I’ve pondered many mysteries standing in
a river how it can be ever-changing and
eternal all at once how in 1992 a lone
sockeye salmon named Larry could swim
900 miles up a river a river right here
outside of town to go home to spawn
alone without a mate to spawn with how
somebody could chug 12 beers and think
that this river is the perfect place
through all the empties still pondering
that one I fell in love with wild salmon
when I was 2 my memories around 10 my
dad standing next to me in the boat at
first light and the purple of the King’s
Salmons side arcing toward me as I was
trying it into the net and the look on
my dad’s face as he watched me do it
and later the smell on my hands like
metallic sweetened grass and that night
my family chattering happily with lemons
mustard smudges on their faces and the
taste of the ocean in them or orange
flesh of the salmon no one really knows
why you’re called to a river but I took
to it early on my dad brought me into
fishing and I was easily hooked but for
me it was about the experience the mist
coming off the river in the morning the
hot cocoa and the coffee
early morning from the thermos but most
of all it was the connection with my dad
with my brother and with this holy being
that comes to us from the sea under the
surface of the water and a connection to
that through a thin rod and a thin line
that directly connects me to it to this
this mysterious creature
that comes back to us to create new life
over and over and over again I wanted to
connect to that and for time I did
and then I lost that connection and I
nearly lost my own life and in the end
it was that same mysterious creature
that called me back to life and that’s
why now and forevermore I will sing
their song so I spent my 20s as a
wilderness fishing guide in southeast
Alaska I got paid to fish for salmon let
me repeat that I got paid to fish for
salmon dream job something changed me
though during this time I slowly
transformed from somebody that needed to
possess and dominate all these salmon as
they came to me one after the other and
I saw thousands of them I started
thanking every fish that came into my
boat I actually did this you could ask
my off bewildered guests as they were
standing next to me what the hell is
this guy doing but I did because I
developed this holy reverence for these
things and as this went on and towards
the end of that part of my career all I
wanted to do was figure out a way to
save the remnant runs that remain but I
just didn’t know how so flash forward to
2014 and I’m now ensconced in my career
as a storyteller and as a filmmaker and
I spent four years working on this story
that’s my best version of a love story
for wild salmon it’s the best I could I
could do at the time it’s what I needed
to do and during all this time I tried
to come up with a call to action to tell
people to to do something that would
make a difference to help save wild
salmon and so at the end of it all on a
particular Tuesday no fanfare whatsoever
it just kind of came to me and floated
in the window in order to save wild
I know what you’re thinking why would
you kill something that you want to save
doesn’t make a whole lot of sense I’ll
get there I’ll promise beyond a
spiritual physical and emotional and
cultural virtue that all these wild
salmon bring to us they’re just plain
cool they’re they’re shaped like a
bullet of muscle and teeth and blood and
they’re shaped perfectly absolutely
perfectly to survive and make their way
down the river streams from their natal
streams where they come from to make it
out into the ocean and swim with
powerful tail thrusts clear out in this
great ellipse of we don’t even know how
far yet we haven’t even tracked them we
don’t have a way to track that all the
way to arrive back at their River their
Nadeau River where they came from after
they’ve gone through an entire gauntlet
of whales and otters and sea lions and
nets and fishermen like me and sometimes
like Larry to make it nine hundred miles
clear back up to the same spot the exact
spot they were born to spawn and die and
give life to new salmon and new things
and new creatures to 137 different
their shape has given them the ability
to survive ice ages volcanic eruptions
even cataclysmic floods but will it give
them the ability to survive us because
what we do to salmon we do to ourselves
Bristol Bay Alaska is the site of the
last largest wild salmon migration in
the world it’s also site to one of the
largest open pit copper mines its
largest a-positive of copper actually in
North America the pebble limited
partnership is a Canadian corporation
that has been trying for many years to
extract this copper from this place
which is seated in the headwaters of
where these salmon go to spawn if this
went through it would require tailings
dam 700 feet high it’s just tall as the
Space Needle in Seattle to hold back
toxic material forever so about the time
