for the salmon are back but had energy here here ok margot t a i wildlife biologist and filmmaker in spokane washington i'm here today with all my name is jeff ferguson i am a documentary filmmaker and photographer and spokane travel member and now that the salmon are back and that's something that's revitalized the tradition and revitalizing the culture here is something that's really it's something the elders have looked forward to for generations it's something that we've needed in this area and having the fish come back in available not only to the elders but also to everybody else in the community it's been gone for so long and it's just a whole part of this society that was taken away that was no longer here for for generations and that's what was amazing to me as a young guy i assume that all the elders would remember having salmon here but what was kind of strange for me is as i approached some of the spokane elders is that they didn't even they themselves who in their seventies and eighties actually don't even remember the salmon being here they've actually lived a whole life without salmon so for me that was kind of overwhelming to find that people within the tribe here who you who you thought were so tied to these fish actually have lost that connection and now the fish are back and so there are there are those elders that do remember but then there's also elders that actually have no memory of the salmon that are reconnecting to their culture based on these fish and something that they had lost and didn't really realize how valuable it was until it came back well the the salmon used to be such a huge part of the culture there was about three month period over every summer that you could fish the spokane river and literally pull thousands and thousands and thousands of fish out and up to feed everybody in the area and enough to stockpile for the winter and with with the huge fish not just little fish but huge fish an average thirty pound salmon thirty pounds was the average and they got as big as ninety pounds i mean that's a huge fish to be able to pull those out for three months solid and then just to totally lose that i grew up wondering my whole life why were everybody talks about salmon what's the big deal about the salmon we don't even have salmon in the spokane river and what's the deal but then later i found out that they used to be here and that they were in abundance and it was what sustained this area it's what what drew people here people gathered here because of the fish because the fishing was so good that's really what built and made the spokane fall so so important in this area and to have that all over the region and you go to the mountains of idaho that's lush and full of water and today we that's where we go to catch our fish we don't come to the spokane river to lay talk to think about fishing you know but back so it's kind of hard for us at this time and place to envision it where people used to come from hundreds of miles from the mountains of idaho these lush places to come to spokane to get their fish because this is where the salmon return to this was the closest point for them to touch the ocean and to touch this wonderful protein source you know so you know the fact that we have a village site here in spokane that has been occupied for eight thousand years of people from all over the region come into this one place to catch fish is remarkable it's a one of a kind place and it just shows how valuable it was to this entire region you know it was a staple it really was the fish that came through came here from the ocean you know that's over a thousand mile swim they got here that was lean meat that was getting eaten and people came from everywhere to get that and it was shared it wasn't something if anybody that came and fish they they took home their fair share as long as they contributed they always divided up the fish he quickly among everybody that fish that day and i thought that was great because they didn't care where they came from everybody came from all over as long as you put in a good day's work everybody left with with a lot of fish where we are today and we're just starting to taste the return of these fish they're starting to come back in bigger and bigger numbers every year and for the first time down in the okanagan river this year we had three hundred thousand sock return which was the biggest sockeye run in since the sixty's at least so sense the beach or decline when all the dams were put in so what happens when three hundred thousand fish return to a place that didn't have fish i'll tell you what it's incredible to see you have elders that haven't talked in years meeting down at the dock and sitting around waiting for fish to show up so they can take their share home and the dialogue that happens there and the the relationships that are built around fishing are solid relationships in just the joy in the people's faces it was something that i hadn't felt the whole time i lived in this region i can tell you that that what i felt that day harvest and three hundred saka we harvest three hundred sockeye the day i was got to distribute those to tribal members and the feeling that i got from that whole experience was something that i have never experienced in my life the entire time i lived in the pacific northwest so on a personal level i could see the impact and see the change in my own life just from being a part of that and that's what's kind of happening today is many of us that never tasted this these fish are getting to taste them again for the first time and it's really impacting us and now that they're coming back we want to figure out how to really bring them back so it's not just three hundred fish to share amongst the tribe but actually the whole region could potentially benefit from bring in hundreds of thousands of fish back if the numbers of fish were in the hundreds of thousands coming into the spokane area it would create an industry it would literally change the their economic base of spokane you would see everybody from truckers and canners and smokers everyday people just fish in it you you would have  it would impact the economy economy substantially and then also from the tributary swimming upstream like out late talk creek as far as far east as idaho those people they'd be able to benefit to you could go down to your