alongside its fellows, taking in carbon dioxide and gifting us oxygen. A hope that the Salmon, the Sturgeon, the Orca, and all other beings who rely on the unbarricaded River will soon be able to have their homelands, the land to which they are symbiotically evolved for, reclaimed and stewarded once more. 

Today, the dam allows for just one million Salmon to spawn each year.