“We come together in grief.”

That was the sentiment of Colleen James from the Carcross/Tagish First Nation (C/TFN), as she spoke at the Public Water and Salmon Ceremony. The event was held July 24 at the Rotary Peace Park boat launch in Whitehorse.

The goal of the ceremony was to honour water and salmon relatives as the Yukon faces historically low numbers of salmon from unfolding risks to their homes.

Organizers had the more than 50 participants put their prayers into the tobacco touched by an eagle feather that was then placed in the water by Nika Silverfox-Young with the Council of Yukon First Nations Youth Advocacy Training Program, to swim and speak with salmon.

“Our breath is in the water. Our life is in the water. So we come here to celebrate that water is life,” James said.

“We thank you for coming here to pray with us, to give thanks to the water with us, to acknowledge our violent acts toward nature and the water and to make our commitment individually, collectively, holistically — to make our commitments to what we can do as individuals.

“I live above the dam, my grandmother went fishing, she was born in 1917; she would row and sail to M’Clintock River and put up salmon.

“I am her grandchild, and I have never done that because the land is gone, the salmon’s gone and the water levels are a little bit different,” James said.

“So in a hundred years, the fish and the water here are in trouble. The new culture and how things are done has caused it.”

Norma Kassi, a former chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, added: “This is a very hard time for many of our people along the Yukon River. They are honouring the water; our people are apologizing for disasters that happened to our water, to the salmon,” said the former NDP MLA.

Said Silverfox-Young: “Salmon swim in my DNA, they’ve swam In my DNA for time immemorial and they will continue to swim in my DNA long after this body leaves this realm.

“The loss of my salmon means I don’t have that connection to that half of me that I don’t understand. I’m really fortunate that my dad’s from the East Coast of Canada,” Silverfox-Young said.

“My whole life, I’ve grown up knowing what it means to lose our fish on that side of my family, but seeing it happen (in) real time in my lifetime, on this side, absolutely frightens me.“

Currently, only the ghosts of salmon swim through my nets now,” Silverfox-Young added.

“I want to see them come back exactly as the elders used to say — that you could look across (gesturing to the river) and all you could see was just the red backs, and hear the splashing.

“Last year, when I was in Tatchun, I didn’t even see an egg in our river,” said Silverfox-Young.

“Do you know how devastating that is to lose that big part of you when I am just starting to learn who I am and I still can’t have that other half there?

“We need our salmon to come home.”