Monday December 19, 2022
KLCC —
Salmon heads, fins and tails filled baking trays in the kitchen where Lottie Sam prepped for her tribe’s spring feast.
The sacred ceremony, held each year on the Yakama reservation in south-central Washington, honors the first returning salmon and first gathered roots and berries of the new year.
“The only thing we don’t eat is the bones and the teeth, but everything else is sucked clean,” Sam said, laughing.
Her mother and grandmother taught her that salmon is a gift from the creator, a source of strength and medicine that is first among all foods on the table. They don’t waste it.
“The skin, the brain, the head, the jaw, everything of the salmon,” she said. “Everybody’s gonna have the opportunity to consume that, even if it’s the eyeball.”