Carved salmon fill a Fairbanks health center as the real Yukon run collapses

Two new sculptures of a Yukon River fish camp now greet patients and families at the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center in Fairbanks — a smokehouse and drying king salmon rendered in moose antler, driftwood and salvaged tin. They arrive in a year when the real thing is disappearing.

The works are by Ramy Brooks, an artist from Rampart who grew up along the Yukon at fish camp. In the Cultural Gallery, "Tending to Salmon in the Smokehouse" sets antler-carved salmon with copper tails and epoxy-glossed scales among weathered driftwood, river rocks and an old net. A second piece between two of the campus buildings adds a smoke barrel glowing with flame, evoking the cottonwood smoke used to preserve the catch. For Brooks, the scenes stand for the lessons of fish camp — families working together, knowledge passed between generations, and the place of salmon in the identity and well-being of Interior Alaska Native people.

That meaning lands harder against what's happening on the river. Yukon Chinook passage this year ran at 59 percent of the historic average at the Pilot Station sonar, and summer chum at just 27 percent of the historical median, Alaska News has reported. Closures have shut off subsistence and personal use fishing across the drainage, and emergency orders have closed the whole river to king and chum sport fishing through 2026. The salmon in the health center may be the closest thing to a fish camp some families see this year.

Brooks said he hopes the work pushes people toward protecting the fishery. "Through action now it is my hope that this display is not just a memory, but a vision of what our future could look like," he said.