Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
Planning a visit to Memorial Wall
May 4, 2022
Page 7
Around Indian Country
American Indian Hall highest sustainable rating
Courtesy Sandra Greene
Randy Boise Sr. and Gerald Sampson Sr. plan to visit the
Vietnam Memorial Wall.
Vietnam War veterans
Gerald Sampson Sr. nad Randy
Boise Sr. are planning a trip to
the Vietnam War Memorial Wall
in Washington, D.C. To help
them with travelling expenses,
please see one of the following
to purchase a raffle ticket, to
have a chance at one of three
prizes: 1) $1,000; 2) $500; 3)
$250. Tickets are $5 each or five
tickets for $20. Drawing will be
on Facebook Live on May 23.
Thank you for your support.
The new American Indian Hall
at Montana State University has
become the first building to earn
LEED—Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design—
Platinum certification.
“This rating substantiates our
belief that the new American In-
dian Hall is the finest building of
its type,” said Montana State presi-
dent Waded Cruzado.
“Not only is it one of the most
beautiful buildings of its kind in the
world, but also has the highest
sustainability rating possible, which
will allow it to serve MSU students
for decades to come.”
Walter Fleming, director of
MSU’s Department of Native
American Indian Hall at Montana State University.
American Studies, housed in the
building, said the designation is im-
portant for a building that sits on
ancestral lands of many tribes.
“It is always our mantra that if
any building on campus needed to
be LEED Platinum, it was impor-
tant for the American Indian Hall
Courtesy photo
to earn that,” Fleming said.
“It is also so consistent with
the Native traditional practices
of leaving nothing to waste. What
is also important is the statement
that an efficient building does
not have to sacrifice beauty or
cultural significance.”
First adult offspring of translocated lamprey returns to Columbia
From the Columbia River Inter-
Tribal Fish Commission
In 2007 the Nez Perce Tribe’s
Pacific lamprey restoration team,
led by the late Elmer Crow, re-
leased a group of lamprey into
Newsome Creek, a small tributary
of the South Fork Clearwater
River in Idaho.
They had been collected from
the lower Columbia River and
transported 400 miles upriver to
spare them from the risky journey
passing the remaining dams and
increase their likelihood of repro-
ducing.
The Nez Perce Tribe, Confed-
erated Tribes of the Umatilla In-
dian Reservation, and Yakama
Nation have been conducting Pa-
cific lamprey translocation efforts
like this since 2000, in areas in-
cluding the Yakima, Methow,
Wenatchee, Tucannon, and
Umatilla rivers.
Through this work, the tribes
have hoped to prevent extinction
and increase abundance of lam-
prey larvae and juveniles in wa-
terways that historically supported
populations of this culturally im-
portant fish but were either strug-
gling or locally extinct. The ulti-
mate objective is that these trans-
locations will lead to Columbia Ba-
sin Pacific lamprey populations
that are healthy enough to support
a sustainable tribal harvest as they
had since time immemorial.
“When these programs began,
there was no guarantee transloca-
tion would even work, since the
technique had never been used on
lamprey before,” said Aja
DeCoteau, executive director of
the Confederated Tribes of Warm
Springs.
“Despite this, the tribes pressed
on, not only from confidence
stemming from their successes re-
building salmon populations, but
also from our cultural obligation
to help these fish that were disap-
pearing throughout the Columbia
Around Indian Country
A brighter future for
upriver Coho salmon
Once upon a time, up to 15
million Pacific salmon and steel-
head were thought to have re-
turned to the Columbia River Ba-
sin. A nearly continuous run of
these magnificent fish migrated to
spawning and rearing areas in the
upper Columbia and Snake Riv-
ers and tributary streams. Al-
though Chinook salmon were the
most abundant species, coho or
“silver” salmon comprised an im-
portant part of a virtual year-
round opportunity for harvest.
Regional tribes, in partnership
with state fisheries manager part-
ners, have been at the forefront
of coho salmon restoration for
over two decades.
Much of the funding comes
from
Bonneville
Power
Administration’s Fish and Wildlife
Program.
Given the importance of coho
to tribal culture, the Nez Perce
tribe began reintroduction efforts
in 1994 with a primary goal to pro-
vide sustainable runs for tribal and
non-tribal harvest in the Clearwater
Basin. The Nez Perce tribal pro-
gram now grows and releases up
to 1.5 million smolts annually,
mostly from local broodstock.
The Yakama Nation has also ini-
tiated efforts to restore naturally
spawning populations of coho
salmon to harvestable numbers.
Their focus is in the upper Co-
lumbia region—the Yakima,
Wenatchee, Entiat, Methow, and
Spokane Rivers—where as many
as 165,000 coho returned annually
during the pre-treaty era.
A recently approved master plan
for the Yakima River includes a
hatchery facility for coho salmon,
named in honor of Melvin
Sampson, a tribal elder and long-
time advocate for regional fisher-
ies.
Yakama fights to clean up highly
contaminated Bradford Island
The Bonneville Dam Complex
sits in the Columbia River between
Portland and Hood River. Within
the complex is Bradford Island, his-
torically used by the Army Corps
of Engineers for chemical and
equipment storage, as well as a haz-
ardous waste landfill. In late March
of this year, after nearly two de-
cades of protest from the Yakama
Nation, other tribes and environ-
mental groups, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) listed
Bradford Island as a Superfund site–
a priority list for the most contami-
nated sites in the country.
The levels of contamination in
the water around Bradford Island
more than qualify for Superfund
site listing. According to Rose
Longoria, the Regional Superfund
Projects Manager for the Yakama
Nation, testing for the levels of
Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) in
the tissue of fish is a major indica-
tor of contamination levels.
Basin.”
Now, with over a decade of
data, researchers at CRITFC’s
Hagerman Genetics Laboratory
have published their research
showing the first direct evidence
that the tribes’ translocation pro-
grams in the Snake River basin are
working.
The research found that trans-
location increased the production
of juvenile lamprey in the interior
Columbia Basin and demonstrated
that these offspring successfully
migrated to the Pacific Ocean and
could one day return as adults.
Their findings were published this
week as a featured article titled
“Pacific lamprey translocations to
the Snake River boost abundance
of all life stages” in the peer-re-
viewed journal Transactions of the
American Fisheries Society.
The research found that the
translocated adults produced more
offspring than the adults arriving
in those streams on their own, dem-
onstrating that translocating adults
Courtesy CRITFC
Elmer Crow, Nez Perce Fisheries
and Jeff Yanke, state Fish and
Wildlife, releasing translocated
lamprey into the Wallowa River in
northeastern Oregon.
to suitable habitats in the Snake
River increased overall productiv-
ity.
“No matter how many adults are
released in an area, around half of
them contribute offspring,” said
Tod Sween, the Nez Perce lamprey
biologist.
The research also confirmed the
potential for the translocation pro-
gram to restore Pacific lamprey to
rivers and streams where they had
been wiped out, which has both eco-
logical and cultural benefits.
Aaron Jackson, Confederated
Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Res-
ervation lamprey research biologist
added, “In 2018, a tribal fishery on
Pacific lamprey was opened in the
Umatilla River basin—the first one
in 60 years,” said Jackson. “The
tribes’ efforts and proactive initia-
tives have a large role in these re-
cent increases in abundance and we
have the data to prove it.”
The data is filling in gaps in the
biology of Pacific lamprey that have
been difficult to study in the past
and provide information that is spe-
cifically tailored to each region and
subbasin.