‘They feel their spirits’: thousands of salmon fry released in syilx Okanagan ceremonies

After spending the morning beneath the blistering sun down by the banks of nx̌ʷntk’ʷitkʷ (the Columbia River), cewel’na Leon Louis enjoys a moment under the shade of a nearby park gazebo in snɬuxwqnm (Castlegar).

Just a few moments prior, Leon and dozens of other syilx Okanagan Nation members, with representatives from the Ktunaxa Nation, were joined by hundreds of students from local schools for a ceremonial release of ntyitix (salmon) fry into the river.

As Louis stares out towards the roaring stream from the comfort of Millennium Park, lines of giddy children hurry past him towards shuttles that will take them back to their classrooms for the afternoon. 

“Those kids, they raise the salmon from the tiny eggs,” Louis, a syilx Knowledge Keeper, said. “They know. They’ve seen them — they feel their spirits.”

The fry that the students had released came from Okanagan Nation Alliance’s kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ hatchery in snpinktn (Penticton). The fish spawn and necessary equipment required to help raise them throughout the year are donated to classrooms from Okanagan Nation Alliance, as part of their Fish in Schools program.

The event on May 13 was just one of the 10 ceremonial fry releases that the Okanagan Nation Alliance hosted between May and June throughout their territory. This year marked the 20th annual year of their commitment — kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ (cause to come back) — of bringing salmon back to their waterways.

A total of 60 elementary and secondary schools participated in the ceremonial releases this year, which all varied in size. 

The first ceremony took place at akɬ xʷuminaʔ (Shingle Creek) on May 2 and saw about 20,000 fry released that day, with around 900 people in attendance. The ceremony at sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitkʷ Park (Okanagan Falls Provincial Park) a few days later was much smaller in scale, with a handful of community members releasing 4,000 fry.

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This year, a total of 1.5 million sc̓win (sockeye salmon) and around 5,000 sk’lwist (Chinook salmon) were released from the hatchery — with the help of schools — into waterways throughout the territory, according to Okanagan Nation Alliance. 

‘Everything depends on the water’

During the salmon release ceremonies, prayers are said before singers play drum songs, making way for students and community members to free the small fry from paper or plastic cups into the water. 

Before Louis releases fry into the water during ceremony, he said he likes to say a prayer for the fish and speak to them first. 

“(The baby salmon) face me and listen to everything I have to say. When I finish my prayer, it does circles, and then I turn it loose,” Louis said.

“When we turn it loose, the land, the water — everything is happy. It’s come home. They say, ‘Welcome home.’ ”

After initial prayers are made during ceremony, students are invited to line up one-by-one near the edge of the water. They’re each handed a cup, containing anywhere from one to a small handful of salmon fry.

They’re reminded to keep one hand over the cup before they release the fish, as the baby salmon have a tendency to jump from the holder at any given opportunity. The students are also instructed to gently pour their cups into the water, not throw them.

While bending down near the water, students and community members are encouraged to pray for the fish or wish them smooth travels before setting them on their way. 

Many of the children are excited to see their fishes go upon releasing them. “Swim safe!” or “Come home soon!” are the typical send-offs they will give to the fish. Sometimes they’ll hang by the water for a moment and watch the fishes make their way down stream.

Depending on the size of the ceremony, some of the salmon fry are released down a slide-tube, or come streaming out of a high-pressure water pump to conclude the gathering.

The ceremonies throughout the various release points were often led by different Knowledge Keepers depending on the site. 

While Okanagan Nation Alliance has been engaging in salmon reintroduction efforts for 20 years now, syilx Knowledge Keeper caylx Richard Armstrong said that he was raised to do the ceremonial work that he’s been conducting for the last 40 or 50 years.

Armstrong was present and helped lead many of the ceremonies this year, including the ones at snɬuxwqnm (Castlegar) and Slocan Lake on May 13.

“When we first started doing this, there were only one or two of us. I was tasked with the responsibility,” Armstrong said, who is nearing 80 years old.

“It’s all about teaching the young folks and everybody about why it’s important to do the ceremony.”

