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Salmon & Cans
by Victoria Pitkanen Stopp tel Io
My dad was a commercial fisherman, he ran a
tr o lle r . the Sellle, out of Ilwaco moat of his life His
father before him was a fisherman too, a gillnettar I
remember what I refer to as "the last salmon' that my
dad brought me when i was still living in Portland It
was a stiver, rightly cal led a coho, and d»di, seem
that big That was in the early 8 0 s fishing was
already bad then My dad sold his boot and commercial
liscense not long afterward Fish have been abtg part
A Sraall Uprising
I t s almost sunny that first Monday The bluffs above the falls
at Oregon City seem ready for a rainbcxw Nose in the wind,
we re feeling our nets and our nurse, young Tasha. shortens our
teaah crossing the high**» to the overlook
Many white eyes have come The ones from Channel 6 with a
wagon with a satellite dish The attraction du )our is far below
us on the rocks Against a backdrop of the ugliest paper m ill
this side of M insk. a small band of tribal fishermen are
building the firs t of several scaffolds
They re here because, for the firs t time in 1 0 ,0 0 0 years,
not enuugh spring salmon male it up the Columbia to meet even
the River People's ceremonial needs Next to us, a descendant of
white settlers squints and spits
'They’re pushing it If you ask me '
Stifling a snarl, Nurse Tasha explains sweetly that theRiver
People worship the salmon
'Whoever heard of praying to a fish7 '
On the other side of us, a young woman is just back from
driving home to fetch her binoculars
'This is something to tell your grandchiltFen,' Tasha says,
fillin g her in on the police boat waiting to pinch people catching
fish that are theirs by treaty right
“You re kidding,'the young woman says
’ That s really
crummy '
You could say that, yes
Building a scaffold in fast water is slow work
The afternoon
drifts by, punctuated by rumor
The fishermen were shot at
last night Their firs t scaffold was torn down and pitched into
the riv e r by good old boy fishing dudes you don t see in beer
commercials (Thegunshots were never corroborated, the
midnight vandalism was )
An Indian couple comes by with their children ( V new
friend hands the little boy her binoculars There are smiles
and thankyous She leans over and cups her hand to our ear
'I'v e never met an Indian before "
Progress in small things
We don't wear a watch but Nurse Tasha s»/s it was a little
past six when the firs t eagle arrived Muted oohs and ahhs from
the crowd On cue, the sun comes out and the young woman
shartRS her eyes
"I've never seen an eaQle before either "
And then there are two They circle the Indians and the rush
hour traffic
"Is this obvious, or what7 " Nurse asks no one in particular
"It's like they know." the young woman se/s
The settler concerned with pushy Indians snorts, spits, and
gets into his Buick
There are throe eagles now
'Have you ever7 'a n old woman asks her husband He shakes
his head, watching one endangered species circling another
Down on the rocks, the police boot arrives
And now there are five eagles Circles within circles,
drifting off to the south We watch, all of us, listening to the
wind, feeling a fragile sense of place, ana wonder ing about the
roots of coincidence
stove Those iMys are jx w
My husband on the other hand, is an architect And
kind of a nut When we re out walking and he sees an
aluminum can along our path, he exclaims
'hey, another s m o ltf and puts it in his packet
he , not a nut. maybe he s a radical He's been
Maybe
involved in the politics of energy for a long time
When he sees aliminum lying around on the ground, he
equates it with the fish that are killed by the dams
Yeah, a lot of people think the fish ought to do all
right going up the fish laddpr s They do It s the young
fry . the smolts. coming downstream that the dems
really k ill It's estimated that 9 0 < of the smolts
twadnd for the see are ground up in the turbines of one
dam or another and the rest are put at r isk by the
intense turbulence going over the spillways
Whet does this h ^ e to cto with aluminum cans7
W ell, the aluminum industry is reevily subsidized by
cheep alert rice I {xiwer provided by the Bonneville
Power administration's dam system We all benefit
from this subsidized power, we pay about half the
rate of the rest of the country for our electricity But
the aluminum industry gets and even biggw subsidy
- - they pay less for a kilowatt hour than you da in
your household And the amount ttiey buy accounts for
2 5 1 of BPA s revenue, which, when you think II
through, means they are using more than 2 5 1 of
BPA s output Infact.onedam ontheOolum biawas
built lust for aluminum production
So, our cheep household power . and even ctieaper
power for aluminum production, ts directly leading to
the dscimation of salmon runs This ts what the
environmentalist are talk mg about when they refer to
Real spring, not that phoney
calendar ic one that happens in March All who live on
the Coast know March is winter Almost seeming, in fact
to be winter taking vengBanee on us for having survived
again tts g ra / onslaught But M a /, late May and June,
that is spring
The first tender asparagus from the bed, the firs t
radish eaten unwashed in the garden, the firs t tiny,
tender artichokes steamed and eaten cold with
