Item 2006.25.1.81 - Grease: Ooligan Oil Production on the Bella Coola River, Including BBQ Spring Salmon

• Moving images

1 videocassette (30 min.) : duplicate, release print, analog, col., VHS, sd.

Al Elsey compiled this commercial video using footage he filmed in 1964 and 1965 in the Bella Coola area. The video provides a compilation of film footage shot by Elsey and is narrated by him describing the activities related to the Grease Trail. Description verso of VHS commercial box reads:
"Al Elsey's friendship with Margaret Siwallace with other people of the Nuxalk Nation dates back over fifty years. This, his premier documentary, produced from vintage 16 mm movie film taken in the Bella Coola Valley in 1963, invites us to witness their tradition of making Ooligan Grease. The process, followed for centuries by the Nuxalk and other coastal First Nations people, was of such importance that their trading routes from the Coast to the Interior of British Columbia were called Grease Trails. The Ooligan were netted by the ton each year, returning from the ocean to spawn in early spring. The destruction of the Ooligan runs in the Bella Coola and other coast rivers of Southern B.C. probably resulted from over-fishing by shrimp trawl draggers during the late 1990s. GREASE shows catching the Ooligan with conical nets and dugout canoes, rotting them in "stink boxes," then rendering and purifying the Grease. Elsey's captivating narrative and brilliant footage transport us back to another time on the shores of the Bella Coola River."