Sound Perspectives: Sentiment Analysis of Residents of the Puget Sound On Indigenous Fisheries

By Hailey Kehoe Thommen

A THESIS

submitted to

Oregon State University

Honors College

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Honors Baccalaureate of Science in Natural Resources, Forest Ecosystems & Society (Honors Associate)

Presented May 24, 2019 Commencement June, 2020

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Hailey Kehoe Thommen for the degree of Honors Baccalaureate of Science in Natural ​ ​ Resources, Forest Ecosystems & Society presented on May 24, 2019. Title: Sound Perspectives: ​ ​ Sentiment Analysis of Residents of the Puget Sound On Indigenous Fisheries.

Abstract approved:______Kelly Biedenweg

Indigenous management and coordinated co-management of natural resources is an emotionally filled topic, especially for those within the Puget Sound region of Washington, but has yet to be studied in depth from the emotional perspective of residents. This research used sentiment analysis to find the overarching sentiment of indigenous fisheries, how it varies by demographics and level of trust in governance, and frequency of reported fishing. I also sought to identify which primary emotions were most evoked by respondents. From this I found that when people chose to make a free comment, the sentiments were predominantly negative. Demographics did not vary significantly between those evoking positive or negative sentiment, although the few people of color within the sample evoked positive sentiment. Primary emotions evoked by respondents within the negative sentiment group were sadness and disgust, while those within the positive sentiment group expressed trust and joy. These primary emotions of the sentiments groups are directly opposing according to the psychology of emotion theory. There were various words respondents used frequently when expressing themselves, and these indicating words matched with their sentiment can lead to a better understanding of the misunderstandings and misconceptions of these two user groups. Utilizing these insights of the respondents emotions underlying this topic can lead to more effective ways to communicate co-management and improve perceptions between sovereign indigenous nations and non-indigenous fishing groups.

Key Words: Sentiment analysis, Qualitative study, Puget Sound, Salmon, Native, Indigenous, Fisheries

Corresponding e-mail address: [email protected]

©Copyright by Hailey Kehoe Thommen May 24, 2019

Sound Perspectives: Sentiment Analysis of Residents of the Puget Sound On Indigenous Fisheries

By Hailey Kehoe Thommen

A THESIS

submitted to

Oregon State University

Honors College

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Honors Baccalaureate of Science in Natural Resources, Forest Ecosystems & Society (Honors Associate)

Presented May 24, 2019 Commencement June, 2020 Honors Baccalaureate of Science in Natural Resources, Forest Ecosystems & Society project of ​ ​ ​ Hailey Kehoe Thommen presented on May 24, 2019. ​ ​

APPROVED:

______Kelly Biedenweg, Mentor, representing Fish and Wildlife

______Reem Hajjar, Committee Member, representing Forest Ecosystems and Society

______Gail Woodside, Committee Member, representing Fisheries and Wildlife

______Toni Doolen, Dean, Oregon State University Honors College

I understand that my project will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University, Honors College. My signature below authorizes release of my project to any reader upon request.

______Hailey Kehoe Thommen, Author Introduction History of Indigenous Fisheries In the 1850’s, governor and superintendent of Indian Affairs for the territory of Washington, Isaac Ingalls Stevens, secured what is known as one of the most peaceful land exchanges of the US, as the indigenous people of this area ceded approximately 64 million acres of land (Blumm & Steadman, 2009). Although it is purported as a peaceful exchange it’s crucial to note that these treaties constructed and implemented through force and coercion, with the aim of disenfranchising and exploiting indigenous populations (Allen, 2000; Asher, 1999; Spirling, 2012; “Indian Treaties”, n.d.), and in this particular case this treaty left the tribes with less than 6 million acres, broken up into reservations (Chrisman, 2008; Richards, 2005). This land was ceded to the US government with the security of a treaty signed by various tribes which stipulated clearly that the tribes have the right to continue fish at all “usual and accustomed” places (Crowley & Wilma, 2003; Lewis, 2002). Furthermore, Blumm and Steadman report that is was known by federal officials including Stevens that the tribes were solely dependent on salmon for multiple aspects of their livelihoods at the time of signing these treaties. Not only are salmon used to preserve livelihoods in an economic sense, but they are also used in trading with others to promote good relationships, and are deeply rooted in tribal cosmologies and known as kin to some (“Tribal Salmon Culture”, n.d.; “Against the Current”, n.d.). The treaty tribes of this time included: Lummi, Nooksack, Swinomish, Upper Skagit, Sauk-Suiattle, Stillaguamish, Tulalip, Muckleshoot, Puyallup, Nisqually, Squaxin Island, Skokomish, Suquamish, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Jamestown S’Klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam, Makah, Quileute, Quinault, and Hoh (“About Us”, n.d.).

