Different Perspective

I came across a rather interesting couple of sentences today that made me think about the possible differences of perspective in the situation, depending on whose shoes you were in. The statement was on a package of smoked salmon (a gift from some of our NW friends, thank you very much) that is marketed as being from a First Nations Tribe. It read something like this:

“The first salmon to return from the saltwater sea to the freshwater streams – a Spring Chinook – is caught and ceremonially brought to the village. There its flesh is meticulously removed from its bones and eaten and shared with everyone in the village. Afterwards, the bones of the fish are returned to the river with equal ceremony and placed into the river facing the same direction, in hopes that the fish will tell his brothers and sisters of the great treatment it was given in the village and bring more of them to the area.”

My first thought – YOU ATE IT!!! What kind of idiot fish is going to send his siblings to you to have their flesh picked from the bones?

After putting my cultural glasses on, however, there is likely more to the story. The respect afforded to the fish, being brought with great ceremony, and the likely detailed process of removing every scrap of flesh from its bones (so as not to waste even one bit) and then being shared by all, these all speak of great traditions and great awareness of history and our fragility in this world as well as the fact that we are all in this together and need each other.

This is not the image of a massive commercial net being dragged through the water, pulling every living thing over a certain size out of its norm, and often discarding or destroying things in the process that we deem invaluable or not what we were after.

This is not a rail on the waste we can so easily see in so many different ways in the world. That is not my style. No, in fact, this is a call to consider how something that at first seems so odd or crazy, might actually have some real value. Consider the lessons taught by the village elders each year as they repeated this process. Think of the depth of tradition and reinforcement this made in the young men and women in this tribe. There is value in that. It was not only the pragmatic issue of feeding the village. It was about much more.

Of course, all of that said, it would still stink to be the fish! Rich depth of tradition and culture or not, it would not be a good day when you get the flesh picked from your bones.