First Salmon Ceremony

We had a lovely afternoon with Tatum today since she’s on spring break….  went back to the Seattle Art Museum to catch what I hadn’t seen…now I don’t need to go back to Our Blue Planet .     When I saw this piece of art the first time, of course I thought about the building in our neighborhood we often walk by.   It’s the same image, the same artist.  Ron Hilbert Coy  (tulalip/upper skagit)  I can’t seem to find when it was put on this building …there’s no id of any sort, but the painted copper piece on wood was 1979.   Here is more about it.  So we had to have a visit to see the neighborhood one too.   see extra, for scale and close up of the center part.       I've blipped this odd building not too long ago.,

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 stopped such sacred practices from Native life, this important ceremony was revived among Puget Sound tribes in the 1970s.