I grew up in the Duwamish watershed, where salmon have always felt omnipresent in the way of life. I remember zips of pink and silver rippling through the creek under the bridge where I biked, and the hatchery with the teal sign, halfway between the library and my brother's swim practice. When I returned home in 2020, watching the salmon run became a grounding exercise for me in time of deep, communal rupture and upheaval. I've since been slowly documenting their ancestral migration each summer and fall through photos, videos, maps, sketches, and other ephemera as a spatial, durational, and personal practice.       

The species’ significance to Coast Salish waterways pre-dates the settler state by many millennia, and it continues to sustain the greater regional networks of soil, vegetation, and wildlife today despite centuries of ecocide and extractive practices. In tracing the salmon run through the places I grew up, I’ve begun to draw continuities from geographies of the Duwamish watershed to my own articulations of diaspora, loss, grief, and resilience.

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