Dammed Societies: Effects of Dams on Native Americans in the Columbia River Basin Elliott McGill Senior Capstone Project Faculty Advisors: Dr. Jamie Dolan, Dr. Jeremy Johnson, and Dr. David McCanna McGill 1 Abstract Since dam construction began in the New Deal Era, it has represented a dominance of humankind over nature. These massive structures have harnessed, collected, and distributed electricity from the rivers they hold back and allow humans to reap the benefits of that cycle. One of the areas where dams are particularly apparent is in the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. While the dams in this region certainly have allowed the area to develop and build by using the electricity collected by these dams, they have also had several negative effects on the tribal people in the region who once fished the mighty Columbia during its populous salmon runs and relied on the salmon for nutritional, economic, and cultural reasons. This project seeks to examine the costs of human advancement when it comes to dams, and will do so by studying three dams located in the Columbia River Basin: The Bonneville Dam, The Dalles Dam, and The Grand Coulee Dam. These dams will be studied using Black’s Theory of Law as a framework to examine the manner in which law was applied to each case. The research finds that although the dams certainly provide a useful resource to the people of the region, it has had negative effects on the Native American people who depended on the river. McGill 2 Introduction When President Franklin D. Roosevelt successfully passed his New Deal legislation in 1933, many Americans rejoiced in hopes that the new jobs created by this initiative would energize the economy and provide the means for the country to climb out of the worst economic crisis in American history. One initiative created by this legislation would be construction of hydropower dams along some of the major waterways in the United States. Among the dams created were some of the most well-known in the country such as the Grand Coulee and Hoover Dam. While this legislation surely stimulated and boosted the struggling economy and created a renewable source of energy that showed no immediate negative aspects, it also set in motion the damming of wild waters and displacing native people and animal species. This cycle of dam-building has continued to grow to this day even outside of the United States, as sixty-percent of the world’s two hundred major river basins are dammed (Hawley 2011). Together, these dams have drowned a land-mass behind them that is larger than the state of California (Hawley 2011). Furthermore, these dams have held back sediment and minerals from reaching the ocean and have instead allowed for salt and alkaline deposits to build up and be transported into farmland that neighbors these massive dams (Hawley 2011). Possibly the most staggering statistic is that since World War II, between forty and eighty million people worldwide have been displaced and lost land, lifestyles, and jobs as a result of dam construction in various regions of the globe (Hawley 2011). As noted earlier, these dams played a vital role in American history and have had a significant impact on American lifestyles today. According to the United States McGill 3 Geological Survey, hydropower represents about 16% of the world’s total electricity production (U.S. Geological Survey 2014). The purpose of this research paper is to examine this delicate and intricate relationship between humans and nature. It aims to answer the following question: What are the consequences of human advancement when it comes to dams? To answer this question, I examine the dams constructed along the Columbia River basin and the effects they have had on the native people, plants, and species of the region. This study looks at these effects both from a statistical approach using data on several measures, and also on a deeper level to examine some of the qualitatively negative effects dam construction has had on Indian tribes in the region that are not as easily quantified. In order to complete the latter aspect, the research uses Donald Black’s Theory of Law as a framework (Black 2000). Project Significance This research is particularly significant for two main reasons. First, there is relatively little research and information on this issue, both on a global level and particularly in the Columbia River Basin which suggests that it is somewhat under- studied in the academic and scientific communities. While there seems to be a fair amount of research on either the benefits of dams or the negative implications of them, little has been published examining both and specifically how they relate to Native Americans. Furthermore, none of the existing research uses Black’s Theory of Law to examine the case which makes this research unique and significant. Also, this research is something society should consider because it is one example of a very interesting relationship that has existed for all of human history. This relationship is that of human McGill 4 advancement and nature, and the consequences the natural world experiences in order to make life easier or more enjoyable for some. This research aims to serve as a case-study of this relationship and possibly open the eyes of readers who may have not previously thought about it by examining the manifest and latent functions of dam construction. Literature Review As noted, most of the existing literature and research related to this subject has mainly focused on either the benefits of hydropower dams or on the negative issues resulting from dams on a worldwide scale. The most extensive of this research is a study done in 2000 by the World Commission on Dams (WCOD) to examine the various economic, environmental, legal, and social costs and benefits of damming projects across the world. The WCOD found that large dam-construction projects offer a variety of social benefits to the communities nearby. One of the most obvious is electricity produced by many of these dams. The electrical output generated by these dams, the report points out, has brought electricity to communities in the world that previously lived without it (WCOD 2000) Among the communities listed are the slums in San Paolo, Brazil and various impoverished communities in India. The report shows that people in these areas were mostly living in shacks with either no electricity or illegal and often unsafe access to electricity (WCOD 2000). Another benefit of large dam-construction projects noted in the report is improved irrigation which benefits the agricultural areas surrounding dams. The report makes note McGill 5 of the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest hydropower dam in the United States which sits on the Columbia River Basin which is the region of focus for this research. It shows that agribusiness in the surrounding communities multiplied due to newly constructed irrigation systems that diverted water from the reservoir created by the dam and that this contributed to higher production yields in crops (WCOD 2000). A final benefit is that of employment. Again using the Grand Coulee Dam as reference, the report notes that this construction created around 10,000 jobs employing both skilled and unskilled laborers during the construction period and created a few thousand jobs stemming from the tourism created by the dam (WCOD 2000). The report also suggests that dams have created some negative aspects. The most striking being the displacement of people in the communities that stand where construction takes place. In looking at the Grand Coulee Dam project again, the study states that the project drastically flooded the Colville and Spokane American Indian reservations as well as three towns in the area (WCOD 2000). The construction required workers to burn homes to clear land and eventually thousands were forced to leave their homes with no compensation after the entire area was flooded by the new reservoir (WCOD 2000). It was not until two years later, when the American Indian residents found out that most of the white landowners affected by the construction had been compensated, that tribes demanded to be paid and finally were, but only for the land and not homes or other personal property lost. This displacement was also negative for the tribal members because they were relocated to areas that were not powered by the newly produced electricity coming from their lands and therefore they were not able to reap benefits of the construction that others did (WCOD 2000). McGill 6 Little research has been done on all of the effects of dams on the Columbia River region, which reaffirms the significance of this project. Nevertheless, there has been some limited research conducted to examine the experience of Native Americans in dealing with large-dam constructions on their land. A study by Du Bey an Sanscrainte (2004) noted three major negative implications that arose as a result of the Grand Coulee Dam construction. The first was the destruction of tribal salmon fisheries that had existed for centuries. The authors note that prior to 1850, salmon runs along the Columbia were among the highest in the world, seeing between 500,000 and 1,300,000 salmon each year (Du Bey and Sanscrainte 2004). Annual runs have decreased to about 25,000 and continue to dwindle due to the difficulty the fish have making it up the river and over multiple dams to their spawning beds (Du Bey and Sanscrainte 2004). The second implication Du Bey and Sanscrainte noted was that due to the high amount of sediment held in the reservoir created by the Grand Coulee Dam (Lake Roosevelt), sediment and other minerals, as well as toxic sediment from mine tailings was released into the air in the surrounding communities (Du Bey and Sanscrainte 2004).