PORT ANGELES — For most folks, fish mean food. For some, they mean money.
For Northwest Native Americans who are “people of the water,” fish mean both these things — plus history and hope for the future.
Marlin Holden, a Jamestown S’Klallam elder, made that clear Thursday to members of a Governor’s Ocean Policy Work Group that held a public forum in the Clallam County Courthouse.
“Hear my words today,” he told the seven members of the panel.
“The Dungeness River, when I was a boy, I could hear the fish run up the river.”
Salmon have all but vanished from the Dungeness. Abalone, from which tribes make button blankets, has disappeared. Eelgrass is dying.
Holden, whose great-great grandfather signed the Treaty of Point No Point in 1855, said: “It’s so important to get our young folk interested in our natural resources — teaching them to trap fish, teaching them to geoduck, teaching them to crab.”
But the fish, the clams, the crabs — all are threatened, he said.
“We are struggling to hold onto our culture.”
Sewage from Victoria
Holden urged the work group to combat foreign factory-fishing operations in the Pacific Ocean and to stop Victoria from dumping raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“There comes a time when you’ve got to stop talking and start doing some things,” he said.
Holden’s comments echoed the concerns of Doug Morrill, fisheries manager for the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
“Tribes are trying hard to reconnect with their cultures,” he said, including traditional diets rich in seafood.
“The ocean and the forests were the supermarket/pharmacy of the tribes,” he said.
Restoring traditional foods could reverse increasing heart disease and diabetes among Northwest Native Americans — but doing so carries a different threat to health, he said.
“It’s quite alarming, the amount of toxins in our fishing resources,” said Morrill, citing heavy metals, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.
Lyn Muench, environmental planning manager for the Jamestown S’Klallam, said the tribe has spent millions of dollars restoring the salmon habitat of Jimmycomelately Creek and now is turning to restoring the Dungeness.