“We’re not only talking about the salmon — we’re talking about every living thing that depends on the water, including you and me,” he said. 

“Everything depends on the water.”

Tyson Marsel, a hatchery biologist for Okanagan Nation Alliance, said that ceremony is about wishing — and praying — for a safe journey for the salmon.

“The ceremony is a huge part of what we do in bringing these salmon home,” Marsel said, especially for the Chinook who are “really struggling.”

“There’s just not a lot of Chinook making it back,” he said. “Historically, there used to be really good numbers, but there’s a depletion of the run.”

He cited a number of different factors impacting Chinook returns, such as climate change and the usual suspects of dams and overfishing.

“Every fish counts. We’re doing whatever we can to bring them back,” he said.

Last year, the hatchery reared up to five million sockeye salmon and released them throughout the territory with the help of local schools, compared to this year’s 1.5 million. This year alone, 650,000 sockeye went into Mission Creek.

“Mission Creek, luckily enough, has a lot of ideal spawning habitat compared to some other systems that are connected to the Okanagan Lake system,” he said. “That’s why we’re putting a lot of our fish into Mission Creek — it just comes down to that availability of spawning habitat.”

As for last year’s returns, Marcel said that spawning numbers recorded at Okanagan River were about 18,000, short of the hatchery’s statement goal of 30,000.

He hopes that this year’s return numbers reach that goal, as well as rearing up to five million sockeye salmon at the hatchery again.

“I look forward to the future, to that 50-year-mark or however far we keep going, until we finally create that wild, sustainable run,” he said.

For Louis, he said that you need to have faith and trust in the revitalization process, no matter its volatility.

“If I didn’t believe, I wouldn’t be here. You have to believe,” he said.

“My spirit keeps me going. I have the spirit of all my ancestors, and they’ve done this before. They were all here being a part of this ceremony. Their spirit, from the beginning of time, they were all here to witness this with us.”

‘One day, we’ll be able to fish in here again’

Before colonization, the Columbia River was plentiful with fish — it was once the greatest salmon-producing river system in the world. Their journey from the river’s upper region takes them hundreds of kilometres down through the “United States” before draining into the Pacific Ocean and going up to Alaska, before returning to their spawning habitats four or five years later.

“A long time ago, before contact, we used to have the salmon ceremony here, where the Kootenay River and Columbia River come together, just up here,” Louis said.

The confluence of the two rivers was a regular gathering site for salmon ceremonies, not just for the syilx Okanagan Nation, but in community with the Secwépemc, the Nlaka’pamux and the Ktunaxa Nations, Louis said.

“We did that for thousands of years. We all come here and we have ceremony.”

Hundreds of people would spend an entire day fishing for salmon along the rivers’ banks. Whatever they could harvest would then be gathered and placed in the middle of the communities in attendance for distribution.

“The salmon chief will go around and say, ‘Here’s one for you. Here’s one for you.’ Keep going around until it’s all given away,” Louis said.

“When we leave, nobody leaves with nothing. Everybody has something. That’s how we live.”

Things began to change in the late 1800s when settlers began to overfish the Columbia and its tributaries. Dams were created and channels were carved out, erasing salmon spawning habitats in the process. As time went on, salmon stocks rapidly diminished. 

“Ninety per cent of the salmon populations have been wiped out, because 90 per cent of the habitat is gone. Those numbers go together,” nk’lxwcin Chad Eneas, a syilx Traditional Ecological Knowledge coordinator at the En’owkin Centre, said.

At this year’s final ceremonial release location at the Salmon River near “Falkland” on June 19, syilx Knowledge Keeper Eric Mitchell told the Youth in attendance that when he was young in the 1980s, there was a time where you it seemed could walk across the river on top of the abundance of salmon.

“That’s how many there was,” Mitchell said. “When there’s salmon in here in the future, you can remember this day, and you can say, ‘Hey, I was part of that.’ One day, we’ll be able to fish in here again. Maybe not in my time, but in your time for sure.”

Daniella Roze, a clinical counselor with the Okanagan Indian Band’s Cultural Immersion School, said the exposure to the release ceremonies is the type of learning on the land that the children need.

