The Seattle Times: Yakama, Lummi tribal leaders call for removal of three lower Columbia River dams

JoDe Goudy, chairman of the Yakama Nation, calls on Monday for the removal of three dams on the lower Columbia River. “Dams or salmon,” he said in an emotional plea at the Celilo Village park near The Dalles Dam. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

By Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times environment reporter

CELILO VILLAGE, Wasco County, Ore. — The Yakama and Lummi nations called Monday for taking down the Bonneville, The Dalles and John Day hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River to restore salmon runs once the mightiest in the world.

The three big energy producers churn out enough electricity to power more than 2 million Pacific Northwest homes annually and also provide an important inland navigation route for commercial goods.

The tribes’ call for main-stem dam removal intensifies a long-running debate over the teardown of dams in the Columbia River Basin. This year in particular feels desperate for tribes and fishermen and advocates of endangered southern resident orcas, which rely on chinook salmon from the river. Some fish runs are at 13 percent of their 10-year averages.

Jay Julius, chairman of the Lummi Nation, and JoDe Goudy, chairman of the Yakama Nation, gathered — on Indigenous Peoples Day — at Celilo Village, all that is left of the fishing and cultural center at Celilo Falls, the most productive salmon fishery in the world for some 11,000 years. The falls were drowned beneath the reservoir of The Dalles Dam in 1957.

Goudy said Columbus Day, a federal holiday also on Monday, celebrates the invasion of the lands and waters of indigenous people under the colonial doctrine of discovery, under which Christian Europeans seized native lands.

The lower Columbia River dams inundated many usual and accustomed fishing sites of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, and led to the decline of salmon, lamprey and other traditional foods.

“The tribe never consented to the construction of the lower Columbia River dams,” said Goudy, wearing an eagle feather headdress and white buckskins.  “On behalf of the Yakama Nation and those things that cannot speak for themselves, I call on the United States to reject the doctrine of Christian discovery and immediately remove the Bonneville Dam, Dalles Dam and John Day Dam.”

Julius said the Lummi Nation stands with the Yakama Nation in calling for the removal of the dams. Tribes throughout the region are in a constant battle to defend their way of life, Julius said. “Whether defeating coal ports, opposing increased vessel traffic on the Salish Sea, repairing culverts or removing invasive Atlantic salmon, to leave to future generations a lifeway promised to our ancestors 164 years ago,” he said, referring to the treaty the Lummi Nation signed with the U.S. government in 1855 ceding much of their lands while reserving forever their rights to fish, hunt and gather in their traditional places.

Read the rest of the article by The Seattle Times here: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/yakama-lummi-tribal-leaders-call-for-removal-of-three-lower-columbia-river-dams/