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This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members, images, objects, and other sources to help students and teachers understand the efforts of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest to protect and sustain salmon, water, and homelands. Scroll to begin an exploration of the Pacific Northwest history and cultures.

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Coast Salish, Colville Confederated Tribes, Lummi, Makah, Muckleshoot, Nisqually, Puyallup, Quileute, Skokomish, Yakama

Environmental Science, Geography, Government and Civics, History, Social Studies

Pacific Northwest, salmon, usual and accustomed, Washington state, fisheries, treaty rights, salmon runs, dams, pollution, salmon habitat, environment, sustainability, cultures, culture, spawning grounds, comanagement, food sovereignty, foods

Northwest Coast, North America

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Framework for Essential Understandings about American Indians

Building on the ten themes of the National Council for the Social Studies' national curriculum standards, NMAI's Essential Understandings reveal key concepts about the rich and diverse cultures, histories, and contemporary lives of Native Peoples. Woven throughout the lesson, the following Essential Understandings provide a foundation for students to thoughtfully understand important connections between foods and cultures.

This resource addresses the following Essential Understandings:

Essential Understanding 1:

There is no single American Indian culture or language.

For millennia, American Indians have shaped and been shaped by their culture and environment. Elders in each generation teach the next generation their values, traditions, and beliefs through their own tribal languages, social practices, arts, music, ceremonies, and customs.

Interactions with Europeans and Americans brought accelerated and often devastating changes to American Indian cultures.

Native people continue to fight to maintain the integrity and viability of indigenous societies. American Indian history is one of cultural persistence, creative adaptation, renewal, and resilience.

Essential Understanding 2:

Time, Continuity, and Change

European contact resulted in devastating loss of life, disruption of tradition, and enormous loss of lands for American Indians.

Hearing and understanding American Indian history from Indian perspectives provides an important point of view to the discussion of history and cultures in the Americas. Indian perspectives expand the social, political, and economic dialogue.

Essential Understanding 3:

People, Places, and Environments

The story of American Indians in the Western Hemisphere is intricately intertwined with places and environments. Native knowledge systems resulted from long-term occupation of tribal homelands, and observation and interaction with places. American Indians understood and valued the relationship between local environments and cultural traditions, and recognized that human beings are part of the environment.

Long before their contact with Europeans, indigenous people populated the Americas and were successful stewards and managers of the land.

Essential Understanding 4:

Individual Development and Identity

For American Indians, identity development takes place in a cultural context, and the process differs from one American Indian culture to another. American Indian identity is shaped by the family, peers, social norms, and institutions inside and outside a community or culture.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many American Indian communities have sought to revitalize and reclaim their languages and cultures.

Essential Understanding 7:

Production, Distribution, and Consumption

For thousands of years, American Indians developed and operated vast trade networks throughout the Western Hemisphere.

American Indians traded, exchanged, gifted, and negotiated the purchase of goods, foods, technologies, domestic animals, ideas, and cultural practices with one another.

Today, American Indians are involved in a variety of economic enterprises, set economic policies for their nations, and own and manage natural resources that affect the production, distribution and the consumption of goods and services throughout much of the United States.

Essential Understanding 8:

Science, Technology, and Society

American Indian knowledge can inform the ongoing search for new solutions to contemporary issues.

American Indian knowledge reflects a relationship developed over millennia with the living earth based on keen observation, experimentation, and practice.

American Indian knowledge is closely tied to languages, cultural values, and practices. It is founded on the recognition of the relationships between humans and the world around them.

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Common Core State Standards

College, Career & Civic Life-C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards

Construct arguments using precise and knowledgeable claims, with evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging counterclaims and evidentiary weaknesses.

Shana Brown
Educator from the Yakama Nation

Essential Connections Between Food and Culture

We have not always gotten our foods from grocery stores or restaurants. Nor have we always been accustomed to eating out-of-season or imported exotic foods. Before shipping, plastic wrap, and packaged meats, we ate what our local environments provided. And we built our worlds accordingly.

The food practices of the Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest do not just reflect their identities; they define their identities. Who we are as a people is reflected in our relationship with the environment, the foods that environment provides, and the individual and collective responsibilities undertaken to care for natural resources. Natural resources are not simply viewed by Native people as commodities to be bought and sold; instead, they are viewed as relatives to be cherished and cared for. Culturally important foods, such as salmon and other fish, reflect the unique histories and experiences of Native peoples, especially the histories and experiences that are connected to landscapes and water.

Because our lives and identities are so intertwined with salmon, many Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest call themselves the Salmon People. From the late eighteenth-century on, European and American arrivals in the Pacific Northwest made it increasingly difficult for our ancestors to maintain their food practices, especially once non-Native diets became so prevalent. The influx of non-Native settlers in the Pacific Northwest, thus, threatened our very identity as Salmon People. Over time, the activities of non-Indian settlers brought about commercial fishing, pollution, habitat loss, hydroelectric dams, and other factors that had a very negative impact on the salmon population and the environment as a whole. Instead of respectfully using and managing existing resources, the newcomers altered the landscape and depleted resources. They also denied Indians access to millennia-old hunting, fishing, and gathering sites.