“This is where they thrive, and learn how they are, who they are and where they come from,” Roze said. “This is the kind of knowledge and learning that is most important.”

‘Everyday they’re fighting to get back here’

For more than 80 years, salmon have been blocked from returning to the upper Columbia River system. But thanks to the ongoing efforts of Okanagan Nation Alliance, salmon runs are having a resurgence. 

More than 633,000 salmon returned to the mouth of the Columbia in 2022, with 477,000 being sockeye salmon — the largest return since regarding began in 1938, according to Okanagan Nation Alliance.

“They have so many obstacles to survive. Even just swimming upstream, they have to fight. Everyday they’re fighting to get back here,” Louis said.

Outside of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, there are similar initiatives in the region being done to help bring the salmon back. In 2019, a three-year agreement was made between the syilx Okanagan, Secwépemc, and Ktunaxa Nations with the provincial and federal governments to create a unified vision around reintroducing salmon into the upper Columbia River region.

That long-term plan for the three nations’ Bringing the Salmon Home initiative is dedicated to crafting a long-term plan to see fish stocks return for Indigenous food, along with social and ceremonial needs.

But revitalizing salmon runs also has a purpose that goes beyond food security, cultural and ceremonial purposes. Louis and Armstrong also highlighted the biological benefits that salmon provides to the land and water.

Armstrong shared how salmon DNA from a valley’s lowest altitude has been scientifically found at higher mountain tops, providing nutrients to berry bushes to help them grow. Ecologists have studied how migrating salmon bring nutrients from the open ocean into forests, which helps various plants and animals, and can be found in old growth trees.

“Before science told me, my grandmother told me those berries at the top of the mountains are fertilized by the salmon in the river. The eagle takes them to the bank; the bear eats it and takes it further up the mountains; and the berries are fertilized.”

Louis said that when a salmon returns to its spawning habitat, it’ll lay its eggs and die. When its body floats to the bottom, it provides nutrients to the eggs and other life in the water.

“All those other fish don’t do the same thing as the salmon does for the water and the land,” Louis said.

Armstrong added that western science and society is just catching up with Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

“There’s a lot of things that they’re just learning that our Elders and our grandmothers have always been saying about water, land, plants, birds and animals,” he said.

‘We’re tied to this land in our blood’

When the month-long release ceremonies concluded, Okanagan Nation Alliance shifted to salmon calling ceremonies, with five separate gatherings happening along the Columbia River system between June 21 and 25 to pray for their return.

At the salmon calling ceremony near the dam at nʕaylintn (McIntyre Bluff) in Oliver on June 24, community members stood by the banks of the Okanagan River, where they prayed, sang drum songs and pounded small rocks together.

“In the springtime, the water gets fast and rolling,” Eneas said. “Sometimes, when you’re by the river, what do you hear? You can hear the rocks in the river.”

The sound of community members clapping small rocks together is designed to mimic the sound that salmon would hear in the water when the rocks are rolling in the stream.

Eneas said that in the captikʷł, or teachings, this location was one of places where Senk’lip (Coyote) brought salmon for the people-to-be.

“This ceremony is a Coyote law for us to do. It’s not something we’re making up — it’s not new. This is one of the oldest ceremonies that we have,” he said.

Prior to the ceremony, syilx Knowledge Keeper Bruce Manuel said that it’s important to bring ceremony back alongside the work of bringing the salmon back.

“The ones that do this work, they’re not doing it because they want to be seen in a higher light or to have bragging rights,” Manuel said. 

“It’s what they were told to do — that’s what we were told to do.”

Okanagan River at nʕaylintn, now dammed and channelized, may look different, but Eneas said that the prayers haven’t changed. 

“Our people, before science, talked about DNA. We already knew that in our language, in our knowledge,” he said. “We’re tied to this land in our blood. Our creation stories are like that.”

He gifted a scarf to a Youth in attendance, and told them that the gift would serve as a reminder of this day.

“Remember that you’re part of the ceremony,” he said to the Youth. 

“They’re the ones who will be here long after we’re dead and gone. They’re going to say, ‘This is what I remember. This is what was shared.’ That’s why it’s important for them to be here.”