sEATTLE — The U.S. government on Tuesday acknowledged for the first time the harm that the construction and operation of dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest has caused to Native American tribes.
Published a report that details how the unprecedented structures have devastated salmon runs, flooded villages and cemeteries, and continue to severely restrict the tribes’ ability to exercise your treaty fishing rights.
The Biden administration report comes amid a US$1 billion effort announced earlier this year to restore the region’s salmon runs before more of them go extinct – and to better partner with tribes on the actions needed to make that happen. This includes increasing renewable energy production and storage to replace hydroelectric production that would be lost if four dams on the lower Snake River are always violated.
“President Biden recognizes that to confront injustice, we must be honest about history — even when doing so is difficult,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory, in a written statement. “In the Pacific Northwest, an open and frank conversation about the history and legacy of the federal government’s management of the Columbia River is long overdue.”
The document was a requirement an agreement last year to stop decades of legal fights over the operation of the dams. It describes how government and private interests in the early 20th century began to isolate tributaries of the Columbia River, the largest in the Northwest, to provide water for irrigation or flood control, worsening the damage that was already being done to water quality. of the water and the salmon. operates by mining, logging and salmon cannery operations.
Tribal representatives said they were pleased with the administration’s formal, albeit long overdue, recognition of how the U.S. government for generations ignored the tribe’s concerns about how the dams would affect them, and were pleased with its steps to undo that damage. .
“This administration has moved forward with aggressive actions to rebalance some of the wealth transfer,” said Tom Iverson, Yakama Nation Fisheries regional coordinator. “Salmon was the river’s wealth. What we have seen is the transfer of wealth to farmers, to loggers, to hydroelectric systems, to the detriment of tribes.”
The construction of the first dams on the main Columbia River, including the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams in the 1930s, provided jobs to a country struggling with the Great Depression, as well as hydroelectric power and navigation. But it overcame objections from tribes concerned about the loss of salmon, traditional hunting and fishing sites and even villages and cemeteries.
As early as the late 1930s, tribes were warning that salmon could disappear, and the fish would no longer be able to access spawning grounds upriver. The tribes – the Yakama Nation, the Spokane Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville and Umatilla Reservations, the Nez Perce, and others – continued to fight the construction and operation of the dams for generations.
“While the entire system of dams and reservoirs was being developed, tribes and other interests protested and sounded the alarm about the deleterious effects the dams would have on salmon and aquatic species, which the government at times acknowledged,” the report stated. “Yet the government gave little or no consideration to the devastation the dams would bring to tribal communities, including their cultures, sacred sites, economies and homes.”
The report was accompanied by the announcement of a new working group to coordinate salmon recovery efforts across federal agencies.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
