The Si'lailo Way: Indians, Salmon and Law on the Columbia River. Joseph C. Dupris, Kathleen S. Hill, and William H. Rodgers, Jr. 2006. Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC. 450 pp. $40 paperback.

It is impossible to work in the environmental field in the Pacific Northwest without knowing something of salmon: their epic journeys from river to sea and back; the legendary runs of the nineteenth century, before the arrival of dynamite, fish wheels, dams, and hatcheries; the near-symbiotic relationship between the Northwest Indian tribes and the fish that were the backbone of their diet and culture. Those who pay any attention at all to the area's history are aware that serious injustice was done to the native people and fish of the Columbia River. The Si'lailo Way makes that injustice tangible by adding lavishly illustrated characters and a narrative that viscerally connects the reader to the people and places that fell victim to what the authors depict as a 150-year campaign to rid the Columbia of its native human and piscine inhabitants.