Despite these challenges, tribal nations have been able to maintain their traditional food practices to varying degrees of success. Today, we see a renewed resurgence of and respect for traditional Native food practices. This resurgence not only complements the survival of tribal peoples, their collective identities, and their sovereignty, but it also supports the changing viewpoints of non-Indian people, who now more frequently accept the essential and sustainable value in the very food practices they once sought to eliminate altogether.

A number of contemporary practices and events reflect and strengthen the revival of traditional indigenous food practices. One such event, the annual Canoe Journey along the Pacific coastline of Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington, illustrates the renaissance our nations are experiencing. Once a year, canoes filled with indigenous peoples from all over the world converge on the Pacific Northwest. Native Nations here host these events, and share their stories, songs, foods, and food practices with everyone who has gathered for the occasion. Indigenous participants and canoe families exchange cultural protocols to demonstrate the mutual respect for "homelands" among the gathered people, and particularly for the homelands of the people being visited. Inaugurated by Native leaders in 1989, the annual Canoe Journey event was developed to help tribal youth strengthen their connections with their past and present cultures and environments and, by doing so, strengthen personal identities for the future.

Through the activities and resources of this lesson, you will witness the incredible resiliency and innovation of the Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest in their efforts to protect and cultivate healthy relationships with their relatives-salmon, water, and homelands. And, you will see how foods can define not only who we are, but also who we wish to be.

Toggle between Native Nations and landscape views to orient yourself to the locations of the nations today and the geographical features of their homelands.

What Actions are Native Nations Taking to Restore Salmon and Strengthen Cultures?

Explore three short case studies and a video to see how efforts to restore salmon also strengthen Native cultures. First, watch this short video about one Native-led project to restore salmon in the Columbia River.

WATCH SHORT INTRODUCTION VIDEO "

The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) expresses gratitude to the people of the American Indian Nations whose histories, cultures, and contemporary lives are represented on these pages.

The NMAI extends special thanks to members of the Pacific Northwest-region team whose thoughtful collaboration and extraordinary expertise made these inquiry-based lessons possible.

The museum also thanks the following staff and other contributors for their work in the creation of these lessons:

Museum Director: Kevin Gover (Pawnee)

Producer and Writer: Edwin Schupman (Muscogee)

Content Manager, Developer, and Lead Writer: Colleen Call Smith

Developer and Lead Writer: MaryBeth Yerdon

Pacific Northwest-Region Team:

Willard Bill, Jr. (Muckleshoot), Cultural Expert

Shana Brown (Yakama), Lead Writer and Educator

Hanford McCloud (Nisqually), Cultural Expert

Jerry Price, Educator

Dr. Josh Reid, Ph.D. (Snohomish), Scholar

Researchers

Erin Beasley, NMAI

Jessica Phippen, NMAI

Reviewers

Mark Hirsch, Ph.D., NMAI

Joe Horse Capture (A'aninin), NMAI

Carrie Loretto (Zuni, Acoma, San Felipe Pueblo), NMAI Teacher-In-Residence, New Mexico

Stacey Mann

Michelle Nelin-Maruani, NMAI Teacher-In-Residence, South Dakota

Vilma Ortiz-Sanchez, NMAI

Christopher Robinson, NMAI Teacher-In-Residence, Kentucky

Kathy Swan, Ph.D., University of Kentucky and C3Teachers.org

Community Interviews:

Hank Adams (Assiniboine Sioux of Fort Peck Tribes)

Freedom Bill (Muckleshoot)

Justice Bill (Muckleshoot/Tlingit)

Sovereign Bill (Muckleshoot)

Willard Bill Jr. (Muckleshoot)

Ramona Bennett (Puyallup)

Gregory Colfax (Makah)

Carol Craig (Yakama)

Phoenix Dorsey-Billy (Shoalwater Bay/Yakama/Hawaiian)

Samuel Eli George (Yakama)

Randy Finley (Yakama)

Elizabeth Furse (Former Congresswoman, Oregon)

Glen Guzman (Nez Perce)

Elijah Green

Cecile Hansen (Duwamish)

Mary Johnson (Shoalwater Bay/Chinook/Hawaiian)

William James (Lummi)

Phillip A. Kahclamat (Yakama)

James L. Kiona (Yakama)

Gerald Lewis (Yakama)

Michael Marchand (Confederated Tribes of Colville, WA)

Don McCloud Jr. (Puyallup)

Melvin Moon Jr. (Quileute)

John Platt

Valarie Segrest (Muckleshoot)

Anthony Settler Sr. (Yakama)

Randy Settler (Yakama)

Nancy Shippentower (Puyallup)

Steven Soloman Sr. (Lummi)

Charles Strom (Yakama)

