Land Theirs as Long as ‘Sun Shines’ : Light Is Growing Dim for Columbia River Indians

To Johnny W. Jackson, his little home and drying shack here on the broad Columbia River are a last outpost of an Indian way of life dating back 12,000 years.

The great-great-grandson of a Klickitat chief, Jackson too sees himself as one of the few remaining guardians of that culture: an unbroken circle of life joining a native people to the land and waters of the Columbia for both physical and spiritual sustenance.

It is a presence, though, that faces extinction.

An eviction order has come from the U.S. government to the 30 to 40 Indians now living on 40 acres of federally owned land along the mid-Columbia: Leave, and leave behind the river that has meant so much to so many for so long.

No matter that Indians were once promised 10 times as much land as well as new homes to replace the Indian villages flooded 50 years ago by the reservoir created by the Bonneville Dam. They are now being told that federal regulations prevent the establishment of permanent homes on the small portion of land that has been provided, and that they must move to farms on reservation land miles away.

To the Indians, the eviction order has become yet another link in a chain of broken white promises. But this time they are resisting.

“I will fight to the end over this land and this river,” Jackson says. “I’m not going to move. We’ve given up enough. I’m no farmer. I’m a fisherman.”

“They want me to move to the reservation,” says David Sohappy Sr., 61, a religious leader among Yakima Indians who lives on three acres of federal land. “But all the ancestors used to live along the river.”

Jack L. Schwartz, a Portland lawyer representing the Indians, charges that the real motive behind the evictions is a desire to sharply curb Indian salmon fishing on the Columbia. “The plan is to get rid of the Indian fishery,” he says. “The public position (of the government) is that the Indians are harming the fishery--and thus the white sport and commercial fishery.

“The Indians are the weakest, politically and financially, so they get hit.”

Schwartz filed suit in federal District Court in Portland in June not only to halt the evictions but also to force the government to provide more land and homes to replace the fishing and home sites lost in the construction of the Bonneville Dam. Citing that suit, officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who are pressing for eviction of the Indians, declined to be interviewed for this article.

But a BIA history of the dispute confirms that the Indians were, indeed, promised homes and land as a result of the dam.

“They never fulfilled their promise,” Jackson says. “There is still land they owe us for the villages they flooded out.”

Treaties Signed

The conflict is seeded in the expansion of white settlers into the Pacific Northwest, which resulted in four treaties signed in 1855, preserving the right of the Columbia River Indians to fish at “their usual and accustomed places.”

Washington Territory Gov. Isaac Stevens said in 1855 that “the Indian will be allowed to take fish . . . at the usual fishing places, and this promise will be kept by the Americans for as long as the sun shines, as long as the mountains stand and as long as the rivers run.”

In 1933, however, construction of the Bonneville Dam--for flood control and power generation--was begun. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ historical account: “Those families with dwellings and sheds that will be flooded were advised (in 1933) by (the Army Corps of Engineers) to place their names on these buildings and were told that when the Corps received funds, the buildings would be replaced.”

1939 Pact

Agreement was then reached with the Indians in 1939 on six sites--totaling 400 acres--to replace 36 or 37 identified ancient Indian fishing sites. The BIA did not record how many Indians lived on the sites. World War II interrupted the effort to provide what became known as the “in-lieu sites”--sites in lieu of those flooded by the dam.

Legislation in 1945 authorized the Corps to acquire the in-lieu sites, and $50,000 was provided the following year, according to the BIA history. But a 1954 letter from the Portland office of the BIA to BIA headquarters in Washington acknowledged that “from 1939 to the present date . . . not too much progress has been made in the matter” of obtaining in-lieu sites. The letter went on to say that although representatives of the Corps “might have promised” to build new homes and fish-drying sheds for the Indians, it “was never agreed upon or clarified by the Corps. . . .”

Indeed, the promise of new homes was already unraveling. In 1953, the Portland district engineer said that neither the 1939 agreement nor the 1945 legislation required the construction of homes or sheds for the drying of fish.

A Double Blow

In 1957 the mid-Columbia Indians sustained a double blow. Construction of a new dam at The Dalles, Ore., caused a huge fish loss as returning salmon were blocked from reaching their spawning grounds. The Indians, whose treaty rights protected the right to take fish, were largely bereft of fish to harvest. At the same time, the tribes lost their fishing sites flooded out by The Dalles Dam and received a one-time payment of $26.8 million.

