Another Loss
Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River by Roberta Ulrich. ISBN 0-87071-469-4. Chapter 5: Another Loss.
- Dalles Dam: Celilo Falls, Columbia River fisshing
- 1940s: Indians → 10% salmon commercially captured
- 1951: engineering and fishery support and manipulation
- moved to protest from Bonneville to Dalles: 1947; compensation
- argued for annual payment from dam
- 1948 discussions over McNary and Dalles, including compensation before Dalles had been authorized
- orders and protests over McNary
- “they did have a property interest in the fish”; → 1990s Endangered Species Act protection
- hydroelectric dam industry would invalidate salmon; “the Chinook and the Blueback would go the way of the buffalo”
- authorized Dalles in 1950 Rivers and Harbors Act, which included a chapter to “The Indian Fishery Problem”
- only pay to abandon rights in extreme; will continue to live in manner to the millennium
- long-range solution integration and assimilation → termination
- Oregon Warm Springs, Umatilla, and Burns-Paiute escaped termination
- tribes and fisheries both tried to delay and preevent Dalles, but constructed regardless starting 1952 (approved 06/01/1951)
- negotiations began in late 1951: treaty rights exchanged for settlement
- 1953 challenge to Corps against in-lieu sites and treaty rights
- 1953–1954 Celilo settlements
- intro of Nez Perce into Celilo fisher tribes
- Wy’am Tommy Thompson, Olney Patt Sr.
- per capita distribution of money; WWarm Springs placed in treasury for development before 1980s
- backwater flooded villages due to the Dalles
- OG village included
- poor sanitation at Celilo; conflicts, no law enforcement and improvements → dozed in 1956
- “flowage easements”; flood land where pool roe
- Corps deals made with BIA, not owners
- land/allotments bought outright; drowned in-lieus
- Celilo village displacement, poor management and treatment, slow relocation
- 1956 fall fishing season; dam closed in 1957
- “The policy of termination was incarnated in the destruction.”