Salmon Medicine

The Salmon is an amazing creature that can grow up to four feet in length and weigh over sixty pounds. It has remarkable navigation skills. Salmon finds its way from the sea to the river of its birth and swims upstream overcoming great obstacles to reach its spawning grounds. Salmon are masters of water, which is related to the emotions and change. Salmon teaches us how to overcome obstacles and flow with the shifting waters of change. Salmon symbolizes sustenance, regeneration, continuity, fluidity, purpose, resolve, integrity, and the flow of life. Just as the sound of the drum can be used to call the spirit of the salmon into a ritual, the drum can also be used to draw salmon upriver to spawn in restored spawning grounds. Salmon are drawn to the beat of the drum because it sounds like the slap of the female salmon's tail as she scrapes out a gravel nest. The didgeridoo, like the one heard on my video "Salmon Run," originated in Australia thousands of years ago. According to Aboriginal mythology, the Creator created man and woman and gave them the didgeridoo to sound the animals into form. People of Salmon Medicine will have strong ties to the place of their birth. Merge with the salmon and swim in the river of deep knowledge -- the river of life. Plunge into the uncharted waters of the unknowable -- back to the source.