Street Roots • Nov. 13-19 2015
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NESTLE, from page 10
had done to the salmon, it passed the
Mitchell Act, creating 25 hatcheries on the
Columbia River to replenish salmon runs.
The majority of these are located
downstream of the Bonneville Dam, hardly
benefiting the tribes above it, whose
fishing villages were flooded after the river
was stopped and backed up.
“We were never compensated,” Carlos
Smith of Warm Springs explains. “They
built the hatcheries to give more salmon to
commercial fishermen.”
Congress, working together with, state
fisheries, then forced tribal peoples living
at Oxbow Springs to re-locate to the Warm
Springs reservation to build Oxbow
Hatchery.
Despite this history, Smith explains that
the tribes are committed to seeing salmon
restoration succeed, with the help of
hatcheries like the one at Oxbow. And
giving special access to Nestlé does not fit
with that plan. “Everyone knows that you
need good cold water to run^a hatchery,”
Smith explains. “That’s why they started a
hatchery there.”
According to Professor Mary Wood, an ;
environmental law scholar at the
University of Oregon, indigenous peoples *
of the Northwest managed their salmon
successfully because they never took so
much that the following salmon run was
harmed - the same principle that applies
to management of a financial trust, in
which beneficiaries live, off of the interest,
but not the capital. But for dam operators
today, any water dropping from the
Columbia that does not produce electricity
is considered “waste” - an attitude that
guarantees darns will remain salmon
killers. -
Professor Wood explained “Under tribal
stewardship, the Columbia River carried
between 10 million and 16 million fish^
year. These populations were sustained
with concentrated human use for 10,000
years.” By contrast, “State and federal
trustees (managing agencies like the Army
Corps of Engineers) have run the asset
into bankruptcy within just the last century
and a half by allowing the eradication of
natural capital across the entire basin -
everything from dams, clear-cuts, pollution,
paved-over wetlands, to over-harvest of
fish.” By 1995, wild salmon runs had I
dropped to about 2 percent of their
historic abundance. That same year, the_
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish
Commission, or CRITFC, announced a plan
for salmon recovery based on indigenous
knowledge and indigenous land
management. Since that plan was
implemented, Columbia River salmon runs
have actually stopped declining, and some
are showing important signs of recovery.
According to Professor Wood, this is
precisely the type of management we need
to stop the rapid depletion of the natural
environment. “To arrest the hemorrhage of
natural systems brought about by federal
and state trustee mismanagement, tribes
must reclaim a measure of their ancestral
environmental sovereignty.”
Besides being ineffective from a historic
perspective, colonial administration of the
environment has also carried with it a
prevailing cultural attitudes of white
supremacy and manifest destiny. Theodore
Roosevelt, who oversaw the creation of the
National Park and National Forest systems,
also celebrated the destruction of their
native inhabitants, calling the newly
acquired lands “the heritage of the
dominant world races.”
John Muir, a close friend of Roosevelt,
described the natives of Ÿosehiite as
fallen and “unclean,” and complained
that he didnot experience the “solemn
calm of the forest in their presence. He
therefore asserted they had no place in the
landscape - a position he would
successfully advocate with the federal
government.
In similar fashion, early fishing
commissions of Oregon and Washington
were notorious for going out of their way
to harass, intimidate and control Native
fishing peoples, using environmental
protection as a pre-text for the
continuation of racism, genocide and
cultural annihilation by-other means.
In 1954, the federal government began
proposing in-lieu, fishing sites to replace
the ones that had been flooded by the
Bonneville Dam. But because salmon runs
were in decline because of severe
commercial over-fishing, the chairman of
the Oregon Fish Commission wrote, “We •
formally protest the granting of these sites
to the tribes for it is our belief that the
major use to which they can be put is that
of fishing, and fishing is a threat to the
continuance of thé salmon runs.”
These efforts were across-the-board
violations of treaty rights, which guarantee
Native Americans the continued right to
hunt, fish and gather at their “usual, and
accustomed” places - affirmations of rights
that pre-existed the United States^: ■
The historic tendency of state and local
governments to defy these guarantees, and
to continue promoting the cultural
extermination of indigenous peoples, has
created intense conflict between state and
federal government in the past, earning
states the reputation of being the
“deadliest enemies” of local tribes (U.S. v.
Kagama, 1886). The trend away from such
conflict, and toward direct consultation
with tribes from both state and local
governments, offers a way out of this
historical dead-end, and an opportunity to
manage natural resources wisely with the
help of traditional ecological knowledge.
In 2012, a ballot initiative palled
Measured 1 attempted to ban the. purchase
of salmon caught by native gillnets.
Supporters said gillnets did harm to the
salmon runs and worked against
conservation, but in reality, this was a
traditional fishing technique that worked
fine with the salmon for many generations.
Naturally, CRITFC opposed the measure,
with Executive Director Paul Lumley
calling it “a distraction from the real issues ;
this region faces - rebuilding healthy and
abundant salmon populations,” adding “We
need to be working together to rebuild
salmon runs, not fighting over who gets to
catch the fish.”
In 1974, the Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla chose to suspend all fishing in the
upper Grand Ronde River to protect weak
funs of spring chinook salmon, hoping to
inspire similar sacrifice from dam
operators, timber companies and ranchers.