The distinction between non-indigenous citizens rights and those belonging to indigenous sovereign nations is important to make before proceeding, because they are commonly misunderstood by the general public. As reported by the National Congress of State Legislatures (2013) and by the National Congress of American Indians (n.d.), the U.S. Constitution recognizes treaty tribes as distinct governments, separate from common American citizens, and have the right to govern themselves. Tribal governments hold the power to form their own structures of government, pass and enforce laws, and implement their own police and court systems. Within the treaties constructed that established the exchange of land with tribes was that they gain protection from the U.S. to protect themselves and all that them they had retained from encroachment or diminishment (Van Ness, n.d.).

Nonetheless, the time following European colonization led to an influx of white settlers to the area, bringing more non-tribal and commercial fishermen to the waters. The competition for salmon as a resource was made more intense by the increase in population and grew substantially when the global market for salmon increased as well. With knowledge of the connection between the tribes' livelihoods and salmon, this precipitous decline in fish stocks and health of fisheries unsurprisingly created turmoil between Indigenous and non-indigenous user groups.

The root cause of controversy between indigenous and non-indigenous fishermen can be ultimately blamed on broken treaties rights, as with time tribes were no longer able to harvest their right of fish and were often arrested for their practice of fishing, completely dismissing their sovereignty and the lawful rights they were guaranteed (Chrisman, 2008; Carson, 2014). This controversy was further accentuated by the effects of human population increase, more efficient harvesting from fishing technology, and industrial advancements which led to a tremendous amount of environmental degradation (Bisson et al, 2009; Wilkinson, 2005). As urbanization increased the impacts of land conversions and development negatively affected salmon habitat, similarly agriculture impacts of nutrient runoff became more intense, and the number of fishermen and their efficiency greatly increased (Zwang, 2014; Pollock et al, 2004; Peterman and Dorner, 2012). These factors coalesced into habitat degradation, which led to the decline of salmon populations and over 40 years of controversy.

With the mounting pressures mentioned above the tribes struggled to obtain their rightful share of fish due to their treaty-protected rights no longer being upheld. In 1884, Tribes began what would turn out to be a long road of litigation, pursuing justice on various aspects of their rights which were being infringed upon. This arduous battle with the legal system and various interest groups would continue until 2007 and still, there are rumblings of court cases proceeding.

Consequently, tribes pursued litigation for their lawful share of salmon, ultimately leading to their right being quantified and set as law by Federal District Judge Boldt in 1974, allocating 50% of Washington's fish catch to confederated tribes and creating a co-management system between the state and tribes which transformed their sovereignty in this matter from a promise to a concrete law. However, for non-indigenous Washington residents, salmon had also become a mainstay and icon of Pacific Northwest culture, and many non-indigenous citizens felt this ruling to be unfair (Tanner, 2016; “Backlash to Boldt,” n.d; Wilkinson, 2005) . Accompanying this monumental decision was the creation of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC) and the beginning of a collaborative approach to co-managing salmon fisheries between the tribes and state. The establishment of a co-management strategy was met with contention, as those who disagreed with the 50/50 harvest amount and were dismayed with the government decision to uphold the ruling and felt betrayed by their leaders working with tribes.

Even with this collaborative management effort, six of eight Pacific Northwest “salmonid” species subtypes are listed as “threatened” or “endangered” under the Federal Endangered Species Act (Stark, N.d.), and tension and sentiment around the Boldt decision has persisted throughout time, as this conflict of the downfall of salmon populations is emotionally seated in both indigenous and non-indigenous residents values. Current examples of strongly held opinions can be found in Tanner’s (2016) article, which exposes a 2016 protest that a reporter claimed was “reminiscent of an early period in fishery management when bitter protests were sparked by the landmark 1974 Boldt court decision” and provides various examples of Washington residents expressing their opinions on the matter, ranging from “equal rights” rhetoric, which as I discussed sovereign rights before, indigenous rights are not and should not be equal to common citizens, to blatantly racists and violent comments such as “Shoot the boats” and “Maybe we can trade them some smallpox blankets for a few weeks fishing”.

