The Sockeye Mother by Hetxw’ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When you live in a city, you tend to get disconnected from nature. We might see it in the park, and we might see it in our gardens, but we don’t connect it all in our minds. And this might be the problem with why so many people do not get that we really are interconnected.
This lovely, lush, beautifully illustrated picture book uses the example of the Sockeye salmon to explain how important it is to the existence of all life around it, not just the people, Gitxsan, of the Xsan (or River of Mists or the Colonial name of Skeena River).
We learn the life’s path of the Miso’o or the sockeye, from fry (their earliest form post egg) to their final breeding form, as the months change, and the different moons signal different things in the life of the fish.
This is a wonderful way to introduce children, and probably some adults, to just how important a small little fish can be, and why it is important to the Gitxsan rely on it.
Just look at these lovely pictures.
And there is a great youtube video that lets you hear all the Gitxsan words pronounced.
Highly recommended to children, libraries, schools, and homes. A lovely book to own and look at, and perhaps, learn from.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.