I was taking this salmon love movie out
into the world the United States EPA
spent three years doing a watershed
assessment to try to tell whether as
mine the size and scope of the pebble
mine could coexist with a fishery like
that in Bristol Bay after three years of
a scientific assessment they decided
that they could not and that offered
protection for Bristol Bay when we ask
these questions of ourselves do we want
to survive
do we want to perpetuate the survival of
wild salmon in order to save ourselves
I’ve had to ask that question to myself
it’s because I took to drinking early on
after the hot cocoa after the coffee I
took to drinking alcohol at first it was
a rite of passage it was a way to fit in
eventually became a constant companion
it became a way to grieve and deal with
growing anxiety and depression and at
the end it became a way for me to simply
keep existing this all culminated in
2016 in the first part of November that
year I found out in the span of five
days that my mom was diagnosed with
cancer
my grandmother Dorothy headed into
Hospice and I knew she was dying our
nation elected a new president and for
me brought a lot of fear and uncertainty
and I lost my connection to the star
light of the universe and my connection
to these wild meetings fed up that
really transformed me as a young person
and this began a downward spiral for me
about a year ago the newly appointed
head of the United States EPA met in a
closed-door meeting with the President
and CEO of the Pebble limited
partnership one hour after this meeting
the entire EPA was instructed to stand
felt helpless and hopeless at this point
I was I was drinking daily to obliterate
my feelings of sadness and I didn’t know
where to turn and after six months of
this I finally hit the bottom three days
after that meeting and after three days
after burying my my grandmother Dorothy
I checked myself into a hospital and
asked the people inside to save my life
and without them and subsequently the
people that loved me enough when I
couldn’t love myself I wouldn’t be here
speaking to you today after I left the
hospital alive I found I loved in and
for my wife that I never knew was
possible for the death she seemed to be
able to love and care for me through all
of this and for her and for those people
wild salmon have transformed me they
they called me to face my fear and in so
doing now I want to know how I can pay
it forward to them how I can share it
with you and in turn how you can share
it with the rest of the world we can
start by cleaning up the rivers we’ve
fouled here in the lower 48 I mean
there’s a lot of them the Elwha River in
Washington State is a beautiful example
of how this can be done two dams that
were no longer useful we’re taken out
and opened up hundreds of miles 70 miles
to be precise not quiet hundreds but 70
miles of pristine salmon country I will
personally pick up all the beer cans any
rivers as I can find but what we must do
and what it’s more most important is
protect the wild systems that remain the
wild systems like the eight beautiful
wild salmon rivers in Bristol Bay Alaska
and in order to protect them we need to
eat wild salmon and I know this seems
just so counterintuitive again why would
you kill something that you want to save
but here’s what we know wild salmon need
clean cold clear rivers in order to make
new babies and perpetuate life and if
they do that if we keep those rivers
healthy and if we keep demanding a
fishery like exists in Bristol Bay
Alaska that is managed absolutely
perfectly and we keep demanding wild
salmon on our plates will demand the
habitat sufficient for those wild salmon
to keep coming to our plates and feeding
us body and soul forever
we need wild salmon
we need them to connect to that thing
which is bigger than ourselves we need
them to connect to that things that are
sacred in ourselves that we don’t see
every day
we need them to connect to each other
and if we do that and we eat wild salmon
together in this way it’s the most holy
form of sacrament I can think of we are
taking that those nutrients from the
ocean into ourselves and we’re sharing
them in community and that is a way of
finding peace and that is a way of
coming together and I can say with great
joy and gratitude that today my mom is
cancer-free and it’s been almost a year
so grateful for these wild beings from
the other side that it brought me there
and now we’re gonna watch just a few
images that really kind of help tell the
story for me about what these creatures
standing in a river brings more
questions than answers many days but the
answers are shrouded in mystery and that
River is eternal and it keeps flowing
through us I have a wait for them those
answers will come what I’ve learned is
that for me wild salmon are the way
shape and form of life and I choose to
live thank you
[Applause] [Music]
