Coquille tribe ecological restoration, wine industry shifts, healthcare delays, and sanctuary oversight

William Murphy has been manning the salmon pit at the annual celebration for 19 years.

The tribal elder says it's his chance to share Coquille culture with the broader community.

The pit is set up to where you have your home pit on one end and your travel pit on the other end.

Their dance and music performances, crafts and vendors, all set up in tents outside the Coquille Casino in North Bend.

But at the center of it all is Salmon, a foundation of Coquille life for thousands of years.

We're highlighting our gift of the magnificent way we can produce cooked fish.

And we're trying to share that with the public and let them enjoy what we enjoy on a large level.

So this is bridging the culture and letting people experience it.

But that salmon Murphy is cooking, it didn't come from the Coquille River.

The tribe had to buy it from tribes up north.

We kind of don't have the opportunity to provide our own fish, or we would.

Murphy says salmon fishermen like him and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather are gone.

We disappeared.

We went away.

We are now memories and thoughts.

Salmon runs in the area have been on the decline for decades as habitat loss and changing environments took their toll.

But then, in 2018, things got even worse.

State biologists met with the tribal council to bring them some news.

Coquille River salmon were near extinction levels.

So the tribe began working with the state to try and do something to save salmon in the Coquille, and they started a program to introduce hatchery chinook into the watershed.

A few days after the celebration, tribal members gather at Ferry Creek in Bandon.

Tribal fisheries workers wade into the creek and stretch a seine net across the water, pushing hundreds of finger-sized smolts downstream.

Jesse Rodriguez has been standing in the creek in rubber waders all day.

He's a fisheries technician with the tribe's natural resource department.

He explains that they spawn the fish at a hatchery upriver and bring the juvenile smolts to the creek to acclimate.

William Murphy has been manning the salmon pit at the annual celebration for 19 years.

The tribal elder says it's his chance to share Coquille culture with the broader community.

The pit is set up to where you have your home pit on one end and your travel pit on the other end.

Their dance and music performances, crafts and vendors, all set up in tents outside the Coquille Casino in North Bend.

But at the center of it all is Salmon, a foundation of Coquille life for thousands of years.

We're highlighting our gift of the magnificent way we can produce cooked fish.

And we're trying to share that with the public and let them enjoy what we enjoy on a large level.

So this is bridging the culture and letting people experience it.

But that salmon Murphy is cooking, it didn't come from the Coquille River.

The tribe had to buy it from tribes up north.

We kind of don't have the opportunity to provide our own fish, or we would.

Murphy says salmon fishermen like him and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather are gone.

We disappeared.

We went away.

We are now memories and thoughts.

Salmon runs in the area have been on the decline for decades as habitat loss and changing environments took their toll.

But then, in 2018, things got even worse.

State biologists met with the tribal council to bring them some news.

Coquille River salmon were near extinction levels.

So the tribe began working with the state to try and do something to save salmon in the Coquille, and they started a program to introduce hatchery chinook into the watershed.

A few days after the celebration, tribal members gather at Ferry Creek in Bandon.

Tribal fisheries workers wade into the creek and stretch a seine net across the water, pushing hundreds of finger-sized smolts downstream.

Jesse Rodriguez has been standing in the creek in rubber waders all day.

He's a fisheries technician with the tribe's natural resource department.

He explains that they spawn the fish at a hatchery upriver and bring the juvenile smolts to the creek to acclimate.