Smoke Signals 3
AUGUST 1 5, 2007
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To the initiated, lamprey is traditional, and tasty, Native fare, but to newcomers, intestinal fortitude is required.
By Ron Karten
The summer interns at Natural
Resources were bathed in blood. It
was all over the counters and walls.
Heads and gills of lamprey
breathed their last in a giant bucket,
the offal of an awful lot offish about
to become a traditional feast.
It looked like a crime scene on the
overcast afternoon of July 24, but
the cleaning was really a traditional
prelude to the roasting and, on this
day, a not-so-traditional tasting
of the longstanding food staple of
Northwest Native peoples.
Maligned for being oily, and often
boiled first to extract some of that
oil, lampreys have long been an
important food
for Natives
particularly
because of that
oil as long
as they've both
been here in
the Northwest.
"Oil is ener
gy," said Natu
ral Resources
Fish and Wild
life Coordinator Kelly Dirksen, who
earlier in the day, with Tribal mem
ber Greg Archuleta, returned to Wil
lamette Falls to harvest yet another
batch of lamprey, the ones now being
prepared in a kitchen unit behind the
Natural Resources building.
"They don't eat for a year when
they return to fresh water to
spawn," Dirksen said. "That oil
sustains them for that year, and
they use it to develop their eggs."
Without bones, lamprey shrink
during the year, Dirksen said,
making it difficult to tell adults
from juveniles.
"They've never gotten the atten
tion that salmon gets, but they're a
very important fish," he said.
Like salmon, lamprey swim out to
the ocean and return each year to
spawn. During many seasons, when
salmon are scarce, predators turn
to lamprey for food instead of wip-
"It's like a cross
between a pork chop
and a mackerel. "
Ann Dornfeld of Oregon
Public Broadcasting
after tasting a lamprey
ing out the salmon, Dirksen said.
"In the old days," said Chinook
Tribal member Greg Robinson, "oils
was what it was about."
Robinson is a cultural resource,
designer of the Chinook longhouse
at Ridgefield, Wash., and the main
chef for the day's lamprey and
salmon feast.
"When the fish cooked and
dripped their oils, Indians used to
put shells underneath to catch the
oil because it was that important a
source of energy," he said.
And it helped Native peoples
regulate themselves, balancing the
effects of roots and other vegetation
on their digestive system, Robinson
said.
With salmon
and lamprey
slow-cooking by
the fire pit, the
big question
about tasting
the delicacy re
mained. There
wasn't any
doubt in the
mind of Oregon
Public Broadcasting's Ann Dorn
feld, who was back to complete the
story she'd started weeks earlier at
Willamette Falls.
"It's good," said Dornfeld after
her first taste. She looked at a
blackened piece where she first bit
into the lamprey and took another
bite. "It's like a cross between a
pork chop and a mackerel."
But for the work crew and at least
one Smoke Signals reporter, it took a
dose of barbecue sauce before an at
tempt could be made. And when the
time came, the fish did taste something
like a cross between pork chop and
mackerel, and the lamprey did require
another look and another bite.
In the end, however, a big ques
tion hung in the air.
"Who wants to take the leftover
lamprey home?" asked Tribal Public
Affairs Director Siobhan Taylor.
Nobody answered. B
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Above, Chinook Tribal member and
Culture Specialist Greg Robinson sets a
stick of lamprey pieces to cook at the side
of the traditional alder wood fire where
the salmon, held straight between pieces
of cedar with little skewers, has already
started cooking. In the background,
Tribal member Greg Archuleta and
Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Ann
Dornfeld watch.
To the right, Dornfeld tries the lamprey
for the first time.
Below, Archuleta cuts a lamprey into chunks
and Robinson forces the chunks onto
skewers made of green cedar branches.
Traditional style for cooking lamprey and salmon.
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