I love wild rivers and lakes. Fish captivate me. A one-hour documentary on the history of salmon in the Pacific Northwest — the threatened runs, their relationship to Native peoples, and the work to restore them to the rivers and lakes they are native to. It begins at Celilo Falls, where Indigenous peoples fished for 10,000 years.
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Transcript of the Voices of the Wild Earth episode. Lightly formatted from the original production script.
FINAL TRANSCRIPT: PEOPLE OF THE SALMON -4/6/25
INTRO: I LOVE WILD RIVERS AND LAKES. FISH CAPTIVATE ME.
IN 1969, AT 18, AND A MIDWESTERN GIRL, I SAW MY FIRST SPAWNING
STEELHEAD IN A SHALLOW STREAM I WAS FORDING IN CENTRAL IDAHO. IT
WAS THREE FEET LONG! YEARS LATER IN 1991, I WAS ON THE NEZ PERCE
RESERVATION. “NO FISHING” SIGNS HAD BEEN POSTED. I NEEDED TO
UNDERSTAND WHY.
THE FOLLOWING YEAR, I ATTENDED “THE GREAT RIVER OF THE WEST”
CONFERENCE ALONG THE COLUMBIA RIVER. I LEARNED ABOUT CELILO
FALLS, HISTORICALLY ONE OF THE LARGEST FRESHWATER FISHERIES IN
THE WORLD, WHERE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES FISHED FOR SALMON FOR
10,000 YEARS.
LATER THAT YEAR, I WAS AT THE SAWTOOTH HATCHERY IN IDAHO— THE
VERY DAY A LONE, WILD, MALE SOCKEYE WAS CAUGHT IN THE WEIR.
AFTER SWIMMING 900 MILES FROM THE OCEAN! I BROKE DOWN IN TEARS
WHEN I SAW HIM IN HIS INDOOR, CONCRETE CAPTURE TANK. THEY LATER
NAMED HIM LONESOME LARRY—THE LAST OF THIS ANCESTRAL RUN OF
WILD SOCKEYE SALMON IN REDFISH LAKE.
[BRING IN GUITAR MUSIC HERE AND THEN FADE UNDER]
THAT IMAGE OF THIS BEAUTIFUL, AMAZING CREATURE NEVER LEFT ME. SO
IN 2020 DRIVING THROUGH THE SPECTACULAR WALLOWA HOMELAND OF
THE NEZ PERCE IN OREGON, I LEARNED THAT TRIBAL FISHERIES HAD A
PLAN TO REINTRODUCE SOCKEYE IN WALLOWA LAKE WHERE THEY
HADN’T BEEN IN OVER A HUNDRED YEARS.
I KNEW THEN THAT I HAD ANOTHER SOCKEYE STORY TO TELL…
WELCOME TO VOICES OF THE WILD EARTH. I’M JANE FRITZ AND THIS IS
“PEOPLE OF THE SALMON.” THE PEOPLE AND OUR STORYTELLERS ARE
THE NIMI’IPUU, OR NEZ PERCE. THEY ARE DEEPLY TIED TO THE COLUMBIA
RIVER SALMON. THEY WILL TAKE US ON THIS JOURNEY FROM THE OCEAN
UPRIVER THROUGH THE ONCE GRAND PASSAGE OF CELILO FALLS,
CONTINUING UP THE COLUMBIA’S TRIBUTARIES, 600 MILES INLAND, UNTIL
WE REACH THE GLACIAL WALLOWA LAKE IN THE LAP OF THE EAGLE CAP
WILDERNESS OF NORTHEAST OREGON, ONCE HOME TO TENS OF
THOUSANDS OF SOCKEYE SALMON.
[CROSS FADE GUITAR MUSIC INTO SOCKEYE POPPING AMBIENCE AND
FADE UNDER]
WHAT WAS IT LIKE 100 YEARS AGO WHEN WALLOWA LAKE WAS TEEMING
WITH SOCKEYE? KARA BERLIN FISHES IN ALASKA. SHE’LL HELP US
IMAGINE WHAT IT FEELS LIKE ....
KARA: So that sound that you're hearing is taken from the Egegik River mouth
in Bristol Bay, Alaska, which is the world's largest sustainable Sockeye fishery,
where the water is just roiling with fish. I mean, it's almost spiritual...
And I'm just taken aback with gratitude to witness something that is what feels
to be like, the last wild place, truly wild, where nature isn't just limping along and
surviving, it's truly thriving.
We say that, you know, wild salmon, they fuel our body, our mind and our spirit,
and when you get to see something like that, you are filled with appreciation for
the circle of life and the ability to be a steward for the environment.
JIM HARBECK: I want to see Sockeye popping in the Wallowa River where it
meets the Wallowa Lake. And when those fish, those adult fish from the ocean
come back, I want to hear that.
[BRING UP POPPING SOUND AND THEN FADE UNDER AND OUT]
NARRATOR: THAT’S JIM. JIM HARBECK. A FISHERIES BIOLOGIST, HE’S
WORKED FOR NEZ PERCE TRIBAL FISHERIES SINCE 1998. HE’S MY GUIDE
FOR MUCH OF THIS STORY. SEEING SOCKEYE AGAIN IN WALLOWA LAKE IS
A DREAM OF THE TRIBAL ELDERS AND JIM’S MENTOR, SILAS WHITMAN. I
FIRST INTERVIEWED SILAS IN 1991 WHEN HE WAS FISHERIES DIRECTOR IN
LAPWAI, IDAHO ON THE NEZ PERCE RESERVATION.
SILAS: In the past, where I've gone to streams, where as a child I was at, and
remember seeing countless, hundreds of fish going by on their way to their
annual spawning. Never as a child, never realizing that in my wonderment of that
survival of that fish that in one day come to an end. That's when I get that sense
of sadness, and then it's replaced and with a willing rush of anger. Then that too,
then I go full circle, and I feel badly because the very ignorance that people have
about my people, my way of life, and those things that I hold dear to me about
those remaining fish that struggle through the dams, that struggle through a lack
of flow, that struggle through the degraded, denuded habitat.
[BRING UP CAMPING SOUNDS, FADE UNDER, AND CROSS FADE INTO
WATERFALLS SOUND]
NARRATOR: ON ONE OF MY MANY TRIPS ALONG THE COLUMBIA ON THE
WASHINGTON SIDE, I THREW MY SLEEPING BAG OUT ON THE ROCKY
GROUND AND CAMPED FAR ABOVE THE NOW SMOOTH SURFACE OF THE
RIVER THAT FLOODED CELILO FALLS. AFTER MIDNIGHT IN THE MOONLIGHT
AND ONCE THE CARS ON THE INTERSTATE IN OREGON GREW QUIETER, I
COULD ALMOST HEAR THE ROAR AND SEE THE ENORMOUS CLOUDS OF
MIST.
ROBERTA: So most of the family grew up with our father fishing.
