Herring and People of the North Pacific: Sustaining a Keystone Species

"This is an exceptionally interesting, carefully written, and well-reasoned examination of the role the Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) has played in the history and culture of the peoples of the Alexander Archipelago of southeastern Alaska." * Choice * "[A]n interesting read: a current fishing issue with a historic and anthropologic context, well documented and annotated, with references, photographs, charts, and a timeline of the Southeast herring fishery." * Alaska History * "A profoundly hopeful work. If it is taken seriously in high places, it will save the herring and the Tlingit fishery. It is such a stunningly well-done, scholarly, tightly argued work that it will be impossible to dismiss." * Ethnobiology Letters * "The critical element and clear strength of the book is that it is not just a chronicle of herring decline or diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Rather, it provides a way forward from the profoundly alarming situation we are confronted with. The authors’ way forward is a call to draw on traditional and local knowledge concerning sustainable harvesting practices and managerial strategies...[T]his volume offers the kind of rich, compelling and well-argued study that has significant potential to fuel transformational change." * Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology * "Integration of Indigenous knowledge into understanding and management of natural resources and the ecosystems they belong to has been a desired goal of anthropology for decades. Likewise, the use of archaeological data to provide deep diachronic perspective in studies of historical ecology is a growing objective/rational for the pursuit of archaeological research. This book, which considers the past, present, and future of an often-overlooked, but critical keystone species, Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii), represents a timely and impressive step toward attainment of those goals." * Journal of Anthropological Research *