The crew of the Admiral & the Tribal Fisheries Department Partner to Provide Pink Salmon to the Community.

Ray Forsman, Suquamish Tribal elder, and captain of the purse seiner, the Admiral, remembers the old days when people in the community shared their harvests to make sure everyone had enough food to eat. In keeping with this Suquamish tradition, he and his crew, Charles Dryden, Erik Alexander, Ted Jackson, and Duran George, delivered 17,664 cans of wild pink salmon for distribution to the Tribal Community last week. “This is the right thing to do,” Ray Forsman said “our crew wants to make sure everyone has salmon to eat.”

When a big sockeye salmon run was predicted in 2010, Ray proposed to the Suquamish Fisheries Department that the Tribe create an annual plan for a Frasier River wild sockeye and pink salmon subsistence harvest. Subsistence harvesting is a right reserved in the Treaty of Point Elliot and had been done for the community in years past. The Admiral’s crew wanted to renew this tradition. The crew volunteered to set aside a day to harvest fish that would then be distributed to Suquamish elders and to Delores and Luther Mill’s Suquamish Food Bank. That year, Ray and his crew delivered 8,000 pounds of whole sockeye salmon to the Tribe which the Tribal Administration Department distributed.

At the time of the 2011 wild pink salmon run last year, Ray again approached the Suquamish Fisheries Department to partner together to harvest for subsistence. This time he proposed to harvest and can enough fish to distribute locally to Suquamish Tribal families at the Reservation. Ray and his crew volunteered to harvest the fish. The Fisheries Department agreed to cover the canning and distribution costs. This is the wild pink salmon delivered last week.

“The whole crew feels good about this,” said Ray “we want to continue a tradition that has been around for a long time. It is our goal to make this an annual distribution effort for the Suquamish community.” The Tribe’s Human Services Department will begin distributing the salmon to Tribal elders and families shortly. About a third of this year’s donation will be delivered to the Suquamish food bank for distribution to the neediest families in our community.

*Distribution will be Wednesday, May 9, 2012 from 10AM until 2PM at the Maintenance Building.
Call Clae Williams with questions 360-394-8413

On Sunday, March 18, 2012, the Suquamish Tribe's General Council (voting members) voted to re-elect Irene Carper, Bardow Lewis & Jay Mills to their incumbent positions on Tribal Council.  Congratulations to all three!

Tallied votes are as follows:

Position 1 - Irene Carper 187, Bennie Armstrong 139
Position 2 - Bardow Lewis 123, Nigel Lawrence 94, Lois Sullivan 75, Bill Stroud 38
Position 3 - Jay Mills 309 (unopposed)