NARRATOR: ROBERTA KIPP LIVED AND FISHED AT CELILO FALLS. IN THE
1940s AND ‘50s, HUNDREDS OF NATIVE FISHERMEN CAME TO FISH HERE,
INCLUDING THE NEZ PERCE.
ROBERTA: The oldest children at that time were myself, my younger brother,
and my younger sister were allowed to fish off the scaffold. I can remember
being about 9, 10... As children, you're not scared riding that scaffold. It was just
something that you did. And we would put a rope tied around our waist, and we
would have these long fishing poles, dip nets. And when we got a fish, we had
to pull it up and flip it onto the scaffold. Some of them were, like, almost six feet
long, and it was heavy.
NARRATOR: THE LATE RICK ELLENWOOD AND HIS FAMILY ALSO FISHED
HERE. CABLE CARS COULD HOLD UP TO 400 POUNDS OF SALMON.
RICK: Our place was, we had to go across on these, oh, they're big box-like,
type things, and we rode on them. And it was a cable that ran across. And when
you went over the falls, boy, I tell you, it was an exciting experience! Just it had
you on edge. I always remember that you go over there and they’d load the fish
on these big boxes. These are big fish too. These are King Salmon. They're
huge. And you load them all on that box, then you come back, and that thing
would sway left to right, left to right.
ROBERTA: Getting onto that cable car, you had to make sure that you were
secured in there, sitting down, holding on the sides with both hands as it went
through, went from one, the top, and down to the area where our father fished.
ROBERTA: What family was down there, they'd have to catch that cable car,
and then we get off.
RICK: And bring it over, and then you put them in sacks, and the women would
clean them out and everything else and get them ready. Some went to the
canneries. Some went to your own use.
ROBERTA: And then our father would gaff them. A gaff tool, it was like a spear
thing with a hook on it, and he'd put it in this big old bin. Then he'd have to take
that bin on that scaffold car, back over and put the bin in his car. Then he would
go to the fish yards in Portland, Oregon and sell the fish. Sometimes he'd fill it,
sell the fish alongside the road. That was his way of making living.
NARRATOR: I CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE HOW FEROCIOUSLY LOUD IT MUST
HAVE BEEN TO ACTUALLY LIVE THERE DAY AFTER DAY.
ROBERTA: The sound of the falls, the mist...it was sort of like a deafening
sound. You go to sleep listening to the falls, and you wake up listening to the
falls.
RICK: You could see salmon hanging from all those...well, shacks is what they
were. But they were happy people. They were catching salmon to take home.
Food for the winter, this is in the fall time, and they either dried it, or else they
salted it, or they take it home fresh and put it in the freezers. And it was
recognized and established rights that they had on each area to fish. You didn't
have to have papers, you didn't have to have any title rights, or anything like
that.
NARRATOR: A SALMON CHIEF DIRECTED THE FISHING, CULTURAL
ACTIVITIES AND SPIRITUAL CEREMONIES IN THE LONGHOUSE. HE MADE
SURE THAT DESPITE THERE BEING MILLIONS OF SALMON SWIMMING
NARRATOR: UPSTREAM, CATCHING THEM WITH RESTRAINT AND RESPECT
WAS ESSENTIAL. IT WAS DANGEROUS WORK, AND AT THAT TIME, ONLY
ONE IN 20 FISH WOULD TYPICALLY BE CAUGHT.
ROBERTA: As young girls, we would have to help serve in the Long House, and
the old women would sit on mats. The old women would be on one side, and
the men would be on the other side. The old women would have kind of like
whip-like things, and if you didn't move fast enough, they'd just brush it across
your legs. The fish was buried in a big pit, layered with leaves, coals on the
bottom, and they were layered all the way to the top, and then when the fish
were ready, they’d dig it up, and then they'd serve it.
RICK: Grandpa told me to go ahead and take this one fish home. And I was
carrying it on my back, it was pretty heavy, and I was walking uphill, and these
people from all over there were watching fishing and everything that's going on,
and they stopped me, and they said, ‘Young man, can you sell this fish to us?’
They said they'd give me $5 which was a lot of money to me. And so I sold it for
$5 and I went up to the store and I had a bottle of pop, and I had an ice cream
cone, and also ate a sandwich and got some candy bars and shared it with my
buddies that was with me. Of course, I played the rest the afternoon. I never did
go back to fish. When I got home that evening, my grandmother was there, I
seen that look on her face like, oh-oh, you know. And grandpa says, I want to
talk to you. And he says, ‘what'd you do with that fish that I sent you home to
cook?’ I said, ‘Well, I sold it.’ I said ‘I got a little bit of money left.’ I was trying to
give him that money. He didn't want the money. ‘You know that food was
supposed to be for our supper tonight; we were supposed to eat it tonight, all
sharing it together. That food is more important than money. That salmon gave
his life to us, for us to share.
NARRATOR: BUT IN 1957, EVERYTHING AT CELILO FALLS CHANGED. THE
BUILDING OF THE DALLES HYDROELECTRIC DAM BY THE U.S. ARMY
CORPS OF ENGINEERS AND THE BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION
INUNDATED CELILO UNDER 110 FEET OF RIVER WATER. THE DAM
DRAMATICALLY CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE, THE COLUMBIA RIVER, AND
THESE SUBSISTENCE CULTURES FOREVER. ALMOST 70 YEARS HAVE
PASSED, AND STILL THE NEZ PERCE TALK ABOUT THE GRAVITY OF THIS
LOSS.
[BRING UP GUITAR MUSIC AND FADE UNDER]
ROBERTA: Our mother told us to dress in our wing dresses and be respectful.
And I ended up standing by a lot of these older Indian women. That's where I
was able to observe the tears streaming down their faces. It was very emotional.
We heard the dynamite blasting, and we could see from a distance, loss was
incredible. The United States, the state of Oregon being one of them, was all
about energy, and that's why they blew up the Celilo Falls and they built the
Dalles Dam.
RICK: It was very disappointing to see when the dam inundated Celilo Falls. It
was just like losing something that was really valuable and great, like losing a
close friend; you kind of felt really downtrodden and just lost. But now, what are
we going to do? It was kind of...well, it wasn't only just to catch fish. It was a
gathering of many people, and we had a lot of friends, and we'd visit. We had
dances down there. We had feasts, get togethers with all these tribes, and it was
fun. And that was gone, and the fish was gone. Sure, they gave us all kinds of
money. It never has compensated that void in my life. It's still empty, and that's
just the way I still feel about it. So I just feel that Celilo was something that we all
lost, all the Native Americans in the Northwest, we lost something altogether,
like I said—a close friend.
ROBERTA: You talk about Celilo and I get a lump in my throat. It took me many
years living on the Umatilla Reservation to really get over that. It will follow me
my whole life.