Myenngan Syrette (Shoalwater Bay)

Richard Talman (Lummi)

Howard Wahpat (Yakama)

Ronnie Wilson (Makah)

Philip Willard Olney (Yakama)

Lisa Wilson Howard (Lummi)

Dana Wilson (Lummi)

Media

Aerial footage by Foresight Aerial Photography

Mark Christal, NMAI

Dan Davis, NMAI

Doug McMains, NMAI

Web

David Chang

Rebecca Estes, NMAI

Laurie Swindull, NMAI

Jason Wigfield

Cheryl Wilson, NMAI

Deanna Wood, NMAI

Interactivity Concepts and Design

Stacey Mann

Interactive Mechanics

Editing

Martha Davidson

Christine Gordon

Anne Litchfield

Rights and Permissions

Wendy Hurlock-Baker, NMAI

Jessica Phippen, NMAI

Colleen Call Smith, NMAI

MaryBeth Yerdon, NMAI

Evaluation

Jerrell Cassady, Ph.D., Research Design Studio at Ball State University

Teacher Testing

Julie Bell, Washington-Lee High School, Arlington, VA

Boo Balkan Foster, Chief Sealth International School, Seattle, WA

Leirdre Galloway, River Hill High School, Clarksville, MD

Troy Grant, International High School at Largo, Upper Marlboro, MD

Kate Hall, Glasgow Middle School, Lincolnia, VA

Victoria Hildebrand (Muckleshoot), Muckleshoot Tribal School, Auburn, WA

Tasha Johnson, Yelm High School, Yelm, WA

Michelle Nelin-Maruani, NMAI Teacher-In-Residence, South Dakota

Ben Masaoka, Roosevelt High School, Seattle, WA

Tamiko McVicker, West Potomac High School, Alexandria, VA

Audrey Rackley, James Monroe High School, Fredericksburg, VA

Christopher Robinson, Model Laboratory High School, Richmond, KY

Becky Taylor, Sherwood High School, Sandy Spring, MD

Joseph Wood, Lake Ridge Middle School, Woodbridge, VA

Voice Talent

Studio Center, Virginia Beach, VA

Edwin Schupman (Muscogee), NMAI

Contract Management

Pam Woodis (Jicarilla Apache), NMAI

Special thanks to:

Staff at the Burke Museum for their time and expertise in assisting with research in support of these lessons: Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Curator of Northwest Native Art and Director of Bill Holm Center; Bridget Johnson, Assistant Director for the Bill Holm Center; Laura Phillips, Archaeology Collections Manager; Rebecca Andrews, Ethnology Collections Manager

The Muckleshoot Canoe Family: For generously allowing the NMAI media and education teams to accompany, film, and interview members of the Muckleshoot Canoe Family during the 2016 Canoe Journey.

The Nisqually Indian Tribe: For acting as gracious hosts to the NMAI media and education teams during the 2016 Canoe Journey.

The Salmon Defense Fund: For the generous gift of footage from the film Back to the River.

Sheryl Antelope (Yakama), Yakama Cultural Center Manager

Carol Craig (Yakama): For generous support in coordinating interviews with community members of the Yakama Nation and providing access to tribal fisheries.

Wade Frogley, Chief Leschi Schools

Janine Ledford (Makah)

Gail Morris (NuuChahNulth, Ahousat Band): For the time, energy, and expertise offered to the Pacific Northwest-region team in support of the development of these lessons.

Robin Pratt (Tlingit), Director of the Auburn School District Native American Program

The National Museum of the American Indian gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation in the development of these educational resources.

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Native Knowledge 360°- Pacific Northwest History and Cultures: Why do the foods we eat matter?

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This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members, images, objects, and other sources to help students and teachers understand the efforts of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest to protect and sustain salmon, water, and homelands. Scroll to begin an exploration of the Pacific Northwest history and cultures.

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Food isn't just food it's connected to the culture. Salmon is very important to native people. Salmon have to deal with dams and pollution.

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I would like to learn more about how food is connect to us. And why the food we eat matters.

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What actions are people taking to helping native nations?

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Safiyyah - Three things that I have learned are that the food practices that the natives do define their identity, salmon reflects the history and experiences of the native people, and that the Europeans and Americans threatened the Native Americans about their own identity, which is the salmon people.

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Safiyyah - Two things I would like to know are some other examples of food culture around the world, and the contemporary practices are still going on to this day?

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Safiyyah - One question I still have is, how does food define our culture?

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The three things I've learned is that Salmon are important to the native people and that the dams that people built affected the salmon greatly but people are trying to save the salmon

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The two things i would like to learn would be what other cultures food would be and why the food we eat matter

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My question is why do certain foods matter so much

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Madina- salmon are very important to the natives

native nations have kept their traditions alive despite challenges.

natives have a bonding relationship with salmon.

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Madina- What threats have harmed salmon culture?

How do different tribes celebrate salmon their own ways?

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Madina- why are salmon so special?