Vision for a Just Future
by Rena Priest
For colonizers, building a vision for a just future for salmon and tribes requires an act of imagination. For tribes the vision for justice is an act of remembrance. Restoration to a state of balance and prosperity on par with what life was like before colonizer laws and activities depleted fish runs and dismantled lifeways—that will be a step toward justice for Indigenous peoples and for salmon. It must be the model that lawmakers strive toward in their policies and budgets. Here, Billy Frank Sr. lays out the vision by recalling the Nisqually homelands of his youth:
"There were plenty of fish coming up the river the days. Oh, lot of fish. I seen fish crowding each other out of the creek. There were so many fish coming up mill creek, right over here at Lacy. The silver salmon come spawn at the lake, long lake. I seen the fish shove each other out of the creek. There were so many coming up…
Everything grew here. The white man calls it roots now. Roots. Well, I guess they were roots because they grew out of the ground. There were carrots, potatoes, onions. A plant like an onion. It had layers all around it, and a whole lotta other plants, you know. The Indian used to gather it up and bake—they'd take it down to the river where there's a big jam, a lot of wood, and they'd bake it all together.
They had this plant like a carrot, but it was very little. They were short and black, and it was sweet, very sweet, and it would sweeten all these other foods that they baked. One carrot would sweeten all the other foods like camas and the root of the sunflower. They cooked that. That made nice eating. And game! Grouse, pheasant, and all kinds of birds in the trees. They would just ring in the woods. They were called grouse. They would ring in the woods there were so many of them around in the trees.
And the Indians had plenty of birds to eat, and plenty of game like deer, and beaver, and bear, and all that. Plenty of everything. I think the Nisqually Indian here was living the perfect life. He didn't have to cultivate the stuff. It grew here. Mother nature made it grow every year… Nobody had to fertilize that stuff. It just come up every year! Wow, these Indian were living in paradise. That's what I always said."