[FADE OUT GUITAR MUSIC]
NARRATOR: IN 1991, JAIME PINKHAM WAS TRIBAL FORESTRY DIRECTOR
WHEN I INTERVIEWED HIM. EVENTUALLY HE BECAME DIRECTOR OF THE
COLUMBIA RIVER INTERTRIBAL FISH COMMISSION IN 2017. AND MOST
RECENTLY HE SERVED IN THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IN THE ARMY
CORPS OF ENGINEERS.
JAIME: When they put the dam in and we lost the falls, one of the stories that
was told to me by a friend, that expressed it in a traditional view, is that when
you change the land or you change the fish, then you change the people. And
that certainly is what had happened at Celilo Falls, because we had fished there
since time immemorial and relied upon it for subsistence. But when that fisheries
resource was gone, what did the Indian people have to turn to next? Some
people had to find a different way of life to make a living.
ROBERTA: There's not too many people that are alive today that either lived
there and/ or had relatives that fished there. After the Falls was flooded, my
father continued to fish. He got a boat, and we fished with the big nets. And
then our father would do construction work.
JAIME: We look at in relationship on how that connects with maybe social
problems with unemployment, with loss of spirituality — the whole thing is
interconnected. For us to be strong, to maintain our culture, we've got to make
sure that we are able to preserve and maintain all important elements in the
environment, because through each animal, there's a spiritual power that that
animal provides us with. So we've got to make sure that we keep all those
JAIME: things in the circle so that, you know, our life can go on as Indian people
in a traditional way.
[BRING IN RIVER SOUND AND FADE UNDER]
ETHEL GREENE: [SO WHERE DO YOU FISH?] I fish on the Columbia River, just
below John Day Dam at Rufus.
NARRATOR: I MET ETHEL GREENE AT A TRIBAL CELEBRATION IN OREGON
IN 2022. AS WE WALKED ALONG THE WALLOWA RIVER, I WAS SURPRISED
TO LEARN THAT SHE HAD FISHED MUCH OF HER LIFE ON THE COLUMBIA
RIVER.
ETHEL: So that's where we fished there for years. My dad, who passed away,
his name was Jesse Greene, and fished right below there. And we had treaty
sites, in lieu sites, certain spots where we always set our nets. Then when he
passed, us girls and my brothers would fish. And then my brothers passed
away, and so us girls sort of took control, and we'd have to fish and go down
there and set nets...it was a lot of work, because you'd have to carry the nets,
put them on a boat; you have to fix your nets, you have to clean them, you have
to take care of them. You have to sew em up, set em up so that when you let
them out, that they go out right. So it's a lot of physical work.
NARRATOR: ETHEL’S MOTHER, LORETTA HALFMOON, WAS ONE OF THREE
WOMEN WHO COMMANDEERED THE RIVER AFTER CELILO WAS FLOODED.
ETHEL: You know, she kept control of the river, especially in our area. And then
below that, down by the Dalles, was Shirley Imman. And then below that, by
Hood River, that's where Mary Settler. So the whole river was pretty much these
three women took control. They were fishing and going out. And mom would be
ETHEL: always telling us stories about her and Shirley and Mary going on the
river on a boat. You know, they cruised at night, go on the river at night time.
They were The River Women.
NARRATOR: ETHEL AND HER SISTERS SHARE THE STORIES OF SALMON
MIGRATION AND SUBSISTENCE FISHING WITH YOUNGER GENERATIONS OF
HER TRIBE BECAUSE THEY NEED TO KEEP THIS TRADITION ALIVE.
ETHEL: You know, every year we'd bring our families back, grandkids, and all
the daughters and sons; you know, right now, there's only us three. There's me
and Kerma and Sherry. My sisters would talk with the kids to tell them what
fishing was like and tell them about how the fish came about. They come up
here, they lay their eggs, and they go back out into the ocean, then they come
back. You know, that's a life. That's really a big life.
NARRATOR: SINCE THE 1970s, BIOLOGISTS TRACKING MIGRATING
SALMON HAVE WATCHED THEIR POPULATIONS DWINDLE. EVERY YEAR,
FEWER AND FEWER FISH ARE CAUGHT AND BARELY ENOUGH FOR TRIBAL
CEREMONIES OR TO GIVE TO TRIBAL MEMBERS FOR FOOD.
[FADE OUT RIVER SOUND]
ETHEL: I haven't really been fishing for the last few years, you know, because I
was working, and then the fish was so scarce. [What's your hope?] As far as the
fishing, and the fisheries, and all the fish...you know, it would be my hope that
they would at least last, you know, fish forever.
ROBERTA: This year we had three fish giveaways of salmon, whereas in the
past, we used to have about maybe ten fish each. One year when you got two
for the whole year.
NARRATOR: EACH RUN OF COLUMBIA AND SNAKE RIVER SALMON
MIRROR THE CHANGES IN THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT—SPRING,
SUMMER AND FALL. BUT WITH FOUR DAMS ON THE COLUMBIA AND FOUR
DAMS ON THE SNAKE RIVER, AND THE OTHER PRESSURES OF
CIVILIZATION, SALMON ARE STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE.
IN 1991, THERE WERE ONLY SEVEN PERCENT OF THEIR HISTORIC
NUMBERS LEFT. THAT SAME YEAR, THE SNAKE RIVER SOCKEYE WERE THE
FIRST TO BE LISTED ON THE FEDERAL ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST. MORE
SPECIES AND RUNS FOLLOWED. FISH HATCHERIES WERE BUILT TO HELP
THE SALMON, BUT STARTED TO IMPACT WILD FISH STOCKS. AND THEY
FUEL MORE HARVESTING OF THE FISH. SALMON HAVE BEEN OVERFISHED
BEFORE. FEDERAL LISTINGS HAVEN’T MADE MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE
EXCEPT FOR POSSIBLY SLOWING THE RATE OF DECLINE. AGENCY
MANAGEMENT COULD BE MORE IN LINE WITH TRIBAL MANAGEMENT.
SILAS WHITMAN SAW THIS AS FAR BACK AS 1991.
SILAS: Why we need things like water quality, water quantity, flows in order to
allow those fish to migrate to the ocean, and then flows to enhance a return,
adequate passage, whatever man in this instance meaning all of us, have done
to circumvent the system, we must somehow substitute something that allows
us to allow life to go on in its cycle. We cannot continue with this effort that has
come at the expense of mining and logging, and irrigation and agriculture, and
power consumption. What we would like to be able to do is to ensure that we
have the ability to be at the forefront of pursuing good management, and it's a
collaborative effort. Life is a circle, and that's basically what we seek to do, is to
re-instill those circles of life somehow. If technology allows us to put in
substitutions for what Mother Nature created naturally, then we must do that.
We must do that in order to survive.
