The Oregon Treaty divided indigenous people along the U.S.-Canadian border in 1846. The United States removed those who lived within its borders to the Colville Indian Reservation. Kettle Falls, a gathering and trading place on the upper Columbia River was the most significant fishery of the Okanagan (now in Canada) and the Colville. Here Indians used J-shaped baskets to trap salmon in large quantities every spring and fall. The Colville also used dipnets, harpoons, seine nets, and fish drives to catch the fish that comprised between forty and fifty percent of their diet.
Grand Coulee Dam, the second federal dam built on the Columbia River, inundated Kettle Falls in 1941. The dam elevated water levels by 380 feet and did not have fish ladders. As a result, it cut off 1140 miles of upstream salmon spawning grounds. Two thousand Colville people were relocated because of Grand Coulee and some residents did not regain basic utility services to their homes for thirty years.
Our traditional ways, fishing, land, pretty much everything we did for survival was hurt by the dam. . . . They gave us a little money and took a lot.
A. Sam, Colville Elder, 1999, as quoted in “Grand Coulee Dam and Columbia Basin Project”
How much is reasonable compensation for the loss of our fishery, our way of life, our towns where our elders lived? How much must be paid for the destruction of our mother’s and father’s graves? For some of our members no amount of money can fairly compensate the Tribe for this loss.
Eddie Palmanteer, Colville Tribal Chairman, 1999, as quoted in “Grand Coulee Dam and Columbia Basin Project”
The federal government promised the Colville a share of the power revenues generated by the new dam. The government never fulfilled this promise. In 1978, the Colville sued the federal government through the Indian Claims Commission for subsistence losses since the building of Grand Coulee. The ICC awarded the Colville three million dollars. Less than twenty years later, Congress agreed to compensate the Colville fifty-three million dollars for the promised power revenue. Click forward to read the Grand Coulee Settlement Act, passed in 1994, and testimony before Congress regarding compensation, and other documents.
