WaNaPa River People Fight for the Salmon

Oxbow Springs, a breath-taking water source that expresses at the base of the forest is home to the confederated tribes of the Umatilla, and its sacred waters have long been a centrepiece of ritual and reverence.

Last year, Klarice Westley, a Native American matriarch, held a her hunger and water strike to protest the heartless actions of Nestlé, a corporate giant that sees only a commodity that it could turn in to a big profit and which is doing everything in its power to gain control of the water in the area. The locals however, wise to Nestlé’s methods of paying local government representatives off, circumvented this by mounting a campaign to gather signatures to refer the Nestlé proposal to ballot that will prohibit the extraction of water from the county for export, prohibiting it from being bottled and sold – this is what Klarice’s protest was all about, to galvanize resistance.

Anna Mae Leonard 57, of Cascade Locks, is another Native American woman who went on a five-day hunger strike, allowing herself just a ceremonial sip of water from the spring she was fighting to save in the morning and another at night.

Anna Mae sat on WaNaPa Street across from City Hall with a sign that read “Honor Treaty 1855.” The treaty referred to ceded tribal land along the Columbia River to the United States and established rights for native fisheries, granting them “…the exclusive right of taking fish… at all other usual and accustomed stations in common with citizens of the United States.” The U.S. Supreme Court later determined that this included Indian water rights as specified by the Winters Doctrine; this means that sufficient water must be left in streams and rivers to support fish.

Nestlé wants to build a water bottling facility on a 25-acre piece of industrial land in Cascade Locks that would extract around 380 million litres of pristine mountain water from the nearby Oxbow Springs annually.

Oregon tribes are concerned about the impact of this on the salmon in the area and on the impact to tribal fishing rights. According to Water Watch, Bark and Food and other environmental groups, the fact that Oxbow Springs flows into the Columbia River means that the cold mountain water holds more oxygen than the warmer river water, which provides a vital thermal refuge for spawning salmon. If Nestlé removes this cool water, the salmon will die out.

“I’m fasting to plead, beg, insist, implore the leaders of Cascade Locks to withdraw the water rights transfer application … let go of Nestlé, and explore different options for economic development,” said Leonard.