NARRATOR: AFTER MORE THAN 30 YEARS OF RECENT FEDERAL AND
STATE MANAGEMENT, TODAY SALMON IN THE COLUMBIA RIVER SYSTEM
ARE STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE. SILAS WHITMAN AND TRIBAL FISHERIES
BELIEVE THEY KNOW HOW TO RESTORE AND RECOVER SALMON, MORE IN
LINE WITH
THEIR TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE. BUT HAVING THE FEDERAL AND STATE
GOVERNMENTS GIVE THE TRIBE A CHANCE TO APPLY THIS KNOWLEDGE
HAS BEEN THE CHALLENGE. BUT IT’S ALSO WHAT HAS KEPT SILAS
WHITMAN WORKING FOR FIVE DECADES ON THIS CRITICAL ISSUE ON
BEHALF OF THE NIMI’IPUU. WE SPOKE AGAIN ABOUT HIS ROLE IN TRIBAL
FISHERIES MANAGEMENT IN 2021.
SILAS: They embodied in me this desire that we want to restore and recover all
the stocks that we have names for that belong in our territorial waters in our 13
million-acre treaty territory, that included the sockeye, the coho, the fall Chinook,
summer Chinook, spring Chinook, and the steelhead that we felt that we had the
ability to restore those fish that needed our help to intervene, then we need to
recover others that have gone into extinction. What man had destroyed. We try
to put it back together again, all stocks, all populations, all species, those that
mean something to us that we have a name for, we have a place for.
NARRATOR: SALMON KNOWLEDGE EMBRACES BOTH DEEPLY INGRAINED
CULTURAL WAYS AND UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR REMARKABLE LIFE
CYCLE. TREATED WITH RESPECT AND RESTRAINT SALMON CAN SUSTAIN
THE NIMI’IPUU, AND THE PEOPLE WILL RECIPROCATE WITH CARING FOR
THE FISH. THIS IS BOTH SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE.
SILAS: We have to depend upon ourselves to provide that, that the spiritual
sustenance, which includes fish, that includes our first foods, that includes the
SILAS: ability of our women folks who go out and gather all these things; we
have to be ready to meet that challenge that they give us, which is to provide
everything needed for us to sustain our health and hopefully get our longevity
back.
You know, the way that we take care of those animals when they come back is
really necessary to understand the conditions in the habitat that are there that
sustain them for their survival, until they come into our hands and help us. And
the agreement with the salmon and their cousins about that they would give of
themselves to help the Nimi’ipuu survive. In order for us to to do those things by
song and ceremony, they have to be sustained culturally in the way that we
would take care of them, meaning when we would prepare them, how we would
prepare them, and how we would then use them at certain times of the year.
NARRATOR: TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE, OR T.E.K. COMES
FROM A DIFFERENT WORLDVIEW. IT IS A RESULT OF GENERATIONS OF
NIMI’IPUU LEARNING ABOUT THE FISH. AND THEN INTEGRATING WESTERN
SCIENCE INTO MANAGEMENT ACTIONS.
SILAS: We went out and we took our biologist out, we actually physically
counted how many fish were in these territorial waters where we used to fish, as
they say, from time immemorial. But we saw that all the activities around, be it
logging, be it development of housing, municipalities, all these government
things, how they contributed to the demise of our fishery. We had the habitat.
We were habitat rich and salmon poor.
So we went back to Washington and we put that directive together using our
sovereignty, saying that we're going to restore and recover these species of fish
so that we can feed our people, that our people will be free to exercise their
treaty rights that was guaranteed to us initially, in the treaty of 1855. We don't
SILAS: need to write a plan. We need to impose and implement the plan based
upon those things that we know, devise a cultural science that fits our needs.
NARRATOR: APPLYING T.E.K., HELPED BOOST THE COHO, CHINOOK AND
STEELHEAD TO HEALTHIER NUMBERS IN THE CLEARWATER RIVER BASIN.
THEN THE TRIBE LOOKED TO THEIR ABORIGINAL HOME IN OREGON IN THE
WALLOWAS WHERE THEY WERE DRIVEN OUT IN 1877. REACQUIRING
LANDS AND OBTAINING CONSERVATION EASEMENTS WOULD HELP
ENSURE SURVIVAL OF THE FIVE SPECIES OF FISH THAT SWIM INLAND 600
MILES TO THE MOST REMARKABLE AND WILDEST OF SPAWNING HABITAT.
SILAS: In northeast Oregon, for example, we want to go home; we want to be
able to be there and to establish the presence that we've always had. But that
presence has always been in spiritual terms. Now we want them in terms of
where we're contributing something, for example, to Wallowa county, to help us
to protect those things that the grandfather Creator has given us.
NARRATOR: CHINOOK WERE THE FIRST SPECIES OF SALMON TO BE
RESTORED IN THE RIVERS OF THE WALLOWA BEGINNING IN 1997. AND
THEIR POPULATIONS ARE IMPROVING. IN 2017 THE TRIBE BEGAN
REINTRODUCTION OF COHO WHICH HAD BEEN LOCALLY EXTINCT SINCE
1971 NEARLY 50 YEARS. COHO SALMON ONCE RETURNED FROM THE
OCEAN BY THE THOUSANDS TO SPAWN IN LATE FALL, FEEDING CHIEF
JOSEPH’S WAL’WAMA BAND AT THE CONFLUENCE OF THE LOSTINE AND
WALLOWA RIVERS.
SILAS: So we can restore the coho back here. Coho are wonderful colonizers
wherever the temperature is right, those little fish will go back and they're
smaller than the Chinook and so, but they share a fishery. The sockeye are like
their first cousin; sockeye, we call it q’óyxc the coho, or the silvers are called
SILAS: ka’llay. One goes into the lake systems. The other stays in a river and
goes into the streams to spawn. They both have the same characteristics of
getting bright red, protruding jaws and so forth, and the same actions and
activities.
NARRATOR: I WANTED TO EXPERIENCE FIRSTHAND THE TRIBE’S EFFORTS
WITH COHO REINTRODUCTION, SO I TRAVELED TO WALLOWA COUNTY TO
VISIT THE LOSTINE RIVER FACILITY AND WEIR, OWNED AND MANAGED BY
THE TRIBE. ON THIS COLD OCTOBER MORNING, JIM HARBECK AND I FIRST
STOP AT THE RIVER’S CONFLUENCE WITH THE WALLOWA RIVER.
[BRING UP RIVER SOUND AND CROSS FADE INTO SONGS OF GEESE AND
AND FADE UNDER]
JIM: This line of trees marks the Wallowa River, and then west of us with those
tree line marks the Lostine River. So basically, that little patch of water is the
confluence where the two rivers meet; and in this flat spot, this meadow, was
the site of one of the largest Nez Perce villages in the Wallowa country. They
were there because all the fish and the fantastic fishing were here. Chief Joseph
would frequently bring folks to here, and was a great host.
NARRATOR: THEN A MILE FARTHER DOWN THE ROAD, JIM TAKES ME TO
WHERE THE FISH ENTER THE WEIR AND ARE TRAPPED, KEEPING THEM
FROM SWIMMING UPSTREAM TO SPAWN.