a river how it can be ever-changing and
eternal all at once how in 1992 a lone
sockeye salmon named Larry could swim
900 miles up a river a river right here
outside of town to go home to spawn
alone without a mate to spawn with how
somebody could chug 12 beers and think
that this river is the perfect place
through all the empties still pondering
that one I fell in love with wild salmon
when I was 2 my memories around 10 my
dad standing next to me in the boat at
first light and the purple of the King’s
Salmons side arcing toward me as I was
trying it into the net and the look on
my dad’s face as he watched me do it
and later the smell on my hands like
metallic sweetened grass and that night
my family chattering happily with lemons
mustard smudges on their faces and the
taste of the ocean in them or orange
flesh of the salmon no one really knows
why you’re called to a river but I took
to it early on my dad brought me into
fishing and I was easily hooked but for
me it was about the experience the mist
coming off the river in the morning the
hot cocoa and the coffee
early morning from the thermos but most
of all it was the connection with my dad
with my brother and with this holy being
that comes to us from the sea under the
surface of the water and a connection to
that through a thin rod and a thin line
that directly connects me to it to this
this mysterious creature
that comes back to us to create new life
over and over and over again I wanted to
connect to that and for time I did
and then I lost that connection and I
nearly lost my own life and in the end
it was that same mysterious creature
that called me back to life and that’s
why now and forevermore I will sing
their song so I spent my 20s as a
wilderness fishing guide in southeast
Alaska I got paid to fish for salmon let
me repeat that I got paid to fish for
salmon dream job something changed me
though during this time I slowly
transformed from somebody that needed to
possess and dominate all these salmon as
they came to me one after the other and
I saw thousands of them I started
thanking every fish that came into my
boat I actually did this you could ask
my off bewildered guests as they were
standing next to me what the hell is
this guy doing but I did because I
developed this holy reverence for these
things and as this went on and towards
the end of that part of my career all I
wanted to do was figure out a way to
save the remnant runs that remain but I
just didn’t know how so flash forward to
2014 and I’m now ensconced in my career
as a storyteller and as a filmmaker and
I spent four years working on this story
that’s my best version of a love story
for wild salmon it’s the best I could I
could do at the time it’s what I needed
to do and during all this time I tried
to come up with a call to action to tell
people to to do something that would
make a difference to help save wild
salmon and so at the end of it all on a
particular Tuesday no fanfare whatsoever
it just kind of came to me and floated
in the window in order to save wild
I know what you’re thinking why would
you kill something that you want to save
doesn’t make a whole lot of sense I’ll
get there I’ll promise beyond a
spiritual physical and emotional and
cultural virtue that all these wild
salmon bring to us they’re just plain
cool they’re they’re shaped like a
bullet of muscle and teeth and blood and
they’re shaped perfectly absolutely
perfectly to survive and make their way
down the river streams from their natal
streams where they come from to make it
out into the ocean and swim with
powerful tail thrusts clear out in this
great ellipse of we don’t even know how
far yet we haven’t even tracked them we
don’t have a way to track that all the
way to arrive back at their River their
Nadeau River where they came from after
they’ve gone through an entire gauntlet
of whales and otters and sea lions and
nets and fishermen like me and sometimes
like Larry to make it nine hundred miles
clear back up to the same spot the exact
spot they were born to spawn and die and
give life to new salmon and new things
and new creatures to 137 different
their shape has given them the ability
to survive ice ages volcanic eruptions
even cataclysmic floods but will it give
them the ability to survive us because
what we do to salmon we do to ourselves
Bristol Bay Alaska is the site of the
last largest wild salmon migration in
the world it’s also site to one of the
largest open pit copper mines its
largest a-positive of copper actually in
North America the pebble limited
partnership is a Canadian corporation
that has been trying for many years to
extract this copper from this place
which is seated in the headwaters of
where these salmon go to spawn if this
went through it would require tailings
dam 700 feet high it’s just tall as the
Space Needle in Seattle to hold back
toxic material forever so about the time
I was taking this salmon love movie out
