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.”