JIM: So coho swimming upstream and encountering that weir will search for a
way to continue. That's their natural behavior. If they run into a log jam, they're
going to be looking for a way to pass that log jam. And so they're eventually
going to move all the way over to here, where they're going to sense, oh, this is
the way forward. This is the way upstream, and they'll enter that way.
JANE: And after 600 miles, they've gotten pretty good at getting around
obstacles.
JIM: Yes, exactly. Although there is an energy cost for that effort, those eight
dams cost these fish something in terms of the energy that they have.
[BRING UP RIVER SOUND AND CROSSFADE WITH WEIR SOUND AND FADE
UP AND UNDER THROUGHOUT]
NARRATOR: FINALLY WE JOIN FACILITY MANAGER RICK ZOLLMAN AND HIS
CREW UP ON THE FISH PROCESSING PLATFORM OF STAINLESS STEEL
TABLES, FISH TANKS AND DIGITAL EQUIPMENT...
RICK: Basically, what we're going to do is the fish are in the trap. We're going to
go ahead and grab them, put them in a hopper, lift them up, put them into a
fresh flow of water, and then we're going to start working them through. The
coho we're going to be taking sexes on them, links, checking for tags, and then
giving them a punch, a gill punch, and put them back in the river. That gill punch
is a genetic sample, as well as the fish that go back into the river gives them a
mark to say that we handled them at this weir. If people go out and do spawning
ground surveys, they can prove they've been here.
JIM: So, Jane, well, you're going to see coho, but there are other fish species as
well that you'll see, primarily whitefish, mountain whitefish. They are making their
spawning run as well.
JANE: How many coho salmon are you expecting this year?
RICK: Since it’s early in the reintroduction program, we've only had... this is only
our third year of returns, 5000 plus adults came over Bonneville, but they go
through all those fisheries, and right now, according to what we see at Lower
Granite should be about 1000 fish that are in this area. So I'd say most likely
RICK: 500-700 we hope will come here, but whether or not that happens, we
don't know.
JANE: How many have returned to date?
RICK: Twenty-three, plus whatever's in the trap.
JIM: So they've entered the trap through here, Jane, and they raised the floor a
little bit to make these fish a little accessible. So you can see the coho in here.
He's putting them inside the hopper, which will raise it up and make the fish
available. These large fish are the coho salmon, Lostine coho salmon that
entered the trap yesterday and last night. And these guys are saying now that
there's maybe 10-12 coho in the trap today.
They’re maybe 24 inches long, some a little longer, some a little shorter, eight to
10 pounds each, and you can see they have the reddish hue to them right now.
They're not as brilliant as sockeye, but they do turn red, especially the males.
And so out in the ocean they’re silver. Silver is an adaptive color for that type of
environment, and then they're coming here, and those would be called their
spawning colors now.
To leave salt water, and to enter fresh water is a big step. These are, these are
animals that go through quite a physical change, almost like a butterfly in a
sense. They’re able to live in salt water, but they're born and live for a year and a
half in fresh water, and head out and survive in a marine environment, which
requires physical adaptations, and now they're back in fresh water to bring the
next generation to fruition. So after the guys are finished working these fish up
and and releasing them to continue their migration upstream...
JANE: Is that a wild? [ Yes.] So the first fish you catch is a wild coho today.
RUSTY: No mark, male, 690
JANE: So he just put him back into the river. [Yep, go back into the river.]
NARRATOR: [AS VOICEOVER] EACH COHO SALMON, MALE AND FEMALE, IS
HANDLED QUICKLY BUT CAREFULLY, MEASURED IN MILLIMETERS,
SCANNED FOR A PIT TAG, PUNCHED IN A FIN TO TAKE A SMALL SAMPLE
FOR GENETIC STUDIES, AND FINALLY RELEASED BACK IN THE RIVER
THROUGH A LARGE TUBE. IT’S QUITE AN ASSEMBLY LINE FOR THE FISH!
JANE: So now tell me about that one, that particular fish.
BILL: That’s a coho.
JANE: And was it hatchery? Wild?
RICK: It's considered a hatchery fish.
BILL: ...negative on the pit.
JANE: Oh, now that one's better ... look at how pretty.
BILL: Negative on the pit.
JANE: So they're taking a DNA sample of its one of its fins, or in this case, its
tail.
JIM: This is a PIT tag reader, and it'll show up the code, individualized code, if it
has one, will show up on the screen and then record it in this device. Most of
them will not have it, and that's why you hear Bill say negative. But on occasion,
there'll be a pit tag and it'll read on the screen, and we'll know its history both
going out to the ocean and coming back, because they're read at each one of
the facilities, dams and here as well. Not all of the all of them have pit tags. You
know, the tag costs about $2 each, and so we only put tags in a percentage, but
it's a known percentage.
RUSTY: Male, 690 add
BILL: Negative pit
NARRATOR: [AS VOICE OVER MORE AMBIENCE AT WEIR ]
THE CREW CONTINUES TO PROCESS EACH FISH AND GET THEM BACK IN
THE RIVER AS QUICKLY AND SAFELY AS THEY CAN. IT’S FAST, METHODICAL
AND COLD WORK. AND BY LATE MORNING, THE DAY’S CATCH ARE
RECORDED.
RUSTY: Add female, 650.
BILL: Negative on the pit. No wire.
JANE: Now the females are different looking than the males.
RICK: Yeah, they don't have the kipe on the snout. They're more rounded, and
then they have the nice, big belly...
JANE: Full of eggs
JANE: How many fish caught just now?
RICK: We have 14 coho today, and three mountain whitefish today.
JIM: Prior to today, we’ve had coho at the weir, but in single digits. So this is the
highest single day thus far in the run of the coho. So, it’s a good day to be here.
[SEGUE TO A DIFFERENT RIVER SOUND AND FADE UNDER]
NARRATOR: I VISITED THE LOSTINE WEIR AGAIN TWO YEARS LATER TO
SEE HOW THE COHO PROGRAM WAS PROGRESSING. RICK ZOLLMAN AND
A YOUNG NEZ PERCE TRIBAL MEMBER, REDHEART, NEW TO THE CREW
GREETED ME, BUT THERE WERE NO COHO IN THE TRAP THAT DAY. RICK
NARRATOR: EXPLAINED THAT THE SUCCESS OF THE REINTRODUCTION
PROGRAM IS DEPENDENT ON SEVERAL FACTORS.
RICK: Hatchery programs years ago, they would take them from any place and
put them in. The type of quality of fish that you’re getting back is part of the
issue we’re dealing with. Not just getting a fish back, but getting back a fish that
is proper and has a better chance of survival and carrying on the future
generations in the same river.
Genetically and what they’re used to physically, it’s hard to take a fish that only
swims a mile from the ocean and put it into a program here where we’re 600
miles away. That’s one of the reasons the coho are not busting down our doors
because they are coming a long ways compared to what they’re used to. Takes
some generations to build that strength up to be able to handle it.
