Historical Agreement Reached in the Snake River Dam Conversation

Salmon spawning. Credit: Pixabay.

By Kacy Cheslek and Steve Lemeshko

Since time immemorial, salmon have been a significant part of the culture and identity of Tribal Nations. There were multiple treaties with different tribes that honored and secured the exclusive rights of their communities to hunt and fish. However, when the four lower Snake River dams—Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Ice Harbor—were built on the Snake River in the 1960s and 1970s, the salmon populations were practically decimated, leading to a far greater impact than the estimated 50% decrease. The construction of dams has disrupted the traditional fishing practices of indigenous communities and led to a historical injustice—slow violence that has been impacting their identity for generations.

The undamming of the Pacific Northwest has been a long-standing, complicated issue because of a multitude of factors: energy generation, flood control, water irrigation, and transportation on the one hand and the declining salmon population and historical injustice toward Tribal Nations on the other. This sense of the problem’s scale has created a barrier to action—an example of pseudoinefficacy, as actions by individual actors are thought not to make a significant difference. Still, through promising cooperation between the stakeholders in recent years, some progress has been made to address the slow violence of ecological degradation and social injustice.

The Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the Nez Perce Tribe have been working together with Washington and Oregon as a group called “the six sovereigns” to address the issue. This agreement between the government and native tribes is exciting, as the tribes have often been left out of the loop in past environmental decisions. Including the tribes in these conversations not only aligns with the treaties but is also respectful of the identities that are deeply influenced by the salmon. Corinne Sams, chair of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and elected member of the board of trustees for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, said about the agreement: “It allows our people to continue our way of life and we are salmon people.” Through this cooperation, we are able to achieve progress in solving this daunting issue. 

In December of 2023, the Biden Administration announced that $1 billion dollars would go toward funding research on how to address dam removal, such as alternative transportation routes and energy generation. The fund sets the right pathway for bringing the dam removal goal closer, with the potential of restoring environmental justice for the “Salmon People.” Jonathan Smith, chair of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, stated: “This settlement deserves to be celebrated. It takes the interests of all the stakeholders in the Columbia Basin into account.”

The thoughtful research going into the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative and the collaboration with the native tribes provide hope and inspiration in the face of slow violence. Tackling a problem of this scale cannot be done alone. It takes all of us working together. 

For further reading on slow violence, see the following articles:

The Role of Sound in Recognizing the Slow Violence of Carbon Extraction / March 29, 2024

Using Islander Stories to Discuss Sea-Level Rise / May 25, 2023

Photographing Vulnerability: Trans-scalar Articulations of Precarity from the Shorelines of Kerala / May 16, 2023