PORTLAND, Ore. —
When the dams were first erected on the Columbia River system, they held tremendous promise.
Among the benefits: clean energy, easy river navigation and irrigation for farmers across the region.
But those benefits didn’t extend to everyone.
“The salmon was a trading material for us into the plains and up north and in all directions,” said Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce tribe. “That’s something that is not there now.”
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Interior released a report on the harms inflicted on Indigenous tribes in the Pacific Northwest by 11 dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
“Since time immemorial, Tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries have relied on Pacific salmon, steelhead and other native fish species for sustenance and their cultural and spiritual ways of life,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a statement. “Acknowledging the devastating impact of federal hydropower dams on Tribal communities is essential to our efforts to heal and ensure that salmon are restored to their ancestral waters.”
Many salmon runs are just a fraction of their historical numbers, and 14 species are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
When the first dams went up in the 1930s, they cut off access to vast areas of salmon spawning habitat. They also created barriers for migrating fish and fundamentally changed how the rivers operate.
Instead of fast-flowing, cold-water currents, parts of the Columbia and Snake rivers were converted into reservoirs of slack water that warmed easily.
Salmon play an instrumental role in tribal culture, Wheeler explained. As salmon have declined, parts of that culture have been lost.
“We as tribal members are on the rivers, in the water, on the mountain sides. Wherever the salmon would generally be, our families would be. A lot of times, that's where our language is spoken and you know the values of our people are instilled in our children to how we interact with the land,” he said.
As salmon have declined, parts of Indigenous culture have been lost.
“When the salmon aren't there, then we're not there, and we're unable to teach those things to our children,” he said.
The damage caused by dams extends beyond salmon, though.
“We know of 75 village sites that had been occupied seasonally and year-round that are inundated,” Wheeler said.
The dams also flooded burial grounds and swamped traditional fishing sites, which had been guaranteed to tribes in treaties with the U.S. government dating back to 1855.
Taken together — with the loss of sacred sites and the decline of salmon — the report noted the dams represent a massive “transfer of wealth” away from the tribes.
The report had several recommendations for how to begin to set things right. The government should work harder to uphold the rights of the tribes guaranteed in treaties, the report said. It should also incorporate Native perspectives in environmental analysis of future projects.
It does not, however, explicitly call for the removal of four dams on the Lower Snake River, which tribes and environmental groups have been advocating for years.
Opponents of breaching the Snake River dams have cited the loss of hydropower and navigation as huge losses of the structures were taken out.
Wheeler acknowledged those challenges, but said he hopes the report sheds some light on the often-unseen costs of keeping the dams intact.
“The average person shouldn't have to worry about turning their lights on or charging their phone and having added cost to it,” he said. “But they must understand the truth, though, that when you do those things, you are impacting salmon in a way that is detrimental to a species that is in the on the verge of extinction.”