RICK: We put smolts in first year in 2017. They’ve been extinct since the early
70s. So it was quite a change in what was happening in the biology of the river.
We've been having fish... coho are predominantly three year olds as adults. So
jacks are just two years so you let them go in the spring, and then next fall,
they're back as jacks. So it's a quick turnaround, which is nice to see fish
coming back, but it also shows you, with that short of a life cycle, it's easy to
exterminate them again. It's three years of no fish passage, and they're gone.
We're getting literally thousands of fish over Bonneville. I think last year we had
10,000, 12,000 came over Bonneville, but we only trapped about 88 here. So
getting them to the weir is the next thing. Now we've reintroduced them. They're
in the Grand Ronde system in the Wallowa, which is a good thing. That's one of
the things we want to do. But getting enough fish back here to be able to
perpetuate that program of 500,000 smolts is not occurring, and so we're trying
to do some new things, and it's a lot more effort on our part.
[FADE OUT RIVER SOUND]
NARRATOR: IN ADDITION TO THE FISH’S LONG JOURNEY, THERE ARE HIGH
CAPTURE RATES AT ALL THE FISHERIES ALONG THE WAY. ONCE THEY ARE
COUNTED AT BONNEVILLE DAM, THE FIRST DAM ON THE COLUMBIA FROM
THE OCEAN, THE COHO TEAM HAS AN IDEA OF WHAT FISH MIGHT RETURN
TO THE LOSTINE. THUS FAR THEY HAVE SEEN ONLY TWO GENERATIONS OF
COHO, SO IT’S TOO EARLY TO CELEBRATE THE PROGRAM’S SUCCESS, OR
COMPARE IT TO THE RECOVERY PROGRAM OF THE CHINOOK WHICH
BEGAN 20 YEARS EARLIER. BUT WITH MORE TIME, RICK AND HIS TEAM AIM
TO CREATE A SELF-SUSTAINING COHO POPULATION.
JANE: From your knowledge, Redheart, how did these fish find this place?
REDHEART: I'm not too sure what, what it is inside of them that makes them,
like, know exactly where to go and how to get back up to where they came
from. I think it's pretty cool that they can tell just by, like, the water, like where
they were first born.
JANE: And that that plays into the science part of it, right?
RICK: Oh yeah, they’ve been studying for years trying to figure out what exactly
is it that allows them to gravitate back to their same spawning ground areas.
Magnetic, electric fields, they think affect them. Some people talk about the way
the moon phases are and stuff. I don't think they've came up with one way that
is the ultimate way, but there certainly is something in the truth of it, that they
know where they came from, where they're going back.
JANE: How many do you hope come back this year?
RICK: I would hope to get 200-300 is what I'm hoping for. We've never gotten
more than about 90 in a year. So it's going to be doubling or tripling, because
RICK: we did some events to help them to key in here better. And we hope
that's going to work out. Now, a lot of them been caught, it gets narrower and
narrower, how the population is. It's got to come here for that. I need about 300
females to make the program 500,000 so I'm bucking from way down low, trying
to get up to a much higher number.
The people that lived in Wallowa County originally relied on the salmon too, so
they know that what it meant to be here. Now that we have the Nez Perce
coming back in, into their homelands, we get more of a, I think, an amplified
effect of that. So people are very tied to the area, the fish, the animals.
JANE: What do you think about those stories where that you could walk across
the backs of the salmon to get across the river?
REDHEART: It’s crazy to think about to where it is now, like, see, looking at the
river, like just imagining, like hundreds and hundreds of salmon just going
through. You could just walk across their backs. That'd be nice. That'd be cool.
NARRATOR: THE NEZ PERCE COHO PROGRAM IS A MODEL FOR THE
TRIBE’S REINTRODUCTION OF SOCKEYE SALMON INTO WALLOWA LAKE,
MILES UPSTREAM FROM THE LOSTINE FACILITY.
[BRING UP AND FADE UNDER RIVER SOUND]
JIM: We’re standing next to the Upper Wallowa River, it’s above Wallowa Lake.
NARRATOR: JIM TRACES BACKWARDS THE FISH’S RETURN JOURNEY
FROM THE UPPER WALLOWA RIVER TO THE OCEAN.
JIM: The river of course empties into Wallowa Lake which is approximately three
miles long, And then the river re-emerges at the foot of the lake and from that
point flows the length of the Wallowa Valley and then it merges with the Grande
JIM: Ronde River. And the Grande Ronde flows northeast until it hits the Snake
River and the Snake River merges with the Columbia River and the water
empties out into the ocean at Astoria.
SILAS: We have one lake left that is stream fed. That's Wallowa.
NARRATOR: IT’S BEEN MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS, BUT SILAS’S
DREAM TO BRING THE OCEAN GOING SOCKEYE BACK TO WALLOWA LAKE
IS SOON TO BECOME REAL.
SILAS: The idea is that we're going to be able to get, you know, the sockeye
back, which is considered the filet mignon of the fishery world in taste; if the
sockeye started coming back, we'll trap and haul them if we have to, anything
that requires us an ability of taking those animals back. They taste the water and
they come home. This is their home. They go where they want to go. They
provide the sustenance for us. We can catch them, but also we’re restoring back
to that native habitat. And Wallowa Lake happens to be one of those, and we've
not we've not fished that for a very long time, but we are now into the Wallowa
River, into the Lostine, into the Minam, all those rivers that we're getting access
to, the fish are coming back.
[BRING IN RIVER SOUND AND FADE UNDER]
JIM: Historically, sockeye were very abundant and they spawned all the way up
to the falls, all the way to the lake and even there’s some records indicating that
sockeye would spawn along the lakeshore as well. Those eggs emerge as fry
and as soon as that happens they drift down into a lake and that is their nursery
for about two years, and then they leave and head out to the ocean.
[CROSSFADE INTO DIFFERENT RIVER SOUND HERE AS WE MOVE CLOSER
TO WALLOWA LAKE; FADE UNDER]
NARRATOR: AS WE WALK ALONG THE RIVER, JIM AND I COME UPON
BRAIDS OF RIVER CHANNELS THAT FAN OUT LIKE FINGERS AS WE MOVE
CLOSER TO THE HEAD OF THE LAKE.
JIM: It’s kind of an incredible area right here. And that fanning was even more
extensive historically than it is today. The Wallowa Lake State Park is just
through these cottonwoods and during the development of the park a lot of
these side channels were covered over and a little bit of channelizing of the main
part of the Wallowa. The sockeye were limited by the falls on the West Fork and
the cascades on the East Fork. But, because of the extensive nature of all these
braids and all these channels, there was lots of spawning habitat here between
up there and the lake right behind us.
NARRATOR: AND HOW FERTILE WERE THESE SPAWNING GROUNDS FOR
SOCKEYE?
JIM: This would have been a channel of red when the sockeye were here.