creek and pull some salmon out boys that you know that is unheard of in this area you know that's something that that generations of lost and it would it would impact everybody it really would it would become i think it would become a real primary food source i think we would move more from like fish or not from fish but from like beef red meat more towards fish more towards him because he'd be so available and the price of it would come down substantially heaven one hundred  eaven hundreds of thousands of fish back in the spokane river is literally changing the family dynamics of our community fathers and sons are going out together and instead of today in today's day and age a father is he like a father son relationship is have you got a job what is your job how are you making money you know that's what our relationships have been whittled down to but my favorite memories of a child are going out fishing with my dad sneaking me into his secret holes and dragon fish  and that is what is being reborn here fathers and sons are going out together and having intimate experiences through these fish our families are becoming stronger our health is becoming stronger it is literally changing everything about our community based on our food source based on the fish and based on tradition so i think that the focus on ecology would would be a lot greater we'd have a lot more funding for preservation and just a whole ecosystem preserving the whole ecosystem for the not only the fish but when you when you bring fish in you also bring their natural predators and you also bring in other species that are that cohabitate with you and those are some of the things that you have to take into account when when you're looking at that but i think as a whole i think our state would be i think i think it would be a whole different thing i mean it's hard for me to explain the ecosystem has completely changed with the return of the salmon basically the salmon feeds everything in the entire food chain from the bottom to the top it's one of the rare species that actually do that so it feeds off the top predators the bears we used to have we actually had grizzly bears here on the spokane river at the spokane falls but the black bears we still have we do have around in fact i live on lake spokane and we do have a black bear that lives right behind my house so they do come and they pull those carcasses up into the forest as do the auditors as do a number of small mammals so they're returning those nutrients to the forests and that's what gives the pacific northwest its great forest and its huge trees is the salmon pro the salmon protein and phosphorus that comes up these river systems and replenishes our forest and then you know on top of that even the small salmon fry themselves feed on the decomposing of their oil decomposing bodies of their elders so you've got the microorganisms feeding on became bodies all the way up the whole fish feeding large carnivores so this animal is literally feeding the entire food chain of the pacific northwest and it as this fish has come back you see the ecosystem rebounding and higher numbers of all these organisms so we're having nothing but incredible benefits to the entire region by bringing these fish back to i'm actually going to sit down with an eighty four year old elder and she has never seen a salmon spoke in you know a living say she's seen salmon but not  up the spokane system so when you try to ask her she actually has no memories but what she can talk about is what we're talking about now how it could change her life as it stands so the sad thing is is what the elders that we have left actually don't have a lot of salmon stories in the spokane drive whereas if you go to the pacific coastal tribes they actually have you could ask and you could get a handful of stories right now i guarantee two generations ago we would have had that same handful of stories but with the loss of the fish it just goes to show you lose that lost of tradition that loss of storytelling our entire culture falls to the wayside just by the loss of the number one protein the number one food source that brought us all together when you when you look back it was in the thirty's that the grand coulee was built and that's when the that's when we lost the salmon in this area and if you take that time span that would put you know if  it was thirty five thirty six around that area where in two thousand and eleven now so we're talking seventy five years old somebody would have to be they would had been born and so they would have to have been to remember something like that eighty eighty five ninety years old to remember something like that news not a whole lot of those elders around anymore not really from our initial conversations she doesn't feel like she has a lot of knowledge and she was a little apprehensive about want to talk about salmon because she didn't feel like she had the knowledge and so that just goes to show why it's so important to talk to these elders because even what they don't know is so important to frost to understand our history there's not a whole lot that i mean you could talk to some of you would have the return of the eel hopefully some some point that and i know eels are considered a delicatessen they were something that was hard to come by and they were served with freshwater mussels and the salmon too but i definitely like to see more abundant eels only because it's one of those things that when it's gone it's gone bringing it back would be next to impossible well  the great example of you know when we talk about salmon we often forget the other species that sam is not the only creature that lives in these river systems and that's impacted by these dams in the change in the ecosystem we've got the massive sturgeon that is an incredible prehistoric animal that still is in these waters and what's amazing about that you'll is that it is the most protein rich source of food on the planet in fact a one of the half pound you'll have more protein and micronutrients i guess than a thirty pound i think it feeds on the right sand purposes the whole time it's in the juvenile stage that's where this so for seventy years the lamprey depends on the food provided by the cmin and then it goes to the ocean for two years in it relies on the her so the real was such an important food source to the