By Mike Jerry Sr.

This winter, as it has since before anyone can remember, the sweet smell of alder smoke filtered through the air above our village as the community came together to preserve salmon with the ancient “hard smoke” process.

We fileted, salted and hung the salmon on split cedar sticks in the smokehouse where we kept the low fire smoldering for more than a week to transform the fish into hard leathery slabs that can keep for months.

It’s a tradition that we hold onto to teach our children and make our ancestors proud.

I wanted to thank Dave Heredia, Corey Jerry, Stanford Hoskins, Lawrence Jerry, Michael Jerry Jr., Robert Sam, and Robbie Weed. These guys helped make the sticks for the fish and helped keep the fire going 24/7.

Also, a big thank you to Melvin Daniels, Brysen Jansen, Jamie Baker, and the AWTP work crew, they came over and helped with the process of traditionally smoking hard smoked salmon. The salmon we smoked was used for a gathering we have in our smokehouse (Elk House) winter religion, we hung every fish up on the supporting poles and through the evening we then allowed the visitors to take the fish down and take home.

I am thankful for the young folks who came out to help out and hopefully they continue to exercise this process for years to come. The weather was very cold this year in February so it took 10-11 days to fully hard smoke. Normally it's around 6-7 days.

I'm looking forward to next winter to do it all over again!