People of the Salmon

I thought telling a story about salmon reintroduction in northeast Oregon would be a fairly straightforward task, but after more than four years into this project creating a radio production and podcast, it was a daunting task. I can say that finally I grasp the complexity of the subject. I hope it will satisfy those who take the hour to listen. It is worthy of listening because of the emotional impact of Nez Perce, or Nimi’ipuu, voices. You just can’t convey such deep feelings in printed words on a page. Then there are the songs of rivers. Our story is so very rich with natural sound that you will be right there along the Columbia River, and the Wallowa, and the Lostine. I will imagine myself as a Sockeye Salmon to take you there. This is how it once was for me in the Wallowa when the Nimi’ipuu lived here.

I began life as a fragile, single egg laid by an adult female fish in a gravely nest [called a redd] in the shallow of a pristine, wild river [the upper Wallowa] that has flowed down from the surrounding high mountain wilderness [the Eagle Cap] towards a glacial lake [Wallowa Lake]. My mother mysteriously found her own birthplace after traveling 600 riverine miles from the salty ocean, where she had lived, grown and matured into a beautiful fish. She magically transformed herself to live in fresh water again with one inherent, instinctual purpose: to give birth to me and hundreds like me, expending the last of her life-force and then dying only to have her decomposing body feed the trees, the bears and so many other wild creatures.

But first, there is lovemaking. An adult male fish, scarlet in color, traveling the same remarkable journey, swims close by and courts her, only to release a cloud of sperm over all of us. My father faces the same fate of dying afterwards. Neither adult has eaten in this long journey home, and the last of their life force is for us, soon-to-be sockeye salmon.

I am one of the very fortunate fertilized eggs out of hundreds who will float down into that glacial lake and spend the next year or so physically maturing into a fry, then a smolt, until I grow large enough to swim downstream all the way to the ocean, going through my own transformation from fresh water fish to saltwater fish. Some distant day, if the fates allow, I will return as an adult female sockeye salmon to begin this circle of life all over again.

I make it sound so easy! But this cycle of birth/death/new life is fraught with challenges. There are those who prey upon me for their own sustenance and survival. There are obstacles that I must find my way around. And yes, 600 miles to the ocean is a very long way to swim, regardless of whether I’m small or fully grown. But this is how Great Mystery created me, and to be kin to the Nimi’ipuu. Our agreement to each other is mutually beneficial. We are inextricably linked—human and salmon. The question I ask these many generations later is more about our mutual survival. It is an uncertain future; and, yet the Law established at the time of Creation is strong: the Salmon will give of themselves, and the Nimi’ipuu will protect and provide for us in the ways their ancestors agreed to do. If the future is to be a hopeful one, it will take all of us working together. It is an urgent time for humility and reparation on the part of all human beings. So we thrive together.

Jane Fritz

5/13/25