In his masterful memoir “We Survived the Night,” Julian Brave Noisecat (Canim Lake Band Tsq’secen of the Secwepemc people) retells the widely-held mythology about How Coyote Freed the Salmon, and relates the origins of the communal spirit that allowed his people among many others to survive the challenges of life in the Great Northwest for millennia untold by diligently observing what he calls “the most fundamental Indigenous law of the River: Don’t catch all the fish!!”
And the truth of the matter is that the river, fish, and people fared a whole heck of a lot better when Coyote, the Coyote People, our relatives, and our neighbors were the ones taking care of it all. Because in a system where all are kin and each bears responsibility to the others, including the fish . . . tragedies of the commons, like the ones we are living through now with the destruction of fisheries, ecosystems, and the climate, were far less likely than in the present regime, where humans treat fish like commodities and other humans like strangers, not relatives.
Illustration from “how Coyote Broke the Dam” from the Syilx People, Okanagan Nation, https://syilx.org