vinaigrette, no calendar can so speak of Spring
Spr mg Chinook now enter streams large and smal I up
and down the coast Not all, but a surprising number of
coastal streams still harbor a few of that deep bodied,
small headed trib e These are mostly native fish,
secretive survivors who have escaped the often lethal
attentions of the Oregon Dept of F Ish and W ild life Again
this year I took one It was a fiesty male as bright and
shiny, and symbolic of life from death, as a silver
Easter Egg
I wish I believed I could feel the same depth of
reverence native peoples fuel for the firs t salmon of the
year I doubt it a possible The resonances of ml Hen la
of cultural background aren t available to me As in any
experience, I can only get from it what I bring with me
I knew not to cut him crosswise Old Chief Concomly
war ned lew is and Clar k's men after their winter at what
later became Astor ia, not to cut the firs t fish crosswise
To do so. he said, was to cu, them off Cut them
lengthwise and yuu extend them
So I cut him lengthwise I took the two gleam inq aides
for myself and 3lid the carcass back into the water to add
its organic richness to the stream as he would have with
his after spawning death
One half I smoked over older to share with friends, the
other is in the freezer for a later service
( Note It is illegal to clean fish and leave what ODFW
calls 'the offal" In the water You can be cited and fired
for tt Be careful )
"externalities ’ Externalities are the hidden costs,
the environmental coats, the social coats of a
particular industry or course of action Few public
officials want to dnol with this part of the problem At
a recent meeting in Ilwaco regarding closing the ocean
salmon fishing season, a Washington State Fisheries
official respondBd that the dams weren't relevant to
the discussion - - he claimed the focus was on lower
Columbia fish, not u p -riv e r runs How a salmon
fisherman can tell the difference between a Snake
River salmon vs a Cowlitz fish, I don't know Ido
know, however, that the aluminum industry is a big
&
• u \ 11 RING S3 UiBU£KS COPFBI
• u n >1 SELECTION ( )F MAC ¡AZINES
• HEALTHFUL SNACKS
one, bureaucratic, with centralized capital. H e a r
afford to lobby congressional representatives or
launch law suits The independent-mindBd. small
businessman, who is the typical commercial
fisherman or charter hoot operator, is no match for
this goliath
But there are some things that w{ can d i we can
recycle every bit of aluminum that crosses our path
That s important because it takes I/2 0 t h of (he
electricity to make a new can from recycled aluminum
rather than from virgin aluminum I other words, if
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M A N Z A N ITA , OR 97130
It took a dollar s worth of electricty to make a new
can, it would lake only 5< to make a can from recycled
aluminum We can remember to turn off lights when
we leave the room We can insulate our houses We
can lower the ttier mostat We can dry our laundry
outside rather than run an electric dryer I do it -
my neighbor soys I hove laundry outside all winter
We can ancour age our repr esentatives to legislate a
deposit on beverage cans so people with less
self-dtsiplm e w ill be motivated to recycle We can
also encourage a solar tax credit so that more people
w ill put solar water heaters m their houses (Xir
fishing towns along the Columbia could celebrate "We
can live with less' da/ when we turn off the lights,
the appliances, just to see whet impact lowered
electric consumption could have After a ll, fisher men
and the tr ¡bes are giving up their livelihoods to try to
save salmon runs
My husband stopped eating salmon a few years ago,
he didn t want to oat one of the last of an endangrr ad
species But, a few da/s ago, we opened the last jar of
C
oyote
D i s t r i c a t i en
W h en y o u
w ant the
w ord
out
3 1 0 -9 4 6 4
r .o .
r « r t l « B d OM
of my fam ily life Oping to the docks with my other
grantee to buy sturgeon Extended family meals
centered on fish head stew or fried sturgeon or a big
lelmon roast or smelt grilled on the basement wood
Spring is here
salmon that my dad canned - It made a nice meal and
« I* «
was food for thought
I'm not a native I'm not a member of the Chinook
trib e, or a Umatilla But I. too, see salmon as more
than food tor the bod/ I was lucky enough to see the
fishing at Celilo Falls when I was a kid TheOregon
QUALITY TOOLS, INC.
738-3074
_ 2966 Kwy 101 N
■ Sewda. OR 97138
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x
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Tom Brownson
oenis
GWN0ER5
compressors
o-evw»
STATIONARY EQUIPMENT
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I have every sympathy w ith the
American who was so h o rrifie d by
what he had read of the effects of
smoking that he gave up reading
I ord Cones ford
Natural Resources Council is suggesting that we take
down or stop construction on 18 dams in the
Nor thwest in order to save salmon runs on the br ink
of extinction I d like to go one step further I'd like
to take down one of those big dams I d like to see
Celilo again
tn my lifetime
I confess that I cannot understand how we can
plot lie. cheat and commit murder abroad and
remain humane honorable trustworthy and
trusted at home
Archabald Coi
VPPLRLEFTtO&E 3UKE. 1W
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