ABSTRACT
Anthropologists emphasize two major processes when studying how cultures change — evolution and acculturation. The process by which cultures change in form through time is called evolution. Acculturation changed Indian culture more by introducing concepts about property rights, participatory democracy, and domestication of resources. Fish capture is associated with cultures that have small, egalitarian communities that have a less formalized social and political structure and where economic growth and development are not emphasized as goals. Indian cultures were interred on reservations, encouraged to formalize tribal governments, and advised to give up fishing for farming. The salmon fishing peoples of the Pacific Northwest, before the coming of whites, depended on "one, or a few, local ecosystems". As ecosystems are modified to accommodate practices associated with agriculture and aquaculture, the shifting, relatively egalitarian, and less formal fishing peoples give way to dominating, sedentary, stratified, and more formalized cultures.
