Herring are vital to the productivity and health of marine systems, and socio-ecologically Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) is one of the most important fish species in the Northern Hemisphere. Human dependence on herring has evolved for millennia through interactions with key spawning areas—but humans have also significantly impacted the species’ distribution and abundance. Combining ethnological, historical, archaeological, and political perspectives with comparative reference to other North Pacific cultures, Herring and People of the North Pacific traces fishery development in Southeast Alaska from precontact Indigenous relationships with herring to postcontact focus on herring products. Revealing new findings about current herring stocks as well as the fish’s significance to the conservation of intraspecies biodiversity, the book explores the role of traditional local knowledge, in combination with archeological, historical, and biological data, in both understanding marine ecology and restoring herring to their former abundance.

"Herring (Clupea pallasii) is vital to the productivity and health of marine systems, and socio-ecologically is the most important fish species in the northern hemisphere, where it is valued for its oil, bait, eggs, and sac roe. This comprehensive case study traces the development of fisheries in Southeast Alaska from pre-contact indigenous relationships to herring to the post-contact fisheries, with comparative reference to other North Pacific cultures. Its interdisciplinary approach, which combines ethnological, historical, archaeological, and political perspectives, makes Herring and People in the North Pacific unique in literature on indigenous peoples, fisheries management, and marine social-ecological systems.Among the volume's findings are that: *present herring stocks, even in highly productive areas of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, are being managed in a depleted status, representing a fraction of their historical abundance and distribution; * significant long-term impacts on herring distribution and abundance have been anthropogenic; * human dependence on herring as a food resource evolved through interactions with key spawning areas with abundant substrates for egg deposition (such as macrocystis kelp, rockweed, and eelgrass); and * maintenance of diverse spawning locations in Southeast Alaska is critical to conserving intraspecies biodiversity. Local and traditional knowledge (LTK)-in combination with archeological, historical, and biological data-is shown to play a critical role in developing understanding of marine ecology, valuation of herring in North Pacific social-ecological systems, and restoration of herring stocks toward their former abundance"--

In the early 1940s, a boom in white migration to Southeast Alaska brought up questions of land and resource rights. In 1946, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs assigned a team of researchers to interview old and young villagers to discover who owned and used the lands and waters of the region and under what rules. Their report is published here for the first time in book form, along with text of interviews with 88 natives, a reminiscence by an anthropologist on the research team, and an introduction explaining the context and significance of the original report. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Haa Leelk'w Has Aan' Saaxu / Our Grandparents' Names on the Land presents the results of a collaborative project with Native communities of Southeast Alaska to record indigenous geographic names. Documenting and analyzing more than 3,000 Tlingit, Haida, and other Native names on the land, it highlights their descriptive force and cultural significance. With community maps, tables, and photographs, this book will be invaluable for those seeking to understand Alaska Native geographic perspectives. As Tlingits from the Hoonah Indian Association explain in the book: "Long before Russian, French, Spanish, and British explorers mapped and named the mountains and bays of the Huna Tlingit homeland, we identified special places in our own vibrant, descriptive ways. Tlingit place names reflect important natural resources, ancestral stories, sacred places, and major geological and historic events. Our place names describe more than just inanimate locations for we perceive the mountains, glaciers, and streams to be as alive and aware as ourselves. Rather, they capture the history, emotions, and stories of our enduring relationship with a living, evolving landscape." "The new benchmark against which all future work will be measured." -Richard Dauenhauer, author of Russians in Tlingit America "Thomas Thornton and his Tlingit colleagues show how 'grandparents' names on the land' provide exquisite scaffolding for human ecologies in North America's far northwest--a moral universe inhabited by a community of beings in constant communication and exchange. This book will be a resource for the ages." -Julie Cruikshank, author of Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination "Restoring Tlingit placenames and their meanings will root our people back in place and decolonize the landscape, and Thornton has provided us with a fundamental tool to do exactly that. Sh t--oghaa xhat ditee--I am grateful." -Lance A. Twitchell, Xh'unei, University of Alaska Southeast Thomas F. Thornton is senior research fellow and director of the Environmental Change and Management Program at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford He is the author of Being and Place among the Tlingit.

Recovering lost voices and exploring issues intimate and institutional, this sweeping examination of Spanish California illuminates Indian struggles against a confining colonial order and amidst harrowing depopulation. To capture the enormous challenges Indians confronted, Steven W. Hackel integrates textual and quantitative sources and weaves together analyses of disease and depopulation, marriage and sexuality, crime and punishment, and religious, economic, and political change. As colonization reduced their numbers and remade California, Indians congregated in missions, where they forged communities under Franciscan oversight. Yet missions proved disastrously unhealthful and coercive, as Franciscans sought control over Indians' beliefs and instituted unfamiliar systems of labor and punishment. Even so, remnants of Indian groups still survived when Mexican officials ended Franciscan rule in the 1830s. Many regained land and found strength in ancestral cultures that predated the Spaniards' arrival. At this study's heart are the dynamic interactions in and around Mission San Carlos Borromeo between Monterey region Indians (the Children of Coyote) and Spanish missionaries, soldiers, and settlers. Hackel places these local developments in the context of the California mission system and draws comparisons between California and other areas of the Spanish Borderlands and colonial America. Concentrating on the experiences of the Costanoan and Esselen peoples during the colonial period, Children of Coyote concludes with an epilogue that carries the story of their survival to the present day.