Executive Summary
Salmon Nation is both a place, defined by the presence of wild Pacific Salmon from The Sacramento to the Yukon River, from San Francisco, California to Juneau, Alaska, and an idea.
It is a radical idea of a “Nature State” as distinct from a “Nation State”. It is described by the wiggly lines of nature rather than the straight lines of war, genocide and politics.
Salmon Nation is designed to support both people and place in one of the most diverse, rich and beautiful natural regions on Earth. There are some 50 million human residents in this place occupied by as many wild salmon. The existence of abundant, diverse and resilient salmon is an indicator of the ecological, economic and social heath of the socio-economic system.
We have created both a non profit charitable organization, the “Magic Canoe”, and a public benefit LLC called the “Salmon Nation Trust”, to attract a variety of financial, human and technical resources to support promising community entrepreneurs we have identified from 35 years of work across the region. They are developing practical local initiatives across the spectrum from charitable to commercial investment opportunities to address the cascading collapse of planetary life support systems: climate change, the loss of biodiversity, degradation of oceanic fisheries, temperate rain forests, and soil health. They are promoting regenerative farming and ranching, ecological forestry, community fisheries, green energy and building, restoration of sovereign rights of First Nations and Native Americans.
We seek to add an additional $10 million to the $8 million raised over the past few years to support individuals doing good work in Salmon Nation. Tax deductible grants can be directed to Magic Canoe and investments can be made in non voting equity investments into the Salmon Nation Trust or through grants, or Donor Advised Funds (DAF) and Impact investment platforms like Realize Assets.
The collective experience of Salmon Nation team members exceeds 100 years in global public mission oriented enterprise: Spencer Beebe, Christopher Brookfield, Ian Gill, Cheryl Chen, Sara Pietka, Catherine Villarreal, and others. They are guided by 11 high profile Trustees of the Salmon Nation Trust, people like Kat Taylor, Susan Mac Cormac, Nell Newman, Amalaxa Louisa Smith, Bob Warren, Louise Brady, Antone Minthorn, Miles Richardson, Spencer Beebe, Tim Carver, and Greg Moga.