ancestors because it brought an amazing wealth of those nutrients and proteins from the ocean and they used to return at the hundreds of millions all you know what to do what a great thing to bring up and a great animal to think about and that as we recover the salmon we can recover so many other species that aren't necessarily those beautiful charismatic creatures that are picture perfect even animals like the eagle who are slippery and slimy and thought to be like snakes even though they have a massively important role in the ecosystem are going to benefit from the return of the salmon so it's just a win win on so many levels for the ecosystem to bring these but i do want to point this out folks this movement and tonight's of that was not covered by corporate media at all right but i do want to give a big shout out to any of you who are watching me right now let's just acknowledge you're watching it on people's media wherever it is that you're watching me right now some unpaid volunteer took the time to record it thank you some unpaid volunteer took the time to upload this to create the infrastructure for you to watch it so we support the people's media people media and yes to the local cable access program that this is going to be played on and also can we get a big shot up to your community radio station it is a people's own people's operated radio station so the point i'm making is this ma'am let's build alternative people's media so that we can talk to each other and let's have those kind of conversations and let's build political power that is serious that takes ourselves seriously because we have to because a just world is at fires triggered by friday's quake are burning out of control up and down the coast including this one at an oil refinery that you had a fire was also reported at a turbine building at a nuclear power plant thirty say no radiation  all kinds of radiation what kind of payback is this the worst nuclear disaster in human history mr noble the u n says four thousand people died because that's the i hate people that have japan to the united states and create any health problem whatsoever california republican congressman devin nunez want to see two hundred new reactors belt congress and that's going to be a tough sell these days how do you think it's going to go my hope and my prayer is that everything ends up ok over time the people realize that nuclear power is the way to go  became president in september one nine hundred fifty three he went to the u n and gave what has become known as the adams for peace speech and in it eisenhower acknowledged that nuclear weapons are terrible threat to humanity but in addition the atom can be used for peaceful purposes medical purposes nor so to generate electricity shall not be dedicated to that but i think they need to know why we can and do produce electricity using nuclear reactors there were three questions back then that were unanswered can we guarantee that there will not be a major accident and a meltdown of a reactor is there a guarantee that the low level radiations they come out of these reactors are harmless do we have a way to deal with deadly nuclear waste the answers to all technology  femur we have six reactors that are total chaos any monitoring that's been done is completely random and unreliable we know there's been a breach of the unit three at fukushima where there is good tony i'm tony i'm going into the atmosphere is about the worst thing a manageable the tiniest grain of tony i'm can cause lung cancer of breathe it is an alpha emitter it would damage the tissues to the extent that cancer is a virtual certainty it's commonly said by the when reactor one we don't know where those who odds are we don't know how much is in the sky we don't know how much will land in chicago and seattle and when osiris and it's going there but we haven't  three reactor cores in various stages of meltdown and unit two has melted through the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel into a secondary containment building that was largely destroyed by a massive hydrogen  but in addition there are unit one and you know three reactor cores also melted down they have not been able to restore cooling to those three reactor cores they're pumping massive amounts of water into these buildings and then that water becomes radioactively contaminated and then discharged into the ocean in addition there is the unit for reactor storage pool for high level radioactive waste that has boiled dry and the waste has caught on fire directly releasing radioactivity  a year is completely safe the citizens are made to feel that if they are concerned they're overreacting and they're ignorant and just overly nervous and that they shouldn't be  parents are so outraged that they went to tokyo with soil that's contaminated there is actually from the grounds of the preschools and the arm entry schools and they brought that soil and the place in front of government officials at the diet office building and they said this is the soil that our children are playing on the top sit on the kids to turn in their mouth and this is the actual soil that we put in front of you they put the radiation monitor on it the sound just went completely off there are children tokyo and suffer the reactor and also in the north west from the reactors showing  more so we hear about mothers calling other people weeping and crying saying that they feel so guilty that they send  child to school today and every day and yet because there is no official infatuation if people leave the area and they leave their jobs they will probably have no job to come back to people who have become very confused we do know that focus seamus fallout has impacted the entire united states and it's comic con international her in his car into the ocean if it gets into that aquifer system that means you cannot decontaminate radiation from the drinking water and yet the people japan are not being informed of this because then you're talking about having to evacuating evacuating a country like japan is very very difficult it will continue to come here as radiation release of from the from the stricken reactors it's essentially a tsunami of radiation that's still coming united states and will be coming for a long long time the pacific current goes north from japan by alaska coming down the coast of canada