McCloud River Indians Hold Ceremonial Protest To Stop Shasta Dam Expansion

September 25, 2004
By Dan Bacher

More Editorials By Dan Bacher

For the first time in 117 years, the Winnemem (McCloud River) Wintu Tribe held a four-day "War Dance" at Shasta Dam that ended at dusk on September 16. The dance's purpose was to protest the Bureau of Reclamation's proposal to raise the dam anywhere from 6 1/2 to 200 feet as part of the CalFed Program.

The tribe of 125 members, based in Redding, lost much of their remaining homelands and their salmon when the dam was constructed in 1937. "Any raising of the dam, even a few feet, will flood some of our last remaining sites on the McCloud River - sites we still use today," said Caleen Sisk-Franco, Winnemem Spiritual and Tribal Leader. "Village sites, burial ground and ceremonial grounds will all be lost forever."

On September 12, just before dusk, tribal members lit a sacred ceremonial fire, beat a drum, began singing and started their fast. Eight barefoot men danced from dusk on Sunday through dusk on Thursday. The tribe held the dance under a permit from the Bureau.

Over 125 people supported the tribe either in the press conference held before the dance or during the dance. Representatives of environmental and fishery restoration groups, including Steve Evans of Friends of the River and Dave Fink of California Trout, spoke in support of the tribe. The Hoopa Valley Tribe from the Trinity River and members of the Miwok, Redding Rancheria, Pit River and Shasta Toyon tribes also supported the dancers.

Besides flooding sacred sites, a higher dam would hurt salmon, steelhead and other fisheries on the Sacramento River, since the main purpose of the proposal is to provide more water to export to southern California and San Joaquin Valley farmers. It would result in a smaller cold-water pool in Lake Shasta, creating the possibility of increased pre-spawning mortality of chinook salmon.

"We received emails of support from people all over the world as we conducted our dance," said Charlotte Berta, a member of the tribe. "The War Dance is used to ask for protection before we go into battle. We danced to tell the dam that it is our enemy and not the people. We danced for our people and all our relations. We danced to ask for protection of the waters, the salmon and ourselves. We are going into battle, though not a physical one, and we danced to give notice to the dam."

Sisk-Franco said the last time the tribe invoked the "War Dance" was in 1887 when a fish hatchery on the McCloud River was considered the enemy and protecting the salmon and the Winnemem way of life was the focus.

"We prayed on what it was we were supposed to do about the raising of the dam and we were told to hold a war dance," said Fisk-Franco. "Our ancestors showed the way with the dance against the fish hatchery and this is the path that was shown to us. We gave up our homeland for the sake of the California people and got nothing in return. Now you want to take our sacred places and again we get nothing in return."

The tribe lost all of its ancestral land on the McCloud River in 1851 when the federal government signed a treaty with them. In return, the tribe was supposed to receive a 25 square mile reservation, but the treaty was never ratified, and the government illegally seized the land anyway. Eventually, individual tribal members were given allotments along the McCloud River, but their land was completely flooded by Shasta Dam in 1937.

When Shasta Dam was first proposed, Congress passed a law authorizing the federal government to take the lands and the burial grounds that the Winnemem had for a thousand years.

"Promises were made to the tribe that still have not been kept," said Sisk-Franco "The tribe is asking the BOR to resolve these long standing debts before proceeding with these studies. The tribe, as part of the ongoing CalFed process to meet water storage and meet California's growing thirst, wants to study alternatives to raising the dam such as better management practices for the existing reservoir and conservation options, as well as better protection of the fish populations."

The dam expansion would flood the burial ground that includes victims of the massacre at Kaibai Creek; Puberty Rock, where the young women's coming of age ceremonies are held; and Children's Rock, where the young ones place their hands for blessings to make them good people and to help them understand and magnify whatever special gifts they hold, according to Mark Franco, Headman of the tribe's Kerekmet Village.

Bureau of Reclamation officials claim that dam expansion could help salmon by providing steadier flows in the Sacramento River and maintaining colder water temperatures for migrating salmon and steelhead, but the tribe and environmental groups disagree.

"The Bureau says a higher dam is needed to benefit the salmon, but in fact they are changing the operations in a way that will eliminate the cold water pool in Shasta Lake," said Steve Evans, conservation director of Friends of the River. "They are actually proposing to reduce the amount of water in the reservoir by exporting more water south. This dam expansion is tied into supplying Bureau contracts with irrigations while increasing Delta diversions."

Whereas under current operations the Bureau has to maintain cold water 58 degrees and lower in the river down to Red Bluff, the Bureau's proposal would move the required cold water zone upstream to Balls Ferry. Operational changes could result in 26 percent mortality on Sacramento River spring chinooks in dry years and in up to 100 percent mortality in critically dry years, according to Evans.

Raising the dam would also impact houseboat owners, marina operators and fishermen on Shasta Lake, as well as potentially inundate sections of the McCloud River, a world-class wild trout fishery.

"The Bureau claims that the purpose of the dam is to help the salmon," concluded Berta. "But look at the facts: the Bureau in 1937 put in a big dam with no fish ladder that prevented salmon from getting upstream. Now they are saying that making the dam higher is supposed to help the salmon? They are not talking to native people who know all about the habitat of the salmon. We could provide them with a lot of information that would help them restore salmon populations."

The Winnemem is not a federally recognized tribe - in a bureaucratic snafu, the federal government mistakenly left the tribe out when it transcribed a list of recognized tribes - and the tribe supported a bill authored by Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell that would make a "technical correction" to give the tribe federal recognition.

However, the Winnemem rider to the technical correction bill, slated to be submitted the Senate the week of September 20, was pulled. Passage of the technical correction was considered a sure thing until Senator Feinstein's office said she would not vote for it if it contained the language for the Winnemem restoration of federal recognition, according to Berta. Since it's a technical correction, it contained several other issues, and based on the 100% requirement for passing, the Winnemem rider was pulled in order to get the other issues passed.

For more information, visit the Winnemem Wintu website at www.winnememwintu.us .