Donald Sampson, the former executive
director of CRITFC, explained back in
1999 that the Umatilla were legally entitled
to half of the fish, “but we’re not catching
that at all. We have cut back on our fishing
voluntarily, but no one else has stopped
killing fish. The big, indiscriminate killers
- the dams - operate 365 days a year, 24
hours a day.”
In 2000, the Northwest Indian Fisheries
Commission reported that their treaty J
tribes had voluntarily reduced salmon
harvests by 80 percent to 90 percent to
protect weak runs of wild salmon.
On Nov, 2, The Confederated Tribes of
the Umatilla announced their solidarity
with Warm Springs against the Nestle
bottling plant. Chuck Sams,
Communications.Director for the
Confederated Tribes of Umatilla
emphasized “that territory... is Warm
Springs territory. It was ceded to them in
their treaty. But we have rights to that and
to the water uses ...” .
Wilbur Slockish, a hereditary Klickitat
Chief whose relatives lived at Oxbow
Springs, said that the Nestié proposal is
emblematic of a disrespectful and
destructive approach to land that has gone
unchecked for too long.
“Water is being harvested for somebody
that doesn’t live here, that will never live
here, will never come here, and are not
even a local people - they’re from
Switzerland. They’re here and gone - w^én
the water’s gone they’re gone. But the
damage will have to be paid by the'
taxpayers. This is the .problem with the
‘free market’ and the ‘American dream,’
where you take a resource for wealth and
don’t look at the consequences.”
io, .Slockisfrsaidtil^
moved west t
with the extinction of the buffalo and the
destruction of the salmon as dams were
constructed in the rivers of the Pacific
Northwest.
“The same thing is going on with
Nestlé,” he continued, “and nobody ever ;
pays attention to the water rights of the
first animals that lived there, like the
salmon and all the fish species. That’s
their home - that’s where they lived.”
Across the border in California, the
same conflict is still playing out.
On Nov. 5, a coalition of Native
American and environmental groups in
California sent a letter to; Senator Barbara
Boxer urging her to drop a plan to raise
Shasta Dam, which they say would harm
native fish populations and violate both
federal environmental laws and the cultural
rights of the Winnemem Wintu people.
The letters reads: “For too long dams
have been used to solve our water
problems with no consideration given to
their community and environmental
impacts. The time has come to stop this
thoughtless, unethical behavior.... Raising
the dam will harm the Winnémem Wintu
people who have already been harmed by
the dam. Shasta Dam flooded most of their
sacred sites and traditional homelands,
including their cemeteries. Raising the
dam will flood out the little that remains.” \
On the other side of the issue, Cascade
Locks city councilor Jeff Helfrich and State
Rep. Mark Johnson have famously called
opponents of Nestlé “outsiders” - a charge -
that makes Chief Slockish laugh. “Does he
want to call me an outsider? Someone
should ask him where his burial sites are.
We’ve been here thousands of years - not
a hundred years.”
POPE, from page 9
the money was sent.
INSP: As a boy, did you dream of being
the pope?
Francis: No. But I will tell you a secret.
When I was little, there weren’t many
shops that sold things. What we had was a
market, where there was the butcher, the
greengrocer, etc. I wentwith my mother
and my grandmother to do the shopping.
Once; when I was quite little, about 4,
someone asked me: “What do you want to
do when you grow up?” And I answered: “A
butcher!” ¿
INSP: You were unknown to many until
March 13,2013. Then, overnight, you became
famous throughout the world. How was that
experience for you?
Francis: It happened, and I was not
expecting it. But I have not lost peace. And
thatis a grace from God. I don’t really
think about the fact that I am famous. I say
to myself: Now you have an important
position, but in 10 years nobody will know
you anymore.” (He laughs.) You know,
there are two types of fame: the fame of
the “greats,” those who have done truly
great things, such as Madame Curie, and
the fame of the vain. But this second type
of fame is like a soap bubble.
INSP: Can you imagine a world without,
poverty?
Francis: ! want a world without poverty.
We need to fight for that. But I am a
believer, and I know that sin is always
within us. And there is always human
greed, the lack of .solidarity, the selfishness
which creates poverty. That is why it is
difficult for me; to imagine a world without
poverty. . .
If you think of the children exploited for
slave labor, or of children exploited for
sexual abuse. And another form of
exploitation: killing children to remove
their organs, organ trafficking. Killing
children for their organs is greed.
That is why I don’t know whether we will
ever have a world without poverty, because
there is always sin, and it leads to
selfishness. But we must always fight -
always.
■ ■■
We have finished. We thanked the pope
for the interview. He thanked us as well,
and said that he enjoyed our chat very
much. Then, he takes the white envelope
that has been next to him on the sofa the
whole time, and takes out a rosary for each
of us. Photos áre taken, and then Pope
Francis bid us goodbye. As calm and
relaxed as when he arrived, he walks out
the door. Ready for his next appointment.
Courtesy of INSP News Service www.INSP.
ngo /' Straatnieuws
This interview includes questions asked by
reporters Stijn Fens and Jan-Willem Wits
and vendor Marc.
Translated from Italian to English by
Translators without Borders