Sentiments and Emotions Due to the emotionally-laden nature of this topic, understanding the nuances of emotion theory is important for a more holistic assessment of public opinions. Sentiment and emotions are subjective terms relating to human perceptions, the wide range at which sentiment and emotions are studied, such as in psychology, evolutionary biology, neurology and so on, create significant difficulties for there to be scientific consensus for general definitions of the term. Standard dictionaries also fall short of capturing the differences between these two terms, as they tend to be thought of as synonymous. Specifically geared towards sentiment analysis, Munezero et al (2014) aimed to differentiate these terms, and put forth a definition created by Kleinginna and Kleinginna (1981) constructed from a review of emotion literature. As this definition was contrived for the sole purpose of creating a “model” definition that could fit the various spans of emotion research therefore it is wide reaching in its description, but will be presented here in a shortened format for the purpose of this paper as: A complex set of interactions among subjective and objective factors, mediated by neural and hormonal systems, that give rise to various feelings which lead to labeling experiences and effect future perceptions and appraisals, and can lead to goal-directed behavior.

Also presented in Munezero et al’s (2014) literature review, they offer a definition of sentiment constructed by Gordon (1981) stating that sentiments are “socially constructed patterns of sensations, expressive gestures, and cultural meanings organized around a relationship to a social object…” Thus, emotions and sentiment differ in their duration in length of experience, emotions being experienced briefly and sentiments are formed and held for long; and sentiments are more socially constructed whereas emotions are formed by the individual. For this research I focused on Plutchik’s (2001) definition of emotion, “a complex chain of loosely connected events that begins with a stimulus and includes feelings, psychological changes, impulses to action and specific, goal-directed behavior”, which can be seen as quite similar to that created by Kleinginna and Kleinginna (1981).

The difficulties of consensus of definitions of concepts has also been pervasive in the field of emotion theory, in that many contemporary theorist have various ideas on what set of emotions should be considered “primary” “basic” or “fundamental”. From my research, theories came as early as the 1926, and greatly expanded in the 1960’s and beyond. The number of basic emotions ranges from two to as high as 18, as well as there being differences in the definitions and simple labeling of the emotions themselves; in addition the notion of what “basic” means also clearly presents a problem, as researchers hold various scopes as to what is basic. Even with this array of work in the field, Ortony and Turner’s (1990) review of basic emotion theories states that nearly all theorists include the emotions anger, happiness, sadness, and fear as basic emotions.

From a psychoevolutionary perspective, in 1962 and 1980 Plutchik presented a functional framework for understanding emotions and their evolutionary purpose which is to ultimately to promote survival, as well as insights toward their complexities and potential relationships. From this he advanced eight primary emotions along with their basic evolutionary purpose: anger (destruction), joy (reproduction), acceptance (incorporation), surprise (orientation), fear (protection), sorrow (deprivation), disgust (rejection), anticipation (exploration). Later a few of these emotions were re-labelled, such as acceptance becoming trust, and sorrow to sadness. Plutchik provided ten postulates as a foundation for these eight emotions, stating that basic emotions should fit with the adaptive processes, noted within the parenthesis, leading towards greater chances of survival and that the basic emotions can be thought of as polar opposites, for this arrangement of emotions see figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Plutchik’s (2010) ​ three-dimensional model showcasing the relationships among emotions, the eight primary emotions are located at the first ring around the interior circle, contrasting in color and arranged at 180 degrees to exemplify opposite emotions and ranging in color intensity to mimic the intensity of the emotion. Words located in between emotions represent a mixture of emotions.

This theory is not without its criticisms though, Ortony and Turner (1990) provide a lengthy review of various theories and take issue with Plutchik’s premise that basic emotions must be biologically primitive and expound the consequences of this basis, as well as the clarity of the relationships between emotions Plutchik presented in his 1962 version of the above figure which stemmed from there being no general principles of combining emotions and no details about the mechanism that might create such the combinations. Criticisms of the earlier 1962 can be found within Arnold’s (1964) book review, where they critique multiple aspects of Plutchik’s arguments including the exclusion of subjective experiences as evidence and that emotion does not require introspection and so on.

Despite its critiques, this theory has been cited in well over 1000 publications and has been used in various types of research pertaining to examining emotions. Many researchers use this theory due to its ease of conceptualizing mixed and dynamic emotions and it’s used highly within the field of sentiment analysis, which is also why it was chosen for this particular research project (Munezero et al, 2013; Malik and Hussain, 2017; Yu and Wang, 2015; Gao and Huang, 2017).