The BIA history concluded: “Hence, the (in-lieu) sites took on added importance because they represented the only (land) recompense for lost fishing sites.”

Eventually, six in-lieu sites were agreed upon, and five were acquired. But because of deteriorating sanitation at the five sites, the Corps in 1965 said it would improve sanitary facilities only if it “could be relieved of any further obligation to acquire an additional site or sites,” according to the BIA historical account.

Faced with severe sanitation problems, the tribes agreed.

Objected to BIA Rules

But in 1969 they strongly objected to proposed BIA regulations that prohibited permanent dwellings at the in-lieu sites. The regulations were designed to control sanitation and other problems, and to restrict the in-lieu sites to seasonal fishing-related activities only, not permanent habitation.

The BIA account says: “The Indians asserted that historically many of them had lived along the river, some at (in-) lieu sites and some at other locations which had now been flooded. They also reminded the BIA that earlier the Corps had promised to replace homes.”

A government lawyer replied that although the secretary of the Interior may allow permanent dwellings and year-round residency, “he does not have to,” according to the BIA account.

The regulations prohibiting permanent dwellings were adopted. Legislation providing for new homes to replace those flooded out never was.

‘So Many Promises’

“My grandmother died waiting for a new home” to replace her flooded one, says David Sohappy, who lives with eight other family members in a jerry-built home on the three-acre Cooks’ Landing in-lieu site. Pointing upstream, he adds: “Another woman is still waiting down there for her home. We’re trying to make them live up to their promises--they got so many promises to the Indians they never kept.”

“All these acts and all these laws are without consent of the Indian people,” says Lavina Washines, a member of the Yakima Tribal Council. “Today, many, many young people have no land, no homes. So now we want homes and 360 more acres along the Columbia River.

“It’s a long-range plan by the government,” she adds, “to step by step get the Indian people off the river so they can get full control of the river for windsurfers, ‘love boats’ and other tourist industries.”

But Schwartz, the evictees’ lawyer, also sees the evictions as revenge for Indian victories in fighting criminal charges that they illegally caught fish and sold them to undercover agents in a so-called “salmon scam” operation in 1982. Ten of 13 defendants were cleared in state court. Some of those cleared are targets of the evictions.

Whites Not Imprisoned

But 13 of 19 suspects were convicted in a federal court case, and nine of the 13, including David Sohappy Sr., are to report to prison Friday. Schwartz says white salmon-poachers have similarly been convicted but not sentenced to prison.

The undercover agents’ purchases of Indian fish followed the disappearance in the early 1980s of 40,000 salmon between Bonneville and McNary dams, and authorities suspected the Indians of poaching.

Ironically, after the sentences were handed down, federal fish experts concluded that the huge fish loss was due to a premature spawn caused by chemicals from an aluminum plant, not mass poaching.

The Indians have received support in fighting the evictions from many of their white neighbors.

‘A Final Paltry Crumb’

“Forty acres is a final refuge,” declared The Enterprise newspaper of Bingen and White Salmon, Wash., in a moving editorial of support, “a final paltry crumb fallen by the wayside of rail and pavement and progress. . . . How uncertain we must be of ourselves, our convictions and our own right to dwell in this land if we must withdraw even a crumb from those who once held the entire loaf.”

“I’m fighting for a place to fish without no harassment by the whites,” Sohappy says. “We’ve got so many darn agreements that bind us. I’d like to go out there and fish like the old people (did). But they want me to move to the Yakima reservation.”

Schwartz sees the evictions as a major threat to a way of life. “If you get rid of the people on the in-lieu sites, you will no longer have a culture after 10,000 to 15,000 years. And we do think it will happen to both.”

Also Home Sites

Today, the in-lieu sites are used by scores of Indians from a wide area to launch fishing boats and clean and dry their fish. But for some, like Johnny Jackson, they are also home sites. Jackson lives here, where the Big White Salmon River joins the Columbia, with his 26-year-old son, Peter.

“I’ve been living around here about all my life,” Jackson says. “But about five years ago, when (vandals) started burning the drying shacks, I decided to move right in here. I’m going by my great-great-grandfather’s treaty. I want to hold on to what is ours. If I lose, they’ll just have to put me in jail. I’m not leaving. I’m not giving up the land.

“I’m looking for the future, my son’s children and all the children after that, and all the other people’s children and all the children after that.”