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The People

Voices of Salmon Nation

Friends of Wild Salmon

FRIENDS OF WILD SALMON organized a May 2005 gathering in Terrace, British Columbia to express the spiritual, cultural, and economic importance of wild salmon.

Arnie Narcisse
Chairman/Speaker of the BC Aboriginal Fisheries Commission
My mother's people come from a Stlatlimx village, about 300 miles upstream of the Pacific Ocean. We dry salmon there each and every year. My father's people are Blackfeet, from the state of Montana. The only reason I mention that is the fact that: when the buffalo were strong, my father's people were strong. With the demise of the buffalo, so went their strength as well. It's something I never want to see happen here: the demise of wild salmon. Everything connects us to the wild salmon. My grandson is six years old, and he comes to the river with us. I thought about how I never want him to say, "My grandfather used to do that." I always want him to be able to say, "I do what my grandfather taught me how to do."

Dave Porter
First Nations Summit
I see before me the people of this region, people of many walks of life, of various interests, of various ethnicities. Many of us in public life work for this kind of development, to forge consensus and commonality of view on the important issues that affect us. You've done a tremendous job in showing to us, and to the rest of the province, a degree of unity that has not been seen in this province for a long, long time.

The whole question of salmon resources is fundamental to aboriginal society. What we heard today from the scientists today is: salmon farms kill a lot of salmon. If that is the case, then we are looking at a huge impact on the culture of the people who depend on this resource, an impact that would be devastating to say the least. So the First Nation Summit follows Friends of the Wild Salmon in calling for a moratorium. Our responsibility is to let the government hear clearly how we feel. And I'd like to add my personal view as to what should be done in this case, and that is: get them out of the water, put them on the land.

Chief Darren Blaney
Xwemalhkwu First Nation
The environment and our culture are one, they go hand in hand. For us to be practicing our culture a thousand years from now, we have to look out for our environment. Clearly, the federal government, DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans), and the provincial government, though their various agencies, are not doing their job. They're in a conflict of interest.

Bill Cranmer
Musgamagw Tsawataineuk First Nation
I'll tell you what we have seen in our own eyes, in our territory in the Broughten Archipeligo. As we speak, the sea lice are killing the salmon farm. We cannot over-emphasize the danger of the open-net fish farm operations, not only to the salmon, but to the clams, the herring, and everything that swims in the ocean. We have been opposing the fish farms in our territory right from the start. You hear the Premier and all the other ministers saying, "We have the strictest regulations in the world." But they won't enforce them. If they enforced the regulations, these fish farms wouldn't be in our territories.

Stan Dennis
Laxkwalaams First Nation
It overwhelming to see what the science panel has presented, and still, we're not being heard. Look at all the people here. We have the commercial sector sitting down with the recreational section, river fishermen sitting down with First Nations. We're all in this together. We ask the political parties that are running in the provincial election to listen to our message. We want a moratorium, we will get a moratorium.

John Lewis
GiTxaala Treaty Society
We need to sustain our resources, and the resources will sustain our people. It's a reciprocal effect, and that's one of the laws we base our society on. We are here to support the premise of wild salmon. We believe there are better ways to create economic development for our people, than to choose a development that has high, high risk for the resources in our territories. It is our hope and our prayer that this forum, and the information that is passed on here, will open the eyes of all British Columbians. For we're all here with one common purpose. None of us want take our children or our grandchildren to a museum to see what sockeye salmon looks like.

Fish farming is a serious issue on this coast. When you can't even touch that fish with your bare hands, there's something wrong with that. It's imperative that we do our homework on this issue. If we look at the results from Alaska, prior to offshore oil and gas development, there were no baseline studies done. Now that there are issues arising from offshore oil and gas, the industry is saying "We don't accept your recommendations, because you didn't make these baseline studies before our industry arrived." So one of the issues that we raise here, is that we need support to do these baseline studies, before fish farms come in. The bottom line in our view is that fish farms are dangerous — on or off the land.

Roy Henry Vickers
Tsimshian First Nation
Tomorrow or the next day, or the day after, I ask you to do something that the elder Cecil Paul taught me. Go down to the river, take some water, put in on your eyes. Take some water, put it on your ears. Take some water, put it over your heart. So that you can see, what needs to be done to protect that river. So that you can hear, the truth spoken by those that love that river. So that you can continue to feel that love, and pass it on to your children, and grandchildren, and friends.

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