Research Objective and Questions

With the foundation laid of the brief history of this issue, some examples of modern day comments, and an understanding of emotion theory; the main objective of my research was to undertake sentiment analysis using a lexicon on public response data. I set out to answer five research questions: Using the 2018 Puget Sound Vital Signs survey, how frequently do respondents mention Indigenous fisheries reported within the open-ended responses? What are the overarching sentiments about Indigenous fisheries reported within the open-ended responses? How might these sentiments vary by demographics? How might these sentiments vary by perceptions of good governance? And what are the most common emotions evoked within responses?

Methods Puget Sound Partnership The data for this research project were derived the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP). The PSP is a state agency tasked with creating and managing meaningful collaborations with various partners in order to meet their vision of “Vibrant, enduring natural systems and communities” (PSP, 2018). Washington state legislature slated the following for recovery goals for the Puget Sound area: Healthy Human Population, Vibrant Quality of Life, Thriving Species and Food Web, Protect and Restored Habitat, Abundant Water Quantity, and Healthy Water Quality. The first two of these recovery goals are intertwined with the concept of human wellbeing. The PSP believes these aspects critical for ecosystem recovery in the area, as human and natural systems are coupled and largely impact each other.

The 2018 Puget Sound Vital Signs survey was conducted to gather baseline data around those first two recovery goals, with a focus on respondents’ sense of place, trust of governance, and participation in outdoor activities. The survey was sent to the Puget Sound population selected through a stratified random sample of 8,261 individuals from 8 counties. It was available in both paper and online forms, and received a response rate of 28% equating to 2,322 individual respondents. It should be noted here that this survey was not intended to be used for sentiment analysis, nor did it ask any questions about indigenous fisheries.

Identifying Source Data Utilizing data from the PSP 2018 Vital Signs survey, I looked for free responses that referred to indigenous fisheries. Relevant responses were identified through a logical statement that located any of the following terms associated with fisheries in a free response question at the end of the survey: fish, fisheries, hatcheries, salmon, chinook, sockeye, or water. A subsequent logical statement was used to refine the results to include terms associated with indigenous communities: tribe, tribal, indigenous, native, nation and Indian. Along with free response information, data entry technicians also entered comments that were written outside of the free response section. These outside comments were denoted with asterisks. Example: *On question 6 subquestion 2 wrote: "LAND OF THE FRUIT LOOPS!" and subquestion 3: "IT'S LOSSED TO NATIVES AND FRUIT LOOPS"*. The text proceeding the asterisks signified the end of earlier comments and the beginning of the response to the free response section. These comments were important to include in this analysis because they were written without prompting, other than the topic of the question, and the respondents felt that answering in their own terms was necessary. 111 respondents were found to using just the fish key words, and 47 were found using the indigenous keywords; from this, thirty respondents mentioned one or more of the terms in both the fishing and indigenous categories. Seven respondents were excluded due to erroneous uses of key terms, such as talking about “native fish” or having the “worst fish in the nation”, leaving 23 respondents qualifying for analysis. This data was compiled within a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and imported into NVivo for coding of sentiment and emotion.

Analyzing for Emotion To derive overarching sentiments about indigenous fisheries, I conducted a sentiment analysis using the National Research Council Canada (NRC) Emotion Lexicon version 0.92 (Mohammad and Turney, 2013). This lexicon includes 14,200 words categorized into positive or negative sentiment as well as the eight emotions: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger, and disgust. It was constructed using words that appeared within the Google n-gram corpus more than 120,000 times, increasing the likelihood that the words found within the lexicon are commonly used (Mohammad and Turney, 2013). This lexicon was chosen due to its use of Plutchik’s (2010) well established eight basic emotions, allowing us to identify beyond positive and negative connotations and get closer to the root of the emotion experienced by the respondent. Additionally, Tabak and Evrim (2016) found that using the NRC lexicon led to better classification results as compared to three other commonly used lexicons, EmoSenticNet, DepecheMood and Topic Based DepecheMood.

Using this NRC emotion lexicon a single word is coded into multiple emotions permitting a dynamic understanding of emotional interactions. Similarly, the lexicon also contains neutral words in which the sentiment is neither positive or negative and has no emotions behind it. Through their research and analysis, Mohammad and Turney (2010) found that unigram (single word) nouns were more likely to have positive sentiments, the use of a negative adjective was generally needed to make the overall phrase negative. Because of this, non-machine programmed coding is useful, as these nuances would not be recognized by computer programming. Similarly, non-machine programmed coding is desirable to identify when words are used sarcastically, and therefore need to be scored oppositely.