and the united states and it's going to have upset and plankton and will and all the life the american public is being constantly relentlessly wide too about the true cost of atomic power about the origin inability of renewables to take their place and certainly about the health impacts of three mile island plants offline in six promina it would appear there are many many windows these windows continue to operate throughout the earthquake there was no slowdown in when generate electricity in japan they have plenty of wind pow nuclear nuclear is not clean because the  how many will die of fukushima will never be known we have never before faced the prospect of multiple meltdowns with deadly breed you like to do missions beyond measure and now i am almost thirty and i want to find out the truth from germany estimated that the number of dead caused by chernobyl mostly through cancer is approaching one million it's a long slow  some people say well where are the people who died actionable we saw the pictures of life magazine the horrible pictures of the workers without hair that it eventually had their immune system collapsed and died within a matter of months but you see radiation in society you can with this radiation with you in your body in your blood especially in your lungs and when you start to die one by one no one can say for sure that it was radiation industries to the point our spokespeople are actually telling the public the time mcgrady ation is somehow good for you which could not be more for us and so this is the kind of mentality we're dealing with it's all cooked up in corporate boardrooms this idea that nuclear power might be good for finding gobal warming i'm sure some p r flack came up with that got a promotion and a bonus this is all money driven is driven to protect these huge investments in atomic energy and we have a situation here where you have people power against money power you know both were very very bad we still don't know the results here but i think it's but i now for the record no one died at three mile island and the chernobyl disaster approximately thirty one people lost their lives because of direct radiation attrition thousands of others are thought to have contracted cancer and died later on i spoke with the know by eating food whether it's radioactive so that gives you an indication of what they still dealing with in europe there are wild hogs running around germany getting into believ and caused enormous harm diary disease went up markedly all over the world but particularly in goa reuss and around the area the area around chernobyl the childhood cancer rate particularly cancer went up markedly movie birth defects were not looking so it's had a devastating effect on that country studies done in germany as within three years after the chernobyl  blowup have found strong ninety levels increased in the teeth of children there we know what radiation does in the lab we've seen what it does the channel despite what they say otherwise like on an international atomic energy agency the world health organization they don't recognize the health effects but we know that they're there and we've seen it and dr bookshelves and a lot of other studies show it so we know what it did it i fear what it will do at f because of what happened and what we've seen happen previously we know what it did have her ocean in august and we know what it does to people when they go in for cancer treatments you might end up getting secondary cancers years down the road from the cancer treatment itself so we know that it's capable of causing these problems and since we know that it is incumbent upon the industry to prove that it does not harm it is not incumbent upon we as society or civil society or individuals to prove that it harms it's up to the industry to prove that it is safe we should use precaution and not unnecessarily and exposure unnecessarily is what the nuclear power industry does there is no such thing as a safe level of radiation in fact one of the odd things i've heard is that we're these reactors one by one from being built and we can stall all the little features that we need to survive on this point and that is your mandate and i think we will do in the all to move down between the profit motive and the survival instinct the survival needs to win and we have a duty to me sure yes all the research that we have gone and that people all over the world have died in the last few decades that the greatest single environmental factor that has been ignored has been bomb fallout and nuclear radiation from permitted releases from the flag and if we continue this emission from a hundred nuclear plants in we see now old too clearly a tommy technology is at war with our eco systems its centralized corporate nature puts democracy itself at risk it jeopardizes the very survival of life on this planet with all the alternative forms of real clean energy it seems senseless that we still rely on an archaic form of energy to jeopardize the lives of just to continue to line the pockets of a few people around the world can keep up the pressure and bring about the green energy revolution we will see the end of the nuclear power industry but i do want to point this out folks this movement and tonight's of that was not covered by corporate media at all right but i do want to give a big shout out to any of you who are watching me right now let's just acknowledge you're watching it on people's media wherever it is that you're watching me right now some unpaid volunteer took the time to record it thank you some unpaid volunteer took the time to upload this to create the infrastructure for you to watch it so we support eagles media yes to the local cable access program that this is going to be played on and also can we get a big shot up to your community radio station it is a people's own people's operated radio station so the point i'm making is this ma'am let's build alternative people's media so that we can talk to each other and let's have those kind of conversations and let's build political power that is serious that takes ourselves seriously because we have to because a just world is at stake and frankly not only a peaceful and just world but we know that the ecology that we depend upon for life itself is in the balance so let's do our work joyously but let's also be serious about it peace