Sockeye were the most abundant returning salmon species here in Wallowa
County and the estimate is between 20,000 and 30,000 adult sockeye salmon
would return to this place. However, currently, they can't come up here because
there is a dam blocking them.
NARRATOR: THAT CONCRETE DAM AT THE FOOT OF THE LAKE THREE
MILES AWAY WAS BUILT FOR LOCAL RESIDENTIAL AND AGRICULTURAL
USE. IT HAS BLOCKED FISH PASSAGE FOR SOCKEYE SINCE 1916.
JANE: So some people say why go to all this trouble to bring anadromous
sockeye back to Wallowa Lake when you’ve got Kokanee.
JIM: Why sockeye here? It has to do with the sockeye being in the ocean. When
they come back, they're bringing nutrients, marine derived nutrients with them in
JIM: their bodies that are released into this little local ecosystem, and those
nutrients benefit everything and everybody. You have a healthier riparian forest
because of salmon coming back and releasing those nutrients. The nutrients
also benefit the organisms that are in the water, macro invertebrates, which are
the insects, benefit from those nutrients, as well as the next generation of
salmon. Those bodies are decomposing; foxes, bears and cougars all benefit
from the nutrients that salmon bring from the ocean.
JANE: Are we talking about carcasses of dead sockeye that have spawned?
JIM: Yes, that is how these fish are delivering that important resource that's
currently not here. There's well over 300 animals that take advantage of those
nutrients, as well as the plants that are here...
JANE: Three hundred ??
JIM: Yes, there's, there's many, many, many, many animals, insects, plants that
take advantage of those important nutrients that they wouldn't have any other
way than these fish bringing them with them within their bodies, and so even
after death, they still contribute to this place.
NARRATOR: ENSURING THE FUTURE OF SOCKEYE REINTRODUCTION,
SILAS WHITMAN NEGOTIATED A CONSERVATION EASEMENT SIGNED IN
2020 WITH THE OWNERS OF THE VERY POPULAR WALLOWA LAKE LODGE
FOR NINE ACRES ALONG THE WALLOWA RIVER AROUND THE LODGE AND
AT THE HEAD OF THE LAKE.
SILAS: Here’s a conservation easement. The Tribe has it, had to sign for it, and
in perpetuity, meaning that as long as those sockeye return to the lake, as long
as the Wallowa flows in to provide the sustenance necessary for the food; our
science staff, our people out of the the field office, the research goes in and
SILAS: basically sets up what is needed, you know, for the survival of the fish
and then the production folks, we provide the ability of getting in and getting
what fish we can determine are the numbers that the habitat will hold for them.
So all of that, it goes into a plan. The less said, the better. Let's get the action
out there and demonstrate in our activities, as opposed to words. As Chief
Joseph said a long time ago, your good words come to nothing if you don't do
anything with them. That, to me, is probably the most important thing, is that
among ourselves, we promote a greater understanding of what it is and why we
get this.
NARRATOR: AND THERE’S BEEN SEVERAL YEARS OF NEGOTIATION TO
REBUILD THE DAM AT THE FOOT OF THE LAKE. THIS WOULD ALLOW
PASSAGE AGAIN FOR THE SOCKEYE.
JIM: They've had that strong desire to put sockeye back into Wallowa Lake for a
long, long time. However, more recently, they're being joined by many other
entities. Four stakeholders have gathered together and finally come to
agreement and signed a collaborative MOA to operate the dam and repair the
dam in such a way that sockeye reintroduction will be possible again. And those
four stakeholders are the owners of the dam, The Wallowa Lake Irrigation
District, the State of Oregon through their ODFW— Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife, the Nez Perce Tribe and the Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation, as well as many here in the local community also want to see
sockeye restored to Wallowa Lake. That will trigger the release of state funds to
rehabilitate Wallowa Lake Dam, with the understanding that there will be fish
passage as part of that reconstruction. Wallowa Lake is the home of sockeye.
They should be here.
[BRING IN SOUND OF PEOPLE GATHERED AND FADE UNDER]
NARRATOR: IN THE SUMMER OF 2022, WALLOWA LAKE LODGE
CELEBRATED ITS CENTENNIAL YEAR WITH A PUBLIC EVENT. IT ALSO
DEDICATED THE CONSERVATION EASEMENT TO PROTECT THOSE NEZ
PERCE ANCESTRAL LANDS ALONG THE WALLOWA RIVER. TRIBAL COUNCIL
MEMBERS, DIGNITARIES, AND GUESTS, NATIVE AND NONNATIVE, GAVE
SPEECHES. ARTWORK FOR A COMMEMORATIVE NEZ PERCE BLANKET
MARKING THE OCCASION WAS UNVEILED. AND EVERYONE ENJOYED A
GIVEAWAY MEAL ON THE BEAUTIFUL GROUNDS, HOME AGAIN TO THE
NIMI’IPUU. WILL CHANNELS FULL OF SPAWNING SOCKEYE BE FAR
BEHIND?
SHANNON WHEELER WAS VICE-CHAIRMAN THEN, AND TODAY IS
CHAIRMAN OF THE NEZ PERCE TRIBAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. AND
SINCE DREAMS ARE SPIRITUALLY IMPORTANT TO THE NIMI’IPUU,
CHAIRMAN WHEELER HAD ONE TO SHARE AS WELL.
SHANNON: Thirty years ago, I had a dream that I was coming out of these
trees, and I didn't know where I was. And at first I thought I was by myself, and
then I looked, when I come out into the opening, into this meadow, there was a
bunch of people that were in a line that way. Then they was, like, in a line back
this way. So it was kind of like this. And I was walking, and I just like, wow. I look
at everybody starting to walk this way. And it was here. It was here, back into
this valley, that our people were coming back into the valley together like that.
The Creator, hanyaw’áat, says we need you back here again, he makes it
possible. He makes it possible through dreams. He makes it possible through
actions of dreams.
There's still a sense of sadness because of the things that have happened to
why we're at this point, but there's also that excitement for something coming
SHANNON: home. The land misses us. The land misses the sockeye. The land
misses those things that have been here since time immemorial.
All those people that have kept this alive and kept our way of life alive and and
those unwritten laws that we carry to the Treaty Grounds the right to travel and
exist and to hunt fish and gather, to be one with the land. So this journey will
continue from this day forward in a better way at this place. And that's what
we're happy for, is that a piece of us, a part of us, we're still not home, but a part
of us has healed.
NARRATOR: TRIBAL MEMBERS ALLEN PINKHAM JR., AND LOUIS REUBEN
TRAVELED TO WALLOWA LAKE FROM THE NEZ PERCE RESERVATION IN
IDAHO.
JANE: This is Nez Perce land in conservation easement for the first time since
1877 when your people were driven out. What does that mean to you?