For my coding process, I read once through each response to familiarize myself with the text, then choose adjectives and adverbs within the response that I believed to convey emotions. Mohammad and Turney (2010) found that these parts of speech often convey the most emotion and tend to qualify nouns and verbs. The chosen words were then cross-referenced with the emotion lexicon giving the words a binary score on each of the ten categories: positive versus negative sentiment, and the eight basic emotions. Numerous words were identified in the data were only present within the lexicon in a different tense (i.e. ‘represented’ was stated by the respondent, but only ‘represent’ and ‘representation’ were in the lexicon). For these occurrences, I coded the sentiment associated with the most similar tense of the word. Finally, there were instances where there was no single word that captured the emotion being expressed, but rather a common saying or phrase was used, such as “And down goes the food chain….” For these instances I coded the entire phrase using my own judgement and based it upon the theme of the phrase and any similarities it had with commonly used words in the dataset that were within the lexicon.

Summarizing the Analysis I tallied the analyzed data for presence or absence of sentiment and or emotions per individual. I compared these frequencies to other variables in the survey to examine possible relationships or meaningful patterns. The variables used for comparison included: perceptions of good governance, sound stewardship, psychological well-being, sense of place, outdoor activity participation, cultural activity participation, reported cultural activities, use of local foods, life satisfaction, years living in the area, and other demographic information.The good governance and sense of place sections of the Vital Sign survey were constructed using a seven point Likert-style scale which included a neutral and “Don’t know” option. For each of these variables, I created an index that captured the respondents average feelings associated with the various questions, based on prior work completed by Fleming et al. (2019).

I then used the word frequency tool on NVivo 12 to find the top ten words representing positive and negative sentiment and emotions to create a word cloud graphic. Common words such as “like” and words that were used in the initial keyword search to identify respondents were disregarded. Words such as “share” and “sustainability” in negative responses were coded inversely, so although they alone convey positive sentiments and emotions on their own, when reading the context surrounding the phrase these words became negative.

Results Characteristics of Respondents Of the 23 respondents, the majority (78%) were males, predominantly 56-75 years old. Most (81%) reported living in a rural area and, the number of years lived in the Puget Sound region from 1-80 years. On average, respondents evoked two emotions, and no respondents evoked both positive and negative emotions.

Respondents engaged in summer and winter recreational fishing 1-4 days and less than 1 day a month for the respective seasons, with the secondary response being that they don’t participate in these activities in either season. The average index score for good governance was 2.86 and for sense of place 4.90, meaning that the typical answers to good governance questions were closer to “Somewhat Disagree” that the region had good environmental governance, and that the typical respondent “Somewhat Agreed” that they were attached to the Puget Sound region.

Before delving further into results, it’s important to reiterate that the free response question used for analysis was not originally intended to assess indigenous fisheries or sentiment people hold about them, therefore there is a large variety in types of responses, ranging from numbered lists to the recounting of stories, with diversity in specificity, length, and detail.

Sentiments of Respondents Overall, the sentiment towards indigenous fisheries was overwhelmingly negative (19 of the 22 respondents, as one respondent was not recorded expressing sentiment). Interestingly, these respondents with negative sentiment report that they “Strongly Agree” or “Agree” with the sense of place statement “I am very attached to natural environment in Puget Sound Region”. Similarly, those with negative sentiments primarily reported that they “Strongly Agree” or “Agree” with the statement that “Being able to engage in outdoor activities or cultural practices is important to my connection to the Puget Sound”; those expressing positive sentiments answered “Strongly Agree” or “Somewhat Agree” to this same statement. Examples of the statements coded for positive or negative sentiment can be seen below in table 1.

Table 1. Examples of representative responses and their coded sentiment with emotive words ​ highlighted and frequencies noted. Sentiment # of Example Responses Evoked Respondents Evoked

Positive 3

“Bringing light to tribal successful hatchery and fish ​ ​ management practices would greatly improve natural ​ ​ resources for commercial and sport fisherman, orca's etc etc etc….” “Ask for tours of their facilities, the tribal hatcheries get much more healthier returns, numbers, health, the whole ​ ​ 9 yards.”

