By caring for the eggs and young salmon, students learn about the lifecycle and habitat needs of salmon, the importance of water quality, and what people can do to help improve the environment.  Over more than a dozen years, students have successfully raised and released thousands of Coho salmon into local streams.

For several years, the LFP Stewardship Foundation has sponsored all-school assemblies at Lake Forest Park, Brookside, and Ridgecrest Elementary schools featuring renown Native American storyteller, Roger Fernandez.

Roger is a member of the Lower Elwha Band of the S’Klallam Indians from the Port Angeles area. He has been storytelling for many years. Roger does a lot of work in Puget Sound schools and tailors his presentations to young people. He believes art, music and stories reflect the culture and the culture reflects the environment. In sharing these types of stories Native people can teach non-Natives about the aspects of their culture that go beyond food, shelter, and clothing, and actually define the culture of the tellers. Children intuitively understand stories, and Roger gives them access to stories that are easy to interpret. Native people call their stories “the teachings” as they are the fundamental way of teaching children.

When Roger visits our local schools, he tells the story of the salmon people, a traditional teaching about how what we put (and don’t put) into our streams affects the “salmon house.” The children then follow up in the classroom to discuss just what the “salmon house” means, and how our choices affect it.

For more info about Roger:

www.turtleislandstorytellers.net/tis_washington/transcript_r_fernandes.htm