To Be a Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers

Free the Snake
For the
rst time in 131 years, a Nimiipu (Nez Perce) dug-out canoe
the Snake and Columbia Rivers as a part of a restoration of
traversed
and salmon to a place. Each fall, Nimiipu and their allies from
relationship
Palouse, Colville and other nations, as well as hundreds of supporters,
the
on Timothy Island, just down from Lewiston, Idaho, on the
gathered
Greeting some strong-backed individuals who had canoed 17
Columbia.
to honor ancestors and a river, the Save the Snake otilla, the largest
miles
gathering to date, pushed ahead in dam removal.
e focus: the Ice,
Monumental and all the dams that are aging.
e tribes want the dams
and so do millions of those downstream.
removed,
Talequah, the mother orca who carried her dead calf for 17 days in
Perhaps
a grieving, tells this story best.
ere are no salmon because of the dams,
and the orcas are starving. “
e southern resident orcas of the Salish Sea are
ing toward extinction. eir population has dwindled to just 75
dri
Every calf that has been born in the last three years has died
individuals.
it could reach maturity,” D.R. Mitchell writes in the Seattle Times. 22
before
are the keystone species of the ecosystem, feeding not only the
Salmon
and the shers but the bears, eagles and every species with excellent
orca
e Columbia used to have one of the largest salmon runs on the
taste.
o en 10 million salmon a year. Today, only a fraction return to
continent,
in an enormous unused habitat. A series of dams, beginning on the
spawn
cut the river from the sea; the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest of all,
Snake,
built without a sh ladder, so salmon are trucked up the river to spawn.
was
makes sh and it makes soil. Fish are life. Today very few sh
Spawning
And if you want to save the orcas, you have to feed them.
return.
aquatic world is worsened by climate change. Salmon need moving
eir
and cold rivers. Dams cut the movement, climate change heats things
rivers,
In 2015, 250,000 salmon died at the mouth of the Columbia — the
up.
warm water, a result of climate change, and slack water. 23
culprits:
Dams are o en touted as green energy, but the fact is that mega dams are