Negative 19

“Tribes have been allowed to overfish and hunt local lands ​ ​ to the point that there is NOTHING left for non-tribal ​ ​ members to obtain. They are depleting populations to ​ ​ unsafe levels without consequence.” ​

Negative Sentiments and Emotions The most common negative emotions were sadness (15) and disgust (12), followed by anger (8) and fear (7) (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Recorded ​ frequencies of number of respondents evoking negative (shown in orange) and positive emotions (shown in blue).

Negative sentiments were largely supported by negative emotions which can be seen above in table 1, whereas table 2 below provides representative examples of statements which evoke negative emotions.

Table 2. Representative examples of negative emotion responses and their coded emotive ​ words highlighted, frequency of number of times evoked by respondents noted. Negative # of Example Responses Emotions Respondents Evoked

Anger 8 “MY gripe is Indians never fish crab until represented in ​ ​ Olympia.”

Disgust 12 “I think the biggest problem with the fishing in the Puget Sound area is that Indian Rights are unregulated. You ​ ​ control people who buy licenses but let Native Americans ​ run FREE.

Fear 7 “I feel the lack of enforceable regulations on native american ​ ​ fisheries is lead to the demise of the puget sound ​ ​ environment”

Sadness 15 “I commercial fished in Puget Sound before the "Boldt" decision, and have watched the orca population diminish to ​ ​ the point of…. Well they are going fast, and I was I as an ​ individual could do more.” ​ Surprise 4 “Now, it's hardly ever open and only when the tribes say so!!! Then only certain sections of the river usually upstream from tribal netting. How generous! What the hell ​ happened to the original Bolt decision that entitled tribes to ​ only take enough fish to feed themselves???”

“In 1973 a buddy and I started Northshore Chapter of T.V. during these years I was… 6 times and always involved in every project- planting trees- cleaning creeks-…. First which enhanced… and Puget Sound with 250 members it was easy and necessary to improve habitat with many work parties. After the Boldt verdict the Washington fish and game went from our friends and work partners to total involvement with the indian tribes and soon we weren't even ​ allowed at meetings and no longer needed or wanted.” ​

Words or phrases commonly used to express sadness included depletion and destruction of the fish population, lost resources, diminished, and overharvested. Words or phrases used to express disgust, the opposite emotion of trust, included aspects of tribes being monitored, checked, and accountable (Table 1). Respondents also mentioned tribes being wasteful and overstepping their authority and power in regard to fishing rules. A graphic showing the top ten words used in negative sentiment responses can be found below in figure 3.

Figure 3. Word cloud showing the most ​ used terms by respondents expressing negative sentiment and emotions about indigenous fisheries in the Puget Sound region.

One respondent evoked a positive sentiment within their overall negative sentiment and emotion filled response, stating that they “believe the tribe should have its traditions and ability to harvest fish and shellfish”, traditions being the positive word coded, but they continue to say they “see the tribe overharvesting and not caring about sustainability”.

When examining the relationships between the negative emotions, sadness was coded along with disgust eight times, with fear seven, anger five times, and with the emotion of surprise three times. There were six respondents who evoked both disgust and anger, four who evoked disgust and fear, and two who evoked disgust with surprise.

Positive Sentiments and Emotions Those who expressed positive sentiment averaged a score of 3.6 (“Neutral”) in perception of good governance and 5.5 (“Agree”) in this sense of place in the Puget Sound region. Of the three respondents, all of whom were men, two identified themselves as Native American and Hispanic/Latino/White- contrasting from the majority of the respondents who identified as white. The three respondents reported living within the Puget Sound region for 7, 34, and 40 years and their ages ranged from 26-75 years old. The positive emotions expressed most were trust, followed by joy and anticipation (Figure 2). The following graphic reports the top ten words used in the positive responses, excluding the words that were used as initial key search terms. These responses tended to focus on the need for tribal and state management to work together, and the current successes of tribal fisheries.

Figure 4. Word cloud ​ showing the most used terms by respondents expressing positive sentiment about indigenous fisheries in the Puget Sound region.

