First Nation Canadian visit
NZ King Salmon hatchery operator Serena Guy (left) explains the workings of the salmon farm to Ali Hunt. Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
Visiting the New Zealand King Salmon Hatchery up the Pupu Valley proved a significant experience for a First Nation Canadian woman in December.
Ali Hunt, 24, is a member of the Kwakiut people, whose traditional homeland is the coastal area around Vancouver Island. As a young child she recalls her family, along with other members of their tribe, going out to catch the running salmon every August, when the water began to warm up.
“We’d catch enough to keep everyone in salmon all year. My family even had a small canning machine and we would all help, preserving the fish for us to eat during the winter months. But the fishery collapsed due to commercial fishing, and the most that families on our reservation can expect these days is a few fish each. We feel a great loss that such a great food source has disappeared.”
Although commercial salmon farming is a contentious issue in Canada, Ali says she was impressed with the NZ King Salmon hatchery at Waikoropupu. “Some of the issues with farming salmon in Canada relate to spreading of disease, but here they really work on keeping it a healthy and sustainable industry. The water was so clean, it’s given me a whole new look at the fishery, even if the salmon we catch is the sockeye variety rather than the Chinook, which is farmed more here in New Zealand. It was amazing to see the big breeding fish in the ponds here, how we used to see them in the wild in Canada.”
Ali’s father is Calvin Hunt, an Aboriginal Achievement Award recipient and Hereditary Chief known as Na-soom-yees. Born into a wealth of traditional values, he started woodcarving at the age of 12 and is now recognised as one of the top proponents of renaissance totem art, raising with his relatives the first totem poles at Port of Prince Rupert in over 70 years.
Last year, 27 Native Americans of the Winnemem Wintu tribe made headlines in the United States when they came to New Zealand on a spiritual mission to investigate returning some of the Chinook fish back home to California. The salmon, known here more commonly as Quinnat, were introduced into New Zealand waters between 1901 and 1907 and now naturally flourish in the Rangitata River, the Opihi River, the Ashburton River,...SALMON page 2
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... the Rakaia River, the Waimakariri River, the Hurunui River, and the Waiau River. The Winnemem said these New Zealand fish were descended from eggs taken from the Sacramento and McCloud rivers, and as the Winnemem saw it, the tribe’s troubles began in the early 1940s with the completion of the Shasta Dam, which blocked the Sacramento River and cut off the lower McCloud River, obstructing seasonal salmon runs, effectively wiping out the strain of salmon that had been imported to New Zealand.
Said tribal chief Caleen Sisk-Franco in the NY Times: “The covenant between the tribe and the fish got broken. The spirits came to us and said, ‘You’ve got to fix it’. The salmon and our tribe are intrinsically linked. What happened to the salmon happened to us. The fish have been diminishing in numbers, and so have we.”
The group scraped together the US$60,000 for the trip by selling trinkets, soliciting help from richer tribes, and fundraising through a Facebook page.
In New Zealand, the Winnemem met with Ngai Tahu leaders and staged a four-day ceremony which culminated in a rare nur chonas winyupus, or “middle water salmon dance”. They returned to the United States with a resolve to negotiate for water to be routed past the dam, restoring the connection between the ocean and the spawning grounds, after which the McCloud River can be restocked, quite possibly from Canterbury salmon eggs.
That area’s regional manager of Fish & Game, Ross Millichamp, said at the time that it was a good reminder to New Zealanders of what happens when you put in a barrier, such as a dam, and prevent fish from migrating to their spawning sites.
Gerard Hindmarsh
