The lower Kootenai Indians, who depended largely on fish, caught salmon, sturgeon, suckers, whitefish and, most importantly of all, trout from the Kootenay River basin. Upper Kootenai Indians, who were occasionally joined by the lower Kootenai, concentrated their efforts on hunting large game. Kootenai Indians now live on the Flathead and Bonner’s Ferry reservations in the United States and on several small British Columbia reserves. Congress established the 12.5 acre Bonner’s Ferry reservation in the 1970s after Kootenai Indians declared war on the U.S. and demanded land based upon 1855 treaty promises.
U.S. and Canadian Kootenai Indians successfully thwarted a proposal to build a hydroelectric dam on the Kootenai River that would inundate the Kootenai Falls in 1981. Kootenai Indians consider the three hundred foot falls sacred. It is the last major falls area in the Northwest that has not been dammed. Thirty miles upriver, Libby Dam was completed in 1972. Part of the U.S.-Canadian Columbia River Treaty, the dam’s 90-mile reservoir backed up forty-two miles into Canada inundating farm land, homes and native fish habitat.
