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Salish Sea Institute News
Annual Meeting of the Lummi Island Heritage Trust
Join the Lummi Island Heritage Trust for the 2025 Annual Meeting on Saturday, March 8th at the Lummi Island Grange Hall from 6:30 - 8:00pm. This year's speaker is the Salish Sea Institute's founding Director Ginny Broadhurst. Ginny's presentation will include important restoration and protection work in the region and tips for how and where to find hope about the Salish Sea and the Planet.
This event will also be available via live stream. Register here to attend remotely via Zoom
Student's get introduction to Salish Sea
by Mia Limmer-Lai
Mia Limmer-Lai is the very first Tahlequah endowed Salish Sea Institute intern and a student in the Salish Sea Studies minor. She wrote an article on the experience of taking SALI 201, the core class of the minor, that was featured in Western Today.
The Salish Sea Institute is proud to support this Student organized evening of conversation on Thursday March 6th, from 4-7 pm in the Viking Union Multi-Purpose Room or via Zoom. This event is seeking to amplify Indigenous voices and bridge generational knowledge about caring for the land featuring Indigenous voices from around the Salish Sea.
First Cohort Fellows Member Dr. Aquila Flower receives $108,000 grant from EPA and PSP
In response to the team that wrote The Health of the Salish Sea Ecosystem Report identifying the need to include additional environmental indicators of climate and landscape change. The Environmental Protection Agency and Puget Sound Partnership gave Dr. Aquila Flowers a grant of $108,000 to update the report with the newly found indicators.
The Salish Sea
The Salish Sea bioregion is an estuarine inland sea surrounded by snow-capped mountain ranges and rich in biodiversity. Freshwater lakes and glaciers filter through temperate rainforest into rivers that meet the saltwater and tides from the Pacific Ocean, filling the Puget Sound, Georgia Basin, and Strait of Juan de Fuca. The name "Salish Sea" reflects the long history of Straits and Coast Salish peoples, who have developed deep and abiding relationships with the lands and waters of this region since time immemorial.
Over the past two centuries, the Canada-United States border and each nation's governance structures have cut across this waterscape and intersected with Indigenous nations' laws and governance systems in myriad ways. Millions of people from around the world have moved to the region's cities and rural areas. Settler colonial systems and industrial-scale population growth in the region, combined with extractive resource economies and global climate change, create challenges for the future of this region and all who live here.
The Institute
The Salish Sea Institute at Western Washington University is dedicated to the study and conservation of the Salish Sea ecosystem. We collaborate with regional universities, government agencies, Indigenous communities, and non-profit organizations to conduct scientific research, develop sustainable management strategies, and educate the public about the environmental, social, and economic importance of the Salish Sea.
Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Webinar
The Salish Sea Institute hosted a webinar on the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project on October 10 featuring Ginny Broadhurst, Natalie Baloy and Derek Moscato.
The Return of Humpback Whales to the Salish Sea
In this video by Bob Turner (also a Salish Sea Institute Fellow) learn more about why humpback whales are returning to the Salish Sea in larger numbers and what this means for the health of the Salish Sea.
Emerging Issues in the Salish Sea: Issue 6
The Salish Sea Institute has just released their 6th volume of their Emerging Issues in the Salish Sea Series: Mega-Projects, Cumulative Impacts, & Indigenous Nationhood on the Multinational Salish Sea which looks at the approved Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project and it's legal challenges over environmental and indigenous consultation issues.
Reconstructing Ancestral səl̓ilwətaɬ Diets
SSI held a webinar in October entitled: "Reconstructing Ancestral səl̓ilwətaɬ Diets-Archaeology and Ecology for Indigenous Food Sovereignty" by Dr. Meghan Efford. This talk discussed a unique research project under the leader of səl̓ilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation). This research integrates archeology, ecology, historical, and archival records, and səl̓ilwətaɬ traditional, ecological, and cultural knowledge to reconstruct a best estimate of the precontact diet of səl̓ilwətaɬ communities.
