“How have we developed our collective salmon narratives, what are these narratives obscuring, and how can we bring these shadows into the light?” This was the call to artists and writers issued by the Alaska Humanities Forum and Alaska Salmon Fellows in March, 2018. “As Alaskans,” the call continued, “we typically tell positive salmon narratives and we often neglect the matching dark sides of our stories, like the struggles for sustainability, equity, and resource management.” The literary submissions and visual art selected will be part a traveling Salmon Shadows exhibit, with publication to follow in FORUM magazine.
The “Stray Hopes” essay I submitted that was accepted was an excerpt from the “The Silver Horde” chapter in my book Entangled on the history of Alaskan salmon fisheries and management. The dark side of the story told in “Stray Hopes” is the potential for ecological consequences on stream and marine ecosystems that shadows the faith placed on hatcheries to boost Alaska salmon production.
MarilynSigman: Entangled 