Page 8
Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
April 21, 2021
A defining aspect of Native culture
‘Large enough to
serve you... Small
enough to care’
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It’s unclear exactly how
abundant wild salmon were
before non-Native develop-
ment of western Oregon in
the mid-19th century. An es-
timated 17 million salmon
once filled the Columbia
River Basin, said Jeremy
FiveCrows, public affairs spe-
cialist for the Columbia River
Inter-Tribal Fish Commis-
sion. According to recent
year counts, under two mil-
lion remain.
Salmon runs are cel-
ebrated as a renewal of life
each year, and allow the trans-
fer of traditional values from
generation to generation. “It’s
a whole culture that’s based
on a place and these sacred
foods that are all of a sud-
den going away, declining or
moving into other ranges,”
Mr. FiveCrows says.
“That is a huge problem
for a culture that’s based on
those foods.”
Gabe Sheoships, a Cayuse-
Walla Walla tribal citizen,
works as a fisheries biologist
and Indigenous educator at
Portland State University and
as the executive director of
Friends of Tryon Creek, a
non-profit organization focus-
ing on education about the
natural world. He teaches
about ‘first foods,’ the foods
Indigenous people tradition-
ally hunted and harvested in
the region: berries, roots,
deer, elk and salmon.
“Salmon is essential to
both sustenance and lifestyle,
fishing, harvesting, gathering
and also to survival,” Mr.
Sheoships says. “Salmon were
and are an important piece of
culture in the Pacific North-
west.”
Many tribal citizens live
year-round on the Columbia
River in fishing camps: They
depend on salmon and steel-
head for their diets, trade
and local economies.
According to Jeffrey
Ziller, a fisheries biologist
for the South Willamette Wa-
tershed District, the con-
struction of dams was the
most significant factor in
declining salmon popula-
tions.
“Every assessment that
has been done since I’ve
been around has fingered
the dams as the major limit-
ing factor to salmon in the
Willamette system,” Mr.
Ziller says. “There’s obvi-
ously good reasons for that.
Until we can fix the down-
stream passage issues at
those dams, it will be ex-
tremely difficult to recover
spring Chinook salmon in
the Willamette Basin.”
In the 1970s, there was a
real possibility that whole
segments of the salmon
population would go extinct.
“So the tribes said, ‘If there’s
no fish, it’s the same as not
having a treaty right to fish,’”
Jeremy Fivecrows says.
Through their restoration
plan, Spirit of the Salmon,
the Columbia River Inter-
Tribal Fish Commission con-
tributed to the halt in salmon
decline and numbers rose
from near-extinction levels.
At the same time, fish hatch-
eries became the easiest way
to return fish to the river.
Today, some fisheries in the
Columbia Basin are com-
pletely reliant on hatcheries.
Following the completion
of the dams, an agreement
was made between the Or-
egon Department of Fish
and Wildlife and the Army
Corps of Engineers to miti-
gate the harm to fish popu-
lations caused by the dams.
Hatcheries were seen as a vi-
able solution.
“The hatchery system is
very much in the U.S. agri-
cultural model, which is,
‘We’ll grow the biggest and
best fish and set it loose and
hopefully it comes back,’”
Mr. Sheoships says.
The justification for rec-
reational hatchery programs
parallels the motive for the
dam project: the economy.
Currently, wild salmon num-
bers are too low in the
Willamette Basin, for in-
stance, to sustain any kind
of consistent angling or har-
vesting, creating the need for
hatcheries.
The future of salmon
conservation in the Colum-
bia Basin is uncertain. As the
planet warms, salmon face
yet another existential crisis.
Today, one-third of freshwa-
ter fish are facing extinction.
In 2020 alone, 16 different
freshwater species were de-
clared “extinct” by the Inter-
national Union for Conser-
vation of Nature Red List
of Threatened Species.
Still, there is cause for
hope as tribes, government
agencies, conser vation
groups, private interests and
others are aware of the peril.
In a recent development,
Jaime Pinkham, Nez Perce
tribal member and executive
director of the Columbia
River Inter-Tribal Fish Com-
mission, was appointed to
oversee civil works for the
Army Corps of Engineers.
The appointment is sig-
nificant: “Indigenous people
have always been adapting
and are pretty resilient,” Mr.
Sheoships says. “I think so-
ciety needs to follow suit and
adapt.”
by Clayton Franke
The Daily Emerald
University of Oregon.
Water conflict along the Ore.-Calif. border
One of the worst droughts
in memory in a massive agri-
cultural region straddling the
Oregon-California border
could mean steep cuts to irri-
gation water for hundreds of
farmers this summer to sus-
tain endangered fish species
critical to local tribes.
The U.S. Bureau of Rec-
lamation, which oversees wa-
ter allocations in the feder-
ally owned Klamath Project,
is expected to announce this
week how the season’s water
will be divvied up after de-
laying the decision a month.
For the first time in 20
years, it’s possible that the
1,400 irrigators who have
farmed for generations on
225,000 acres of reclaimed
farmland will get no water at
all—or so little that farming
wouldn’t be worth it. Several
tribes in Oregon and Califor-
nia are equally desperate for
water to sustain threatened
and endangered species of
fish central to their heritage.
A network of six wildlife
refuges that make up the
largest wetland complex west
of the Mississippi River also
depend on the project’s wa-
ter, but will likely go dry this
year.
The competing demands
for a vanishing natural re-
source foreshadow a difficult
and tense summer in the re-
gion.