Two local schools — Perley Elementary and Hutton Elementary — are doing their part to reintroduce anadromous salmon to the Upper Columbia River system, which have been absent from the area for over 80 years.
As participants in the Fish in Schools (FinS) program offered by the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA), the schools are provided sockeye salmon by the kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ hatchery in Penticton. Students and teachers then raise their fish from eggs through their early developmental stages before releasing them in the spring as part of a salmon ceremony at Millennium Park in Castlegar.
The Grand Forks schools are among 25 others taking part in the program across the Columbia region. Mayor Baker participated in the egg delivery this past January, helping out at Perley and Hutton schools.
FinS provides inspiration for future environmental stewards while offering educational opportunities relating to salmon biology and Syilx indigenous culture.
Since colonization, continued industrial hydroelectric expansion, natural resource extraction, and urban and agricultural sprawl have devastated, if not eradicated salmon runs in the Upper Columbia River system. One of the most challenging of these developments includes the completion of the Grand Coulee Dam in 1942, which blocked salmon from returning to the Upper Columbia, an area that had once supported abundant salmon runs, alongside a host of ecological, social, and cultural benefits that these fish provided.
Salmon is one of the Syilx people’s Four Food Chiefs. Chief Salmon is not just an important source of food for Syilx people, but is central to our cultural ways of being, and highlights the reciprocal relationships with the lands, waterways, and all of life — our tmixw.
Syilx territory was once world renowned for its rich fishing grounds, village sites, and economic trade hubs. These activities drew other Indigenous groups from across Turtle Island for social, cultural, and economic trade purposes. This Syilx history brought forward inherent meaning and purpose behind all these relationships that persists to this day. The ancestral practices and values were passed on, with the Syilx people as caretakers of the lands, waters, and foods since time immemorial. These practices and livelihoods have continued to this day.
In 2003, as part of their ongoing commitment to return salmon throughout the territory, the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) launched the Fish in Schools (FinS) program in the Okanagan sub-basin. The program was then expanded to the Columbia region in 2017.
In addition to the schools in the Okanagan, FinS supports schools across the Boundary and Kootenay regions, including schools from School Districts 8, 10, 20, 51, and 93. Geographically, the program spans from Big White to Fruitvale, Nakusp, to Nelson. It is funded by participating School Districts, as well as the ongoing partnerships ONA has with the Regional Districts of Kootenay-Boundary and Central Kootenay, FortisBC, Teck Trail Operations, Columbia Basin Trust, and the Columbia Power Corporation.
Please contact ONA if you would like your school or organization to be involved in the FinS program.
Carson Kettlewell – Fisheries Technician/FinS Coordinator, Columbia Region – ckettlewell@syilx.org (250-687-4687)
Together we can return the salmon to their ancestral habitat.