Table 2. Representative examples of positive emotion responses and their coded emotive ​ words highlighted, frequency of number of times evoked by respondents noted. Positive Emotions # of Times Example Responses Evoked

Anticipation 2 “When ALL levels of government failed to have the power or legislation in place to protect the coastal waters from the impact of a massive coal exporting and natural gas terminal it was the smallest and weakest group among us who succeeded. The Lummi Indian tribe sued the Federal ​ government to protect the treaty fishing right…”

Joy 2 “Bringing light to tribal successful hatchery and fish ​ ​ management practices would greatly improve natural ​ ​ resources for commercial and sport fisherman, orca's etc etc etc” ….“Reach out to Rebecca Paradis with the lower Elwha fisheries. Great person, great resource” ​ ​ ​ ​ Trust 3 “ALL communities should be strongly working together* with ​ ​ local tribes to help preserve and enhance the Puget Sound's quality of life within the environment.”

*This response was coded using “cooperating” as a synonym since “working together” wasn’t present in the lexicon.*

Discussion

This research aimed to discover how often respondents wrote about indigenous fisheries on their free response section of the PSP Vital Signs 2018 survey, what their overarching sentiments about indigenous fisheries were, what emotions were evoked by the topic, and how these differed by demographics. The results are specific to the survey format conducted, and should not be used to generalize to the larger survey group, nor the greater Puget Sound public. Although a sentiment lexicon leads us to a deeper understanding of the emotions evoked by respondents, my analysis of the respondents emotions can only be extrapolated so far as to represent their feelings at the moment of response. Moreover, responses were derived from the particular survey question that wasn’t geared towards asking about indigenous fisheries or intended to be used for sentiment analysis.

Of the original 2,322 respondents of the survey, 23 were used for analysis due to their use of key terms mentioned within the methods section, making for the total frequency of respondents mentioning indigenous fisheries 0.99% of respondents. Although there was a small sample size, and limited variation in response (predominantly negative), emotions and sentiments did not differ substantially across various demographic attributes such as sex, type of area lived in (rural, suburban, urban), and years lived in the Puget Sound region. Nor did respondents differ in their perception of environmental governance, sense of place, or outdoor activities. A small, but noticeable difference between the negative and positive sentiment groups, however, is interesting to point out. The positive sentiment group, comprised of only three people, had two people identifying as non-white in race whereas all negative sentiment respondents identified as white. This finding fits within the larger theory of social identity, in which people may categorize themselves into groups based upon collective experiences, promoting shared group-based emotions and appraisals (Stets and Burke, 2000; Turner and Reynolds, 2001; Kuppens et al, 2013). This process of categorization has been noted within the literature to lead to and be the product of ethnocentrism (Stets and Burke, 2000; Turner and Reynolds, 2001). Naturally, people desire their social group to hold a positive identity and distinctiveness when compared to other groups (Tuner and Reynolds, 2001) which can accentuate perceived differences between an individual and an opposing group member and falsely enhance an individual's self-esteem while judging the opposing group negatively to support such an enhancement (Stets and Burke, 2000). With this understanding, and basic historical knowledge of social experiences of non-white residents of the American West, one could consider people of color as a broad social group although it represents various ethnic and racial groups.

Furthermore, there is a need to acknowledge the racial bias and racism within the responses, as certain comments went beyond ethnocentrism, defined as a way of viewing one's social group and their values as central and using that stance to filter the meaning of things (as cited in Carignan et al, 2005). Racism, according to Taguieff (1997) as cited by Carignan et al (2005), actively denies certain groups the possibility of sharing the same humanity, reinforcing and perpetuating the exclusion through negative stereotypes. Kleinpenning and Hagendoorn (1993) state racism to be a philosophy of innate differences in quality between ethnic groups while believing one’s own ethnic group is superior. Examples of this feeling being expressed in the responses regarding indigenous fisheries management were often present before or after talking about the indigenous groups management, and therefore were often not coded, as the scope of my project was focused on emotions towards management. A respondent made racist comments on their free response section that were unrelated to fisheries management, but centered around the idea that all ethnic people that live in the area should “realize” they’re white, and clearly had a misunderstanding of tribal sovereign rights as the respondent stated they are treated as a “superior race”; further, the respondent blamed “libs” “Natives” and “wet backs” (a derogatory term commonly used against Mexicans) for the homelessness and drug issues of Washington. Other instances included a respondent stating that indigenous people “are more white american than american….”, completely undermining indigenous groups cultural and down playing the bloody history that brought about America.

