Salmon are unifiers.
That was the encompassing theme of Tuesday’s cultural presentation at Kenai Peninsula College’s McLane Commons. It was also part of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s collaborative salmon stewardship project, which looks at the cultural history of salmon through archival materials and interviews with tribal members.
Over 100 different sources were pulled for the presentation, which highlighted that salmon brings beings, places and objects together.
“Salmon have people too, which was a key theme of this discussion tonight,” said Adam Dunstan, an assistant professor of anthropology at the college. He led the evening’s discussion.
“We think of salmon, often, as just a food, but I said they’re very much like a thread that twines all of these different things together," Dunstan said. "Much like the thread that goes throughout a quiver, or that they’re the keystone of an arch.”
Salmon were, and still are, extensively used by the Dena’ina people in many different ways.
While salmon is a food, the resource has more than 20 non-consumption historical uses. Among them, salmon have been used as bait and offerings on hunting trips. Soft pieces of salmon have also been given to weaning babies. Salmon eyes have even been the subject of practical jokes, sometimes placed in chewing tobacco.
And, salmon is used throughout the Dena’ina language. Dena’ina words for June and July, for example, have the word “salmon” in them. Dunstan also says there’s more than 30 Dena’ina words for salmon anatomy.
“Including terms we don’t have in English, like dark fish blood along the backbone, 'k’chashga,'" Dunstan said. "Obviously not a term we have in English, so incredibly specific language we have for salmon, which is always a tell mark sign of how important, culturally, a species is when you need to be that precise.”
According to the discussion, salmon is also present in Dena’ina religious ceremonies and stories.
Much like today, salmon was a trade commodity around the nineteenth century. Back then, it was traded with other Dena’ina villages and Sugpiaq people on Kodiak Island. It was a default item of trade among European explorers and during colonization.
“It is pretty much impossible to imagine what Kenai River/Dena’ina life would be like without salmon," Dunstan said. "The villages were built around them, the qeshqa system was built around them, the timing, everything was built around salmon.”
Dunstan says salmon is irreplaceable and that many relationships among people and animals have been built around salmon. He says to this day, salmon and Dena’ina culture are fundamentally connected.
“If we’re not including the cultural voices of the people who have been here since time immemorial, to me, that’s as if we’re taking a huge portion of the story and just leaving it on the floor," Dunstan said. "There’s this important, critical element of the people who have been intertwined with salmon, again, since time immemorial, that has to be a part of any sort of discussion about salmon.”
The discussion was the latest from Kenai Peninsula College’s showcase series on Alaska culture. While there’s no regular schedule, upcoming events are listed on the college’s Facebook page.
