Stz’uminus Elder and longtime fisherman Ray Harris remembers a Salish Sea very different from the one many people know today.

“What people don’t know is that the huge abundance we had doesn’t exist anymore,” Harris says. “People today think the way it is now, it’s the way it’s always been.”

Harris grew up fishing in Stz’uminus territory around Chemainus and recalls herring spawning along roughly ten miles of shoreline when he was in his twenties and thirties. Much of that local abundance disappeared within his lifetime. Harris attributes the decline in part to fisheries management that allowed commercial harvest of local herring populations.

The loss is cultural as well as ecological. Harris and his family have worked to keep herring traditions alive, making videos with family and community members demonstrating how to prepare and smoke herring. For Harris, harvesting, preparing, eating and sharing traditional foods are also ways of passing knowledge between generations.

That experience informs what Harris believes needs to happen next. He supports efforts to protect Salish Sea herring, but says lasting change requires people to experience herring themselves—and for Indigenous knowledge to have a much stronger role in fisheries decisions.

“Local traditional knowledge needs to take a major role,” he says, “in the harvest and planning” for the future of herring.

Harris’s perspective comes from a lifetime on the water: not simply remembering what herring abundance once looked like, but knowing what it meant to fish for herring, bring them home, prepare them and feed a community. Protecting herring ensures future generations can also have those experiences.

Bio

Ray Harris is a member of the Stz’uminus First Nation on Vancouver Island (formerly Chemainus First Nation). He previously served for 15 years as the elected chief of the Stz’uminus First Nation. He has also served a number of terms with the First Nations Summit, which represents the majority of First Nations in BC on treaty related issues and other issues of common concern to First Nations. He was the keynote speaker at the 2025 “Let the Herring Live” forum, which brought together 13 First Nations and numerous conservation and research organizations around restoring distinct Salish Sea herring populations.

Mr. Harris is an active commercial fisherman who travels yearly up and down the BC coast. He has been instrumental in organizing the Coast Salish Gatherings and the formation of the Coast Salish Council which focuses on environmental and resource health in the Coast Salish Sea and region. Ray is the father of 11 children and has many grandchildren and great grandchildren. He is an Advisory Board member for the Salish Sea Institute. All of these experiences are guided by Ray’s deep connection and participation in the cultural traditions of the Coast Salish.