‘Salmon Wars’ episode 1: The family

The “Salmon Wars” podcast series tells the story of salmon in the Northwest in a way you haven’t heard before — through the voices of one Yakama Nation family who have been fighting for salmon for generations.

Host Tony Schick introduces us to Randy Settler and his family. The Settlers, members of the Yakama Nation, have been deeply affected by the Northwest’s salmon policies for generations. They lost their home, their primary food source, and their ancestral fishing grounds. Randy and his parents went to jail for exercising their fishing rights. They also won some important victories along the way. Now, he’s passing the fight on to younger people in the tribe.

Our theme music is by Kele Goodwin and Sean Ogilvie.

Special thanks to Katie Campbell and Sarah Blustain at ProPublica.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

(sound of bells and voices)

Tony Schick: Picture yourself inside a Native American longhouse. This one has giant logs rising from the ground in diagonals on either side of you, forming an A-frame roof. The walls and ceiling are cedar-planked. The center of the floor, in keeping with tradition, is bare dirt. Benches lining the walls are full of people. And all eyes are on one man, standing in the dirt at the front of the room. He’s about to get a new name.

JoDe Goudy: We’re going to say the name three times together. Three times. I’ll say it then everybody will say it after in echo. Tookikun!

crowd: Tookikun

JG: Tookikun!

crowd: Tookikun

JG: Tookikun!

crowd: Tookikun

JG: This is the name that our relative will receive this day.

TS: We’re in Oregon, not far from the Columbia River. The man receiving a new name is Sam George. The name Tookikun [Too-KAY-ah-kun] comes from one of his ancestors. For Columbia River tribes, a naming is an honor that can be bestowed at almost any age. Sam George is 50. His elders said the new name recognizes the role he’s grown into for the tribe. He’s a fisherman.

Sam George: I fish for salmon and pretty much whatever else we catch I guess.

TS: Which, in the Yakama Nation, means he feeds a lot of people. Hundreds of people.

SG: I love doing it. I love bringing fish in. I love being on the water. I love providing for my daughter and my family — my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my sisters. They all come get fish, and it helps them.

TS: He works on a fishing crew for his uncle, Randy Settler. Randy and his family catch the salmon that sustain tribal diets and spiritual rituals.

Randy Settler: Our survival is dependent upon the salmon and our existence has been linked to this area and has been linked to the salmon. And we need to be able to gather in our usual and accustomed areas.

TS: As a Yakama fisherman, Randy thinks often about the legacy he’ll pass to Sam, the head of his fishing crew … and to Sam’s 11-year-old daughter, their crew’s youngest member. That legacy is under threat. First came the commercial fishermen and, along with them, the loss of the salmon habitat to farming and livestock, mining and diversions. Then came hydroelectric dams. Tribes and salmon withstood that. During this longhouse ceremony, tribal member after tribal member stands up to deliver the same message: We have always fought for salmon.

Ceremony attendee: Which means we never surrendered. We never surrendered … if they wanna take what’s ours, it’s time for them to give back.

TS: But today’s fight is even more pressing. It’s not just about who can fish for salmon or where Randy and his family can practice their trades and traditions. It’s about whether those fish — and a way of life — will disappear completely. This is Salmon Wars. I’m Tony Schick.

(music)

TS: I was at that longhouse, witnessing that connection to the salmon, because of Randy Settler. I’m an investigative reporter. I specialize in data and documents. My relationships with sources can be pretty detached, sometimes confrontational. I’ve never had a relationship with a source like the one I have with Randy. It’d be hard to find someone more affected by the Northwest’s salmon policies than him. His family lost their home, their primary food source, their ancestral fishing grounds. He watched his parents get jailed for exercising their fishing rights. People like Randy were forced to sacrifice so much for the effort to make Northwest life easier — easier for people like me.

(music)

TS: I live in Portland, Oregon, the city where I grew up. It sits just south of where the Willamette River meets the Columbia, on land taken from Indigenous people. My dad’s foundry supply business — the one that housed me, fed me and put me through school — only existed because of the shipping and manufacturing industries enabled by the river and the dams. I proposed to my wife on a stern-wheeler on the Columbia River, the tourist boat floating on a reservoir created between two dams, in a spot that used to be a series of rapids where tribes fished. There’s no one in this region whose life isn’t touched by the fish, and the river they swim in. We populated towns to fish for salmon and can them. We sacrificed them for cheap electricity. Even the region’s iconic farming and timber industries wouldn’t be possible without salmon, whose dying bodies have enriched the Northwest soil with nutrients from the ocean.

Department of the Interior film narrator: To countless Americans, the Columbia has been a river of hope...

TS: This is from a 1949 film made by the Department of the Interior.

Department of the Interior film narrator: ...a shining symbol of plenty. And men have followed the great river of the West down to the Pacific, to sow their crops and cut the timber, to build a colonial empire. Sending its boundless resources to the far corners of the Earth.

