First Salmon Ceremony
ca. 1978
The annual honoring of the salmon is depicted here in a continuous narrative: songs are sung to welcome the first salmon of the season, the salmon is respectfully carried in a cradle of cedar boughs, and then the bones are returned to the water. This reverential treatment alerts the Salmon People below the water to keep sending fish as sustenance to the People, a practice which honors the relationship between humans and the natural world. After colonization stripped such sacred practices from Native life, this important ceremony was revived among Puget Sound tribes in the 1970s.
Wood, copper and paint
10 x 28 1/4 x 2 in. (25.4 x 71.8 x 5.1cm)
Gift of Vi Hilbert, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum
2005.175
Provenance: The artist; Vi Hilbert, Washington, until 2005
Photo: Elizabeth Mann