Army Corps of Engineers are a critical part of a complex hydroelectric network strung along the Columbia and Snake rivers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho that powers the entire region. Will we be the generation that forgot those who are coming behind us, those yet unborn?"Ĭelilo Falls was a traditional salmon-fishing site for the Yakama for centuries, but it was swallowed by the river in 1957 after the construction of The Dalles Dam. "Our ancestors tell us to look as far into the future as we can. "We have a choice and it's one or the other: dams or salmon," he said. But construction of the massive concrete dams decades later along the lower Columbia River destroyed critical fishing spots and made it impossible for salmon to complete their migration.Īfter a song of prayer, Yakama Nation Chairman JoDe Goudy spoke Monday at the site of now-vanished Celilo Falls near The Dalles, Oregon, and said the placid Columbia River behind him looked "like a lake where we once saw a free-flowing river." Under the treaty, the Yakama Tribe retained the right to fish at all their traditional sites.
Tribal leaders said at a news conference along the Columbia River that the Treaty of 1855, in which 14 tribes and bands ceded 11.5 million acres to the United States, was based on the inaccurate belief that the U.S. Proposals to merely curtail operations, let alone remove the structures, are controversial, and the prospects of the Columbia dams being demolished any time soon appear nonexistent. government on Indigenous Peoples Day, a designation that's part of a trend to move away from a holiday honoring Christopher Columbus.įor decades, people have debated whether to remove four big dams on the Lower Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia, but breaching the Columbia dams, which are a much more significant source of power, has never been seriously discussed. The Yakama and Lummi nations made the demand of the U.S. Two Pacific Northwest tribes on Monday demanded the removal of three major hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River to save migrating salmon and starving orcas and restore fishing sites that were guaranteed to the tribes in a treaty more than 150 years ago.
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