Under a 'grandma moon,' Native Americans honor their sacred pact with salmon

On a tall bluff that overlooks the south Puget Sound in one direction and sparkling headlights on I-5 in another, members of the Nisqually Indian Tribe gathered for a Winter Moon Celebration on this soggy solstice.

These lands are part of the lush home of the Nisqually tribe.

In their creation story, salmon were the first to offer themselves to the people. But a contract was made: The people also must care for the salmon. As they celebrated the Native American New Year on December 21, the Winter Solstice, the Nisqually also honored their sacred relationship with the fish.

‘Grandma Moon’

The Winter Moon Celebration is marked with a bonfire for the community and traditional canoe songs punctuated with drumming.

The celebration is a time to be together to celebrate Mother Earth, and her time to sleep. The shortest day of the year. A time to rejoice in the Milky Way and feel the earth shift toward Spring, explains Joyce McCloud, a Nisqually elder.

It's also a time when families can come together and pray for what's ahead. They gift fruit, candy and small handmade presents to each other, like fresh cedar wreaths to protect the home all year.

McCloud said this gathering is about earth, the stars, and the moon.

"Grandma moon, we always called her Grandma Moon, cause she was overall caretaker of all life, of all life," McCloud said. "Grandma Moon. So, when she's full and abundant, that's when Winter Solstice happens."

The Nisqually say they and the salmon started right here together at the beginning of time.

But colonization, overfishing, logging, development, pollution, and cut-off habitat have been hard on these ancient salmon runs.

‘First food’ in trouble

Salmon is called a "first food." That means eating it is a sacred act for many Northwest tribes. Joyce's son Hanford McCloud says there's not a lot of fish left to teach Nisqually children about their own culture.

"I don't want to be responsible to show salmon on a PDF to my grandkids," said Hanford McCloud.

What's good for the people and good for the environment is good for the salmon, said Willie Frank III, son of the late fishing rights advocate Billy Frank Jr. Frank III said they used to fish seven months of the year, now it's down to about seven days.

"So when you talk about spiritually, you talk about religion, you talk about what the salmon mean to us," said Frank III. "You know it's like if you were only able to go to church seven or eight days out of the year. How would you feel if that was kind of your main religion?"

Frank III said that the growing disconnection between salmon and people is symptomatic of larger social and environmental issues.

"You know we're off balance a bit because of, you know, the environment and the resources that we're not protecting like we should as humans," Frank III said.

‘Tastes like time’

Across the Cascades, Malena Fairlight Pinkham, who uses they/them pronouns, is a lawyer and is enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.

They say for them, salmon is a 10,000-year-old taste, which recalls their ancestors.

"It just tastes like time," Pinkham said. "I can feel my descendants through the years, I can feel my ancestors. I can feel the things they went through."

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