into the world the United States EPA
spent three years doing a watershed
assessment to try to tell whether as
mine the size and scope of the pebble
mine could coexist with a fishery like
that in Bristol Bay after three years of
a scientific assessment they decided
that they could not and that offered
protection for Bristol Bay when we ask
these questions of ourselves do we want
to survive
do we want to perpetuate the survival of
wild salmon in order to save ourselves
I’ve had to ask that question to myself
it’s because I took to drinking early on
after the hot cocoa after the coffee I
took to drinking alcohol at first it was
a rite of passage it was a way to fit in
eventually became a constant companion
it became a way to grieve and deal with
growing anxiety and depression and at
the end it became a way for me to simply
keep existing this all culminated in
2016 in the first part of November that
year I found out in the span of five
days that my mom was diagnosed with
cancer
my grandmother Dorothy headed into
Hospice and I knew she was dying our
nation elected a new president and for
me brought a lot of fear and uncertainty
and I lost my connection to the star
light of the universe and my connection
to these wild meetings fed up that
really transformed me as a young person
and this began a downward spiral for me
about a year ago the newly appointed
head of the United States EPA met in a
closed-door meeting with the President
and CEO of the Pebble limited
partnership one hour after this meeting
the entire EPA was instructed to stand
felt helpless and hopeless at this point
I was I was drinking daily to obliterate
my feelings of sadness and I didn’t know
where to turn and after six months of
this I finally hit the bottom three days
after that meeting and after three days
after burying my my grandmother Dorothy
I checked myself into a hospital and
asked the people inside to save my life
and without them and subsequently the
people that loved me enough when I
couldn’t love myself I wouldn’t be here
speaking to you today after I left the
hospital alive I found I loved in and
for my wife that I never knew was
possible for the death she seemed to be
able to love and care for me through all
of this and for her and for those people
wild salmon have transformed me they
they called me to face my fear and in so
doing now I want to know how I can pay
it forward to them how I can share it
with you and in turn how you can share
it with the rest of the world we can
start by cleaning up the rivers we’ve
fouled here in the lower 48 I mean
there’s a lot of them the Elwha River in
Washington State is a beautiful example
of how this can be done two dams that
were no longer useful we’re taken out
and opened up hundreds of miles 70 miles
to be precise not quiet hundreds but 70
miles of pristine salmon country I will
personally pick up all the beer cans any
rivers as I can find but what we must do
and what it’s more most important is
protect the wild systems that remain the
wild systems like the eight beautiful
wild salmon rivers in Bristol Bay Alaska
and in order to protect them we need to
eat wild salmon and I know this seems
just so counterintuitive again why would
you kill something that you want to save
but here’s what we know wild salmon need
clean cold clear rivers in order to make
new babies and perpetuate life and if
they do that if we keep those rivers
healthy and if we keep demanding a
fishery like exists in Bristol Bay
Alaska that is managed absolutely
perfectly and we keep demanding wild
salmon on our plates will demand the
habitat sufficient for those wild salmon
to keep coming to our plates and feeding
us body and soul forever
we need wild salmon
we need them to connect to that thing
which is bigger than ourselves we need
them to connect to that things that are
sacred in ourselves that we don’t see
every day
we need them to connect to each other
and if we do that and we eat wild salmon
together in this way it’s the most holy
form of sacrament I can think of we are
taking that those nutrients from the
ocean into ourselves and we’re sharing
them in community and that is a way of
finding peace and that is a way of
coming together and I can say with great
joy and gratitude that today my mom is
cancer-free and it’s been almost a year
so grateful for these wild beings from
the other side that it brought me there
and now we’re gonna watch just a few
images that really kind of help tell the
story for me about what these creatures
standing in a river brings more
questions than answers many days but the
answers are shrouded in mystery and that
River is eternal and it keeps flowing
through us I have a wait for them those
answers will come what I’ve learned is
that for me wild salmon are the way
shape and form of life and I choose to
live thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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