In the Presence of the Little Fish
It’s nice to know that our lands are being healed with the help of everybody—teams all over Southeast.
– Travis Adams, Field Leader, Kéex’ Kwáan Community Forest Partnership
Beneath evergreen canopy let us lift
the understory of us—old growth,
salmonberry bushes, s’áxt’, the tree-ruffle liverwort.
We repaired failing culverts, placed new
logs in the creek, added large woody debris.
We sawed and chopped and shoveled and hauled.
Let us slow the stream down, shift rocks
and sediment, build a new side channel,
create pools and eddies to shape a lush habitat.
What had once come undone, been cut down,
torn up, tossed aside, let go, sloughed off,
been forgotten and flooded, is now restored.
Let us take in a moment of this day, this year,
this century, where fish used to hide
and rest, where they’d spawn, where they gave
us this life—enough flesh to fill our bellies
and pantries, rich histories carved
on totems, stunning skins to dangle on our ears,
and bead clans on dance robes. Let us
scoop up this creek water and sprinkle
it on our heads. Let threads of sunlight in the renewed,
open canopy, flicker atop the stream. Let the creek
flow our meditations around our boots,
press against our ankles. Let work-weary backs,
blistered hands, and the mud and dirt on our faces,
be our caretaking ceremony—call the fish
back to this stream. Let their eggs hatch and
the little fish thrive.
Let them call this creek their home once again.
* s’áxt’ is the Lingít word for devil’s club.
The Relationship Between
We’ve not been boot-deep in the beach sand
for a few years now. We’re wary of the old stories
we pass down from boat talk to coffee shop—
the local fisherman who nearly died from sauteing
toxic clams for dinner while anchored in a bay,
and in 1799, the 100 Russians and Unangax̂ who died
from eating toxic mussels in Peril Straits.
Sometimes it’s overwhelming, the competing factors
we must consider to keep us safe and satiated—
our island’s traditional foods could kill us, and we’re
numb not from toxins but the governor’s shrug,
the pashaw and wave-off of hands, and always
the money, the money. But, yet, here we are
on this island, doing something— set an example.
regular baseline. proper protocols. empower
communities. —The smallest of small tribes rose
with the tide—all my cousins and more cousins.
And someone announces the saxitoxin level
results on our radio, social media, and newspaper.
It’s all reassuring, especially when I’m walking
the beach and there’s a truck parked on the sand
and a woman from the tribe is collecting specimens,
measuring water temps, salinity, wind and noting
the tide. She’s rain-dressed in her blue raincoat
and rubber boots, and draped in a myth we all know—
the local Lingít story of the Woman-Who-Governs-the-Tides
and now here she is right in front of me, thousands
of years later as if time is but a refilling tidepool
and she’s got her big white bucket beside her and
with a shovel she’s digging at low tide—
going about her day tending to the blue mussels,
the cockles, and the butter clams.
Vivian Faith Prescott (she/her) is a bi writer, born and raised on a small island, Wrangell, Kaachxana.áak’w, in Southeast Alaska. She lives and writes as a climate witness in Lingit Aaní at her family’s fishcamp on the land of the Shtax’heen Kwáan. She is a member of the Pacific Sámi Searvi and a founding member of Community Roots, the first LGBTQIA+ group on the island
Read “Retroflection,” a poem by Vivian Faith Prescott also published in Terrain.org.
Header photo by Pexels, courtesy Pixabay.