The presence of racism within these responses could also relate to the finding that the two most prevalent emotions evoked by each group were direct opposites according to Plutchik’s model (Figure 1). The negative sentiment group’s top two emotions were sadness and disgust, which directly oppose the positive sentiment group’s top emotions of joy and trust. Numerically, anticipation and joy were evoked by the same number of respondents, but that does not discount the importance of it’s evocation by respondents and it’s contradiction to the other groups emotions. The opposition between disgust and trust can be thought of as related to the presence of emotions rooted in racism, as the adaptive processes of these two emotions are rejection versus incorporation, as stated by Plutchik (2001); essentially, if you trust that something is good it would be beneficial for your survival to have that be a part of your life whereas if you distrust or find something disgusting you would reject it from your life. Rejection of indigenous people and their ability to manage their resources could stem from the racist belief that indigenous people are not intelligently capable of managing their resources correctly, or that their methods are inferior to American western culture. Within a few comments respondents stated that they should be required to only use old technology and methods to harvest resources, perpetuating the stereotype that indigenous communities are some sort of historic relic that does not advance. These directly conflicting emotions held by the groups, of disgust and trust, and the presence of racism creates difficulties for natural resource managers and state officials when trying to appease both groups, create consensus for managing techniques, and gain support for further progress and actions.

Again, related to this topic of social identity theory, it was found that no respondents evoked both positive and negative emotions, and only one respondent evoked a positive sentiment in their primarily negative sentiment response. The lack of “mixed” emotions or sentiments corroborates with Kuppen et al’s 2013 study which showed that when faced with an issue that doesn’t directly affect an individual of a group, if it provides either an opportunity or threat to their social group, they will address the matter with a uniform group-based emotion. This could be gleaned from reading the negative sentiment and emotion responses in the data sheet, examples being responses such as, “After the Boldt verdict the Washington fish and game went from our friends and work partners to total involvement with the indian tribes and soon we weren't even allowed at meetings and no longer needed or wanted,” and “.....the tribes as we all know they have the final say!!!!” These responses showcase the perceived issues this social group (non-indigenous) feels they face, and conveys group concerns and emotions rather than offering multiple perspectives on the issue.

A topic of commonality between the two polarized sentiment groups that relates directly to natural resource management was the level of cooperation between tribes and the state. Only two respondents of the 23 believed that the tribes were doing high quality work and urged for further cooperation from state officials to adopt indigenous methods for hatcheries and management. This directional relationship, where other communities should be working and cooperating with tribes, was reflected oppositely in the negative sentiment and emotion group that felt that tribes need to work and abide by state laws and regulations. Common terms such as unregulated and unmonitored show a clear misunderstanding of the co-management of fisheries in Washington. These respondents convey a stark separation between the state and NWIFC that is untrue. Additionally, the majority of respondents distrust indigenous fisheries to be equipped to manage fisheries in a sustainable manner, as though they aren’t managing with the same mission to restore depleted fish stocks as state institutions. With this knowledge of the polarization between groups, the emotions behind their sentiment and the presence of racism within these sentiments, as well as the sociology explaining social group dynamics, it is easier to understand the dissonance between groups and consider relevant mechanisms that align their common goals of sustainable fishery management to work together to address the root issues of salmon stock decrease.

To possibly overcome the negative sentiments and emotions found to be held against indigenous fisheries management in an effective way, the co-managing agencies could showcase their collaboration and progress made since working together. Improving the relationships between the state and indigenous managers and promoting relationship and trust building within the agencies could positively impact residents of area and support acceptance of the co-management process. Working to change the presence of racist beliefs is extremely difficult, but agencies can demonstrate their own cooperation, trust, inclusion and understanding to set an example (Loanide, 2015). Merely stating the actual working relationships between these agencies, or producing information that is directed towards educating people on indigenous sovereign rights is unlikely to be effective in producing positive changes in people's biased beliefs or perceptions (Nyhan and Reifler, 2010; Peter and Koch, 2016; Kahan, 2010).

Working with the NRC Emotion Lexicon version 0.92 brought a nuanced insight into survey responses that wasn’t from simple frequency analyses of responses. The systematic coding of emotional content at the word level allowed for assessments of internal emotion and sentiment variability within a single response. Although there were a few instances of not having a certain word within the lexicon, close synonyms were easily found and substituted in order to retain the emotions expressed. Since I was working with written responses and wasn’t able to obtain more information or explanation from the respondents I felt it was necessary to use the information given, even if synonyms were used as a proxy for another word. Future work with this lexicon, methodology, and topic could include the analysis of perspectives overtime or large datasets. From this we could gain an understanding of how perspectives have changed over time, and with a larger dataset we could gain a generalizable understanding of sentiments and emotions held by the population on the topic of management of indigenous fisheries.

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