(music)

TS: That story about a “colonial empire,” with the lie about boundless resources, that’s the one I always heard. That’s the story a lot of people heard. It’s a story of progress, of American boldness and ingenuity. But for decades the injustice at the heart of that story has been systematically hidden by — and from — the predominately white people on the winning side of it. It wasn’t till I started this reporting, and met people like Randy, that I realized how little I knew. I met Randy about two years ago. I’d started reporting on Columbia River salmon. A source suggested I give Randy a call. I asked him if I could come see his fish camp. But it’s safe to say none of us expected what that would start. I’d scheduled us to spend one afternoon with Randy and his crew and be on our way.

RS: So how much time are you gonna spend Tony?

TS (on tape): Today?

RS: Yeah, with me.

TS (on tape): Uh, till you give us the boot.

RS: OK.

TS: We lost track of time. After several hours, we didn’t want to leave. They asked if we would come back the next day. And so we did. And we just kept coming back. We’ve done hours of interviews with Randy and his family members.

RS: I used to think, ‘why are these guys coming back?’

TS: That’s Randy talking to a roomful of people about why he agreed to be a part of our reporting.

RS: Especially Tony, because I treat him bad. (laughter) And I always tell people, he’s just, he’s no good. He’s rotten.

TS: Making fun of me is one of Randy’s favorite pastimes. And the feeling is mutual.

RS: This is Tony. He’s with Oregon Public Broadcast.

boat mechanic: Hi there.

TS (on tape): I’m doing a story about fishermen who don’t know how to run their own boats.

boat mechanic: Oh you got the right guy! I’m right behind him.

(Randy laughs)

TS: Since we met, I’ve spent more time with Randy or on the phone with Randy than I have with some of the people in my own family. By now, we’ll call each other just to discuss our favorite basketball team, The Portland Trail Blazers, and who they might trade for.

RS: I don’t know why they’d want to take him.

TS (on tape): Yeah.

RS: He’s a great player, but he’s not big enough.

TS: As you’ve probably gathered by now, Randy likes to talk. And he’s told me a lot about his tribe, his family and their history on the Columbia River.

RS: I was the youngest in my mother and father’s family, and I watched all the older fishermen and my older sisters and brothers and their roles in the fishery, and we drank the river water. We bathed in the river water. We lived on the banks of the river year-round.

TS: We quickly go from talking about the history of his family to the history of the Yakama Nation itself.

RS: Ten of the 14 bands of the Yakama Nation existed for thousands of years along the Columbia River. Their villages were located near key areas of the Columbia, where they could harvest salmon. There was great civilizations here of people, who were able to do great things.

TS: When white settlers began to arrive in Native territories, the United States sought to acquire the land — sometimes by treaty, sometimes by force. The 14 tribes and bands of what’s now the Yakama Nation, they signed a treaty in 1855, at the same time as many other Columbia River tribes.

RS: What was unique about the treaties that we entered into is that the people here were so linked to the salmon resource into the Columbia River and its tributaries they argued, you know, we have to be able to survive. And our survival is dependent upon the salmon.

(music)

TS: In many ways, the treaties in 1855 between Northwest tribes and the U.S. government marked the official beginning of the salmon wars. The treaties ceded millions of acres to the government, and reserved the tribes’ right to fish and gather foods at usual and accustomed places both on and off reservations. But the United States did not honor those treaties. Before the era of dam building, the most important fishing site for upper Columbia River tribes was a huge collection of waterfalls they called Shonitkwu, meaning “roaring waters.” Downriver tribes had Wy’am, or “echo of falling water.”

RS: There was trails upon trails from all over, from Canada, Alaska, California, Arizona, New Mexico, all these different areas to the east came in to trade for salmon.

TS: Both those iconic sets of waterfalls, otherwise known as Kettle Falls and Celilo Falls, are gone. Kettle Falls was near Spokane, Washington, and was flooded when the Grand Coulee Dam created Lake Roosevelt. Celilo Falls was about 100 miles east of Portland, Oregon. The falls were submerged when the Dalles Dam created a reservoir in their place. Also gone are other, smaller fishing grounds along with critical spawning areas, village sites, sacred sites, burial grounds, and other Indigenous resources — all of them destroyed by dams. At other fishing grounds that still exist, the salmon are simply gone, vanished behind dams that have no way for fish to swim past them. In 1947, the Department of the Interior flat out stated that...

Crystal Ligori Voiceover: The present salmon run must be sacrificed. Efforts should be directed toward ameliorating the impact of this development upon the injured interests and not toward a vain attempt to hold still the hands of the clock.

TS: Columbia River tribes, whose traditional fisheries would be located behind many proposed dams, were the most “injured interest.” But they received almost none of the “amelioration.” Congress paid to create a series of government-run fish hatcheries along the Columbia. But they built them to boost commercial and sport fishing in the ocean. The fish from government hatcheries would never even swim as far upstream as tribes’ fishing grounds. We’ll hear more about hatcheries in a future episode. And, when salmon numbers dwindled, Northwest states tried to keep more of the supply for commercial catch. They specifically restricted fishing by tribes. Tribal members fought to assert their treaty rights. They went to jail for it. Tribes found ways to adapt to the losses of wild salmon and sacred fishing grounds — like opening their own fish hatcheries and using boats with gillnets — and they faced backlash for it. Overfishing, dams and other habitat loss drove many salmon populations to the brink. Tribes have been suffering from these consequences, alongside the salmon, for more than 100 years. Salmon recovery has been kicked down the road again and again. But because of climate change, we’re about to run out of road. Take it from Lisa Crozier. She’s a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She led a study estimating what salmon survival could look like in the next 40 years. She found it could decline by nearly 90%.

