New radio documentary People of the Salmon debuts on public radio and podcast platforms

By Reader Staff

The Idaho Mythweaver announces the release of its newest public radio documentary and podcast episode, People of the Salmon. It will be broadcast live at noon Monday, May 26 — Memorial Day — over KPBX, Spokane Public Radio and also live-streamed at spokanepublicradio.org. It is also available as a podcast at mythweaver.org, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts under its Voices of the Wild Earth podcast series. The documentary will also air over Boise State Public Radio stations sometime this coming summer. 

Narrated by longtime producer and storyteller Jane Fritz, and co-produced by Justin Lantrip, People of the Salmon tells the story of the Nez Perce Tribe’s efforts to reintroduce sockeye salmon to Wallowa Lake in northeast Oregon — a place where the spawning fish once returned from the ocean by the tens of thousands. Fritz and Nez Perce Fisheries Project Manager Shane Vatland will be giving a public presentation about the creation of People of the Salmon and the Tribe’s coho and sockeye salmon reintroduction efforts in the Wallowas on Thursday, May 29, at 7 p.m. at the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (403 N. Main St. in Joseph, Ore.). They will share Nez Perce stories, audio excerpts and photos from this multi-year salmon project.

The Indigenous fishing spot at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River before the Dalles Dam flooded it in 1957. Courtesy photo.

The hour-long documentary unfolds through archival tribal voices, field interviews with tribal biologists and elders, and immersive natural soundscapes, tracing the spiritual, cultural and ecological importance of salmon to the Nimi’ipuu. It highlights the historical wounds left by damming the Columbia River while inundating the Northwest’s largest freshwater fishery at Celilo Falls. It also reveals the severe impacts to today’s salmon migration from the four Lower Snake River dams.

From today’s coho salmon reintroduction efforts in the Wallowa’s Lostine River, to the hopeful reintroduction of ocean-going sockeye salmon, People of the Salmon is a story of resilience, fish and culture. It’s a story about coming home. About what we’ve all lost, what can be restored, and how the stories of the land and its Indigenous people are inextricably linked. As with many stories told for Voices of the Wild Earth, this one came from listening to the people of the land: tribal elders, river women, fisheries biologists and the late Silas Whitman, whose voice carries into the future.

This program was supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a state-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, with additional major funding from Idaho Forest Group and several anonymous donors. It is dedicated in memory of Silas Whitman and offered in reciprocity to the Nez Perce people, the Nimi’ipuu.