Since Time Immemorial

Lucas Kinley

INTERVIEW BY JULIE TRIMINGHAM

SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL is a recurring series featuring community members whose families have been here since time immemorial. The ancestral knowledge carried by Lhaq’temish (Lummi), Nooksack, and other Coast Salish peoples is knowledge about how to live in our shared home in a good, life-sustaining way. We live in a time when we need to restore our relationship with Mother Earth and with one another. We are grateful for these stories, told in the words of each featured individual.

Chexanexwh Lucas Kinley is a Lummi tribal fisherman. He is also an elected member of Lummi Nation’s Fisheries and Natural Resources Commission, which oversees openings, regulations, species management, and negotiations pertaining to Treatyguaranteed rights to fish, hunt, and gather in traditional Lhaq’temish (Lummi) territory.

How did you come to be a fisherman?

My family has always fished, and we’ve always fished as a family.

What does that look like?

Depends on which fish we’re going after. We have specific roles we try to stick to, but everyone can typically do each other’s job when needed. Let’s say you’re on the purse seiner, going after salmon. So, like I’d be running the boat, finding the fish, figuring out where to set the net. Brother would be running our purse winch and the boom winches. Dave would be the guy who runs around and helps out where it’s needed. Mom would be on the drum which would haul the net in, and Joe would be in the power skiff which tows the other end on the net.

You’ve got other boats, too?

So the boats I own are the Golden Eagle and the Silver Bullet. Mom owns the Salish Sea, which is the purse seiner we all fish salmon on. My brother’s boat is the Tah-Mahs II, named after my mom. Our family also owns the only tribal reef net gear over on Lummi Island.

You built your own boats from scratch, didn’t you?

Yes, more or less— with help from my parents, and Pat Pitsch who started All American Marine on our family property.

Which I find amazing. I find fishermen amazing because you need to know how to do so many very different things.

Yeah, I guess you have to kind of be a jack of all trades. You gotta know about boat maintenance, gear maintenance, how to read tides and weather, you gotta understand the fish, know where they are, where they might be going. Then there’s always the business aspect.

What’s the hardest part for you?

Probably time management, ‘cause a lot happens pretty quick, there’s always multiple things going on. Like right now we’re fishing crab, but we’re also getting ready for a prawn opening, which means making sure that all that gear is good to go, and we’re on standby for various long line (halibut) openings. We need to make sure our gear, bait, boats, everything is ready to go for these other openings while still making sure we’re crabbing up to our full potential.

Could you walk us through a year in fish?

January, February, we could be crabbing. Halibut fisheries, which are usually short little openings here and there, typically start in March. Come April, May, we will be doing prawns and halibut while also gearing up for crab, which usually starts at the end of June, beginning of July. Then as you get into June, July, August, we’re typically getting ready for salmon, doing boat maintenance, nets, whatever else. August, September, hopefully, depending on the year, we’re chasing some kind of salmon, sockeye or pinks, and also doing crab openers in between. Hopefully, come October, there will be chum salmon and potentially more crab. Then November is when we start back up on our winter crab season.

And where does all this happen?

All through the San Juans, in our traditional territory. I also spend some winters down in the San Francisco area chasing Dungeness crab. In past years, I’ve gone to Alaska to gill net in the Bristol Bay region when the fishing was slow here.

Why is it sometimes slow?

You know, salmon used to be one of our biggest income sources. It isn’t anymore because of habitat loss, water quality, the way the rivers have been managed and whatnot. Right here used to be the salmon capital of the world, and now we’re fishing only one to two percent of what the salmon stock used to be.

Why are you still fishing for salmon if it’s not providing for you the way it used to?

Because it’s who we are. We’re Salmon People. We fish for salmon, whether or not we catch anything. The running joke is that we’ve branched off to different areas like crabbing and prawns to pay for our salmon habit. We go into Alaska to chase fish, and we’ll go crabbing down south in the winter, just so we can chase salmon here at home.

The 1855 Point Elliott Treaty guarantees you the right to fish for salmon as long as the mountain stands and the rivers flow. Since the Treaty is recognized as the supreme law of the land, doesn’t it seem like the US government should be ensuring sufficient wild salmon runs so that you can fish at your usual and accustomed levels as well as in your usual and accustomed places?

Yes. Plain and simple.

How does it feel to you when you’re chasing salmon?

I don’t know how to describe it. Out on the water in the islands, that’s our ancestral home grounds. So many village sites and reef net sites. Doing what my family has always done. It just always feels like home.

Hy’shqe, Luke.

Julie Trimingham is grateful to make her home on traditional Lhaq’temish territory, and to work for the Sacred Lands Conservancy (SacredSea.org), an Indigenous-led 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the life, culture, and sanctity of the Salish Sea. 