Lisa Crozier: We can imagine all kinds of new situations that could occur. Unfortunately, most of them don’t seem to be favorable for salmon.

TS: Avoiding that fate would require federal agencies — namely the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bonneville Power Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation — to take steps they’ve resisted for decades. The Biden White House has made bold public promises about honoring tribal rights and solving the Columbia River salmon crisis. Whether it will back that up with action remains to be seen. Tribal members told me about sitting in meetings with the Biden administration where they’re again being asked to compromise, without any accounting of how compromised their way or life has already become. This fight of tribes on the Columbia River is one shared by those in the Puget Sound. Tribes in Alaska’s bays, and the rivers and streams up and down the West Coast face similar challenges. What’s lasted for thousands of years now depends entirely on what’s done in the next 40.

RS: I just want my people to exist here. Like we’ve always existed.

TS: Coming up after a break: We’ll return to the longhouse and hear more about Randy and his people.

(sound of bells and voices)

TS: Remember the ceremony we were at earlier? Where Randy’s nephew, Sam, got a new name? There were actually two parts to that ceremony. Sam’s was only half of it. The other half was a memorial. For Randy’s mom, Mary Goudy Settler. It’s a tribal tradition to hold naming ceremonies and memorials together on the same day. This is a reflection of the salmon life cycle. These fish return to their home streams to spawn, where they die giving life to the next generation. During Mary’s memorial, dozens of friends and family members took turns standing and speaking. And I was struck by just how much of what they said… was about salmon. I’ve been to memorials. I’ve never been to one that included so many calls to action. Mary was the matriarch of not just the family, but of the fishing operation that Randy now runs. She became a well known champion of tribal fishing rights. Randy saved newspaper clippings about her. In her day, the fight was about protecting their right to catch fish. Now, it’s about making sure there are still fish to catch. One speech from the memorial has really stuck with me.

JoDe Goudy: We look forward with the goodness of life. Don’t record this…

TS: That’s JoDe Goudy, Randy’s cousin. He asked that we stop recording. Some parts of longhouse ceremonies are sacred, and can’t be recorded. So we stopped. But I can’t forget what he said. He said people often ask him why, when he was chairman of the Yakama Nation, did he advocate so much for removing dams on the Columbia River. He reminded the longhouse about the summer a few years ago, when hundreds of thousands of salmon died because the river got too hot. Then he rested his hands on his young son, and he told the longhouse the day was coming in his lifetime when that would be commonplace. He said Randy’s mother was a great warrior. All the fishing families in the longhouse that day share that warrior spirit, he said. And they’re going to need it. For decades, the sites where Randy fished were in his mother’s name. Now they’re in his. He and his sister are now the family elders. As the day’s ceremonies neared the end, Randy stood to share some closing words.

RS: When I look around, I look around and I look at you, but I’m looking at all those ones that were before me, all my mother’s brothers, all my father’s brothers and sisters. I want you people to understand how important this is. We’re in the one mind going forward. Going forward. But you can’t go forward if you don’t go back. And the hardest part is going back to who your people are, knowing who your people are.

TS: One of the treaties in 1855 was signed by a Nez Perce chief from Oregon known by the name Tuekakas. Tuekakas went by another name you’ve probably heard if you’ve spent any time in the Pacific Northwest: Old Chief Joseph. He’s Randy’s great-great-great grandfather. Old Chief Joseph had been an early advocate for peace with white settlers, but later renounced the U.S. government when it so badly reneged on its word. His sons would end up leaders in the Nez Perce War of 1877, in which the tribe was hunted down for its refusal to relocate against the terms of their treaty. One of Tuekakas’ sons was the younger, most famous Chief Joseph. Another was named Ollokot, or Frog. He was a war chief, known as a fearless and brilliant fighter. Ollokot died in 1877, in a war with the U.S. government over treaty rights. His name lives on.

RS: Áwna sɨ́nwit UllaQut. My name is Frog. That’s the name that was given to me. And I live here because my people put me here. And that’s pretty much what I have to say right now.

TS: Randy’s eyes welled as he told us about the name he was given. His mother and tribal elders bestowed it in a traditional ceremony just like the one for his nephew. Randy’s spent a lot of this life trying to live up to that name. His parents were at the forefront of the fight for treaty rights. He inherited their fight. We’re going to share the story of that fight, a story that Randy and his family shared with us. We’ll dive into the history I wish I’d known growing up here. We’ll investigate who’s to blame for the salmon vanishing, and what can be done before it’s too late. But like Randy told the longhouse, before we go forward, we have to go back. Back to when it all began.

RS: ...If they didn’t sign the treaty, they’d walk knee deep in blood.

TS: That’s next time, on “Salmon Wars.”

View all episodes of the “Salmon Wars” podcast here.