‘It’s justice for the Tribe’: Kootenai Tribe of Idaho restores what used to be a landfill

Ambush Rock is a tall hill along the Kootenai River in Bonners Ferry. (Mia Maldonado/Idaho Capital Sun)

On the south side of the Kootenai River in Bonners Ferry sits Ambush Rock, a viewpoint to see the river and town.

Today, there are tales of its different uses for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho.

“The rivers were our highway systems, so you can see people coming and going,” tribal council member Clara Dunnington told the Idaho Capital Sun. “Historically, I was told there was a day camp with fresh drinking water, and they would post lookouts on the rock to alert people if there was danger.”

But growing up, Dunnington did not have that experience. Rather, it was a neglected, hazardous piece of land. When she went ice fishing there as a child, she was warned to be careful of the metals beneath her in the water.

That’s because for over a century, Ambush Rock was used as a dumping ground by the county and local lumber mill.

But within the next few years, tribal members and wildlife will be able to enjoy Ambush Rock after the Kootenai Tribe received a $2 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean and restore the plot of land this summer. The grant is through the Columbia River Basin Restoration Funding Assistance Program which is a part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It provides funding for restoration projects to reduce toxins in fish and water throughout the Columbia Basin.

On July 22, the tribe completed cleaning up the site, and it is now set to revegetate the former dump.

“It was an effort made to bring things to a better ground than they were,” Dunnington said about the grant. “It feels like people are trying to speak up and do better.”

Cleaning up over a century of waste

Boundary County used Ambush Rock as an unpermitted dump since the turn of the century, accumulating debris, metal, household garbage, and waste from the local lumber mill until the early 1980s. Even after this period, the public continued to illegally dump items onto the spot and in the nearby river, according to Genny Hoyle, the environmental director of the Kootenai Tribe.

In 1993, Boundary County offered to return the property to the Kootenai Tribe without addressing the century-old contamination that had accumulated.

The tribe said yes, but also assumed all the liability of the property, Hoyle said.

“If you give back this piece of property to a tribe, but you also attach all liability to it — it’s not really doing the right thing,” Hoyle said. “You’re basically giving the liability along with the property and the expectation of, well, you deal with it.”

This summer, 30 years later after having received the piece of land back, cleanup crews hired by the Kootenai Tribe spent June and July cleaning nearly two acres of contaminated land on the 10.5 acre property – even removing three car bodies located along the shoreline of the site.

Hoyle said the Ambush Rock restoration project embodies the definition of environmental justice.

“It’s justice for the tribe,” she said. “They get the property returned, and now they get to enjoy the property the way it should have been years ago. It’s also environmental justice for the fish and wildlife.”

Ambush Rock sits at the top of critical sturgeon spawning habitat, which is an endangered species, Hoyle said.

The next phase of the project is putting native plants and trees back on the property, and letting it rest for five years so the area can revegetate, Hoyle said.

The end goal is to bring the area back close to its natural state for wildlife and tribal use. Right now the piece of land is not a part of the reservation, but Hoyle said that could happen in the future.

Getting land back and making it better

Like Dunnington, Jyl Wheaton is a member of the Kootenai Tribe. Wheaton was the archeologist that monitored the cleanup at Ambush Rock alongside her team of five other tribal monitors.

To Wheaton, the restoration of Ambush Rock is a part of the Land Back movement, or an Indigenous-led movement aiming to reestablish Indigenous authority over land taken away from them.

The Kootenai Tribe’s reservation consists of 12 acres, and it is the smallest Native American reservation in Idaho.

The tribe has a unique history because in 1855, it refused to sign the Hellgate Treaty and therefore was not given a reservation.

“It went against the covenant that we had with our Creator, saying that we would always take care of this place and then return the place to take care of,” Wheaton said. “So by signing away the land, we would break that covenant.”

Without federal recognition, the Tribe lived on 12 acres just to the north of Bonners Ferry and across the river from Ambush Rock. By 1974, the Kootenai Tribe had gotten down to 64 people, Wheaton said, so the Tribe declared war on the U.S. for federal recognition. Those efforts resulted in the Tribe securing a land base on the 12 acres that they lived on.

“Before 1974, the Kootenai Tribe had no federally-recognized land,” Wheaton said. “And to be given 12 acres in the face of tribes with thousands of acres of land – it’s pretty crazy. But even to have achieved that was a big accomplishment.”

Getting Ambush Rock back from the county after a century of its neglect is huge, Wheaton said.

“We persevered and survived basically 100 years of a dedicated effort to eliminate us as a people,” Wheaton said. “Not only are we getting land back, but we’re improving it and restoring it into something that will be a benefit for not just humans, but for the birds, for the fish and for the plants.”

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