SONNY: First of all, you call it a righting a historical wrong. But that comes
slowly. People that initially moved here, we welcomed. That was our custom,
knowing that there was going to be more that inevitably, that we'd have to
accommodate. And obviously we didn't know what the you know, end result
would be, but that we're working with the end result, and part of that is
reintroducing the sockeye, and sockeye being one of the five Salmon People
that it's important to reestablish that ecosystem here, not only for our cultural
identity, but also because the salmon are part of the country, part of this, this
land, part of this planet. They have been for millions of years. So for us to
destroy these species, it's not a good human value.
LOUIS: I think that's a huge first step for us to return our inherent responsibilities
as well, as stewards of this land, bringing the sockeye back, bringing our
LOUIS: relatives back, welcome them home as well, is a huge first step to
restoration. You know, there's a lot of work to be done still.
JANE: There’s a resurgence, there's a rising up. And you've been part of one
aspect of that that relates intimately with the salmon, and that's the canoes.
We're going to carve canoes again.
LOUIS: I think, it was like such a light bulb idea. A lot of the things that were put
away for a while, I wouldn't say, was lost. It was put away for a while, are
starting to come back now, because there's, it's no longer illegal to be an Indian,
[LAUGHS] you know. So a lot of the stuff can come back to the mainstream, to
main front, to the front lines, and that is going to be our vessel to remove the
dams and restore the salmon, restore the rivers, restore the environmental
injustice that has been happening.
SONNY: The dams that are being removed on the Klamath River that but also
the Snake River that are being looked at and seriously looked at, in my opinion,
getting out on the water with canoes and making other people aware of that,
especially ones that depend on hydroelectric for their livelihood. I don't see
them as antagonists or enemies of me. That's just that they want to make a
living too, just that they've been dependent on hydroelectric. People can make a
living, but they don't need to wipe out whole species or maximize profit at other
people's expense or lives.
LOUIS: Yeah, to piggyback on his point. Our inherent rights, protected by our
treaty, to travel unimpeded through our trails or the river and dams kind of
impede us from traveling, from getting to Celilo or further down river on the
Snake. That's something that I want to remove, not only for myself, because,
you know, my roots are underwater from the Lower Granite Dam that flooded
out my village site and the place where my great grandfather was born. And so
LOUIS: that’s it has a huge impact on me, because I can't reconnect with
something that's underwater.
JANE: Your home...[wawaawawiy]...that’s underwater now?
LOUIS: Yes, it's, it's under the Lower Granite reservoir. That was the place
where my band would winter up along the Snake. We’d move with the seasons.
You know, we'd be up on the Palouse. We'd be in the Blues. We spent a lot of
time with our relatives from the Wallowa, too. We see lower Elwha, as a huge
success story after dam removal, and we're hoping to bring that success story
here.
NARRATOR: THE KLAMATH AND ELWHA RIVER DAMS NOW BREACHED,
ARE SEEING SALMON RETURNING AND HABITAT RECOVERING. BREACHING
THE FOUR LOWER SNAKE RIVER DAMS WOULD SUPPORT THE ECOLOGY
OF THE RIVER AND SO MUCH MORE. THE NEZ PERCE ARE NOW PART OF A
SCIENCE-BASED STRATEGY TO RESTORE SALMON, ENSURE A CLEAN
ENERGY FUTURE, AND SUPPORT LOCAL COMMUNITIES. IT IS CALLED THE
COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN RESTORATION INITIATIVE.
JIM HARBECK BELIEVES IF THE SALMON IN THE WILD WALLOWAS ARE TO
SURVIVE IN SOME OF THE BEST HABITAT FOR THEM IN THE NORTHWEST,
THE DAMS MUST BE BREACHED. AND SOONER THAN LATER.
JIM: Just to be clear, when we're saying breached, it is the earthen part of those
dams that will be removed. That will definitely provide fish passage, or easier
fish passage than there currently exists.
Right now, the Lower Snake River is no longer a river. It's just a series of ponds
or impoundments. The water is slack and the water is warmer, and that means
JIM: significant impacts to anadromous fish like coho, like sockeye, steelhead,
Chinook salmon; all of them are adapted to cold water, flowing water. And so
when these juveniles, like juvenile coho, juvenile sockeye, leave Wallowa County
and head for the ocean, they would no longer hit that slack water, and their
journey to the ocean would be a matter of days, rather than months, and they
would be less exposed to predation that they are exposed to now, and that
water would be colder, more suitable for cold water species like salmon. It's
probably the best opportunity or best chance that we will have in our lifetime to
address a lot of these issues that are negatively impacting our fishery resources.
We are losing, running out of time for these fish.
NARRATOR: THE FUTURE FOR THE SALMON NATION HERE IN THE
WALLOWAS AND THE ENTIRE PACIFIC NORTHWEST IS IN OUR HANDS. IT’S
TIME TO COME FROM A PLACE OF HUMILITY.
JIM: If you think of all the different stages and all the hoops that these fish have
to go through. It's miraculous that, honestly, that there are any fish back here,
and it's a tribute to the Creator that designed this awesome cycle of life.
NARRATOR: SILAS WHITMAN MANY YEARS AGO, SPOKE PROPHETICALLY
ABOUT A BETTER LIFE FOR THE FISH AND FOR ALL OF US. I WANT TO
BELIEVE IT’S THE FUTURE WE CAN ALL CREATE TOGETHER.
SILAS: The change that is foretold that will be coming will signal that there'll be
a new life after the end of an old and now, once again, we will be able to see
rivers flowing with fish, compassion, once again, that will rule people's lives. It's
a matter of trying to retain that within this rush of activity and paper that
pervades our very essence today.
[FADE OUT DRUM MUSIC UNDER OUTRO AND CROSSFADE INTO GUITAR]
OUTRO: PEOPLE OF THE SALMON WAS PRODUCED FOR THE IDAHO
MYTHWEAVER AS PART OF ITS “VOICES OF THE WILD EARTH” RADIO AND
PODCAST SERIES. JOIN US AT MYTHWEAVER.ORG.
THE PRODUCTION TEAM INCLUDES CO-PRODUCERS JANE FRITZ AND
JUSTIN LANTRIP AND EDITOR RICH WANDSCHNEIDER. ORIGINAL MUSIC IS
BY JUSTIN LANTRIP. TRADITIONAL SINGING AND DRUMMING BY NEZ
PERCE NATION.
THIS PROGRAM WAS SUPPORTED IN PART BY A GRANT FROM THE IDAHO
HUMANITIES COUNCIL, A STATE-BASED PROGRAM OF THE NATIONAL
ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, WITH ADDITIONAL FUNDING BY
IDAHO FOREST GROUP, AND SEVERAL ANONYMOUS DONORS. IT IS
OFFERED IN RECIPROCITY AND IN MEMORY OF SILAS WHITMAN.
QE’CI’YEW’YEW. I’M JANE FRITZ.
[COPYRIGHT 2025, THE IDAHO MYTHWEAVER WITH THE NEZ PERCE TRIBE]