For 8,000 years the wild salmon population was the mainstay and the main blood of my community. My entire language, my culture—everything is defined by the salmon. In 2017, we weren't allowed to food fish for salmon due to extreme conservation measures.
I'm attending a meeting next week on the forecast of returns for 2019, and it's dismal. The cumulative effects of the last 150 years seized the wild salmon population. They were just unable to do what they used to do. In the absence of our traditional food source and the mainstay of our economy, we have to transition to something else. We must adapt. That's what we're faced with. There's no smoking gun. It's just all of the above.
Other forms of traditional food sources in my region are also disappearing due to climate change. The extreme heat is making the ungulates move. We are also trending towards overhunting. In the absence of the fish, we transfer our desire for traditional food sources to others, so we may now be overharvesting. If we don't come up with an alternative—which is agricultural-based practices—there is going to be some trouble coming for all of us.