Convergence: Building Towards Fluid Futurities

Abstract

Since the 1974 Boldt Decision, Native Nations in Coast Salish territories have collaborated alongside state and federal governments for co-management over watersheds and coasts. Over this time, the fishing industry has rapidly expanded, from commodifying fishing rights and access to the territorialization and allocation of miles of the ocean to farmed fish production, putting wild Pacific Salmon—an ecological and cultural keystone species in Coast Salish territories—in danger. This paper explores the tensions navigated and solidarities formed between Black, Indigenous, and other people of color on Coast Salish territories in the struggle to protect Salmon and resist the ongoing violence of racial capitalism and settler colonialism that is exerted on their communities, and more- than-human kin. This research combines a historical overview of Seattle, as a crossing-over place for people and Salmon on Coast Salish territories, and ethnographic methods, to explore ways in which Black, Indigenous, and other people of color build towards fluid futures, centering Indigenous ontologies, relationality, food-sovereignty and the long-term restoration of Salmon watersheds and the ocean.