'Salmon Wars' podcast documents Northwest tribes' ongoing plight

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Department of Interior released a report acknowledging how hydroelectric dams built on the Columbia River had devastated tribal communities in the Northwest by destroying major fisheries. But the federal report did not mention documents brought to light by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica that show it was deliberate.

Tony Schick is the host of the OPB podcast Salmon Wars , which documents this history through the lens of a family in the Yakama Nation. He recently joined KNKX’s All Things Considered to discuss his key takeaways from doing the podcast, including what he learned about the role of salmon in tribal traditions.

“I think it was the spiritual and cultural significance of salmon and how it is treated in ceremony and how it is gifted for both no occasion and also gifted on the most special of occasions,” said Schick. “It's a currency, but it's also how you show gratitude [and] love. All of these things”

Click the audio player at the top of this story to listen to the interview or see the highlights below.

Interview Highlights

On the devastating impact of salmon loss

This was the primary food source. Tribal members ate, on average, something like a pound of salmon every day. It was also economically important. It was a trade... people came from all over to trade for it.

On uncovering documents that reveal the motivations of the federal government

These are documents that were released to tribes and tribal biologists under the Freedom of Information Act decades ago, but it's just been kind of sitting in storage. They're documents from the 1940s and '50s, after some of the first dams were built on the river, but before the era of dam building really took off with the Dalles Dam, and the Lower Snake River dams.

These were memos that were sent between government agencies within government agencies....debating what to do about the dams whether to have a moratorium on dam building... essentially showing the effect on tribes was not just a byproduct, or something that wasn't considered at the time. It was considered. The fact that the Celilo Falls fishery, which was at the time, the largest fishery on the Columbia River for tribes, it would have been wiped out — and that was viewed as a good thing.

On how tribal communities in the podcast view these documents

This is something that tribal people I spoke with, kind of knew all along. One of the people I speak to in the podcast quite a bit, Randy Settler, we follow him and his family's story. Before I ever found these documents, he said he felt like tribal people were targeted. That it was like what happened to the buffalo in the plains, where if you take away people's food source, it's easier to control them.

On the Biden administration’s 10-year plan to restore the salmon population

There's optimism about the plan. There's cautious optimism, I would say. And not every tribe feels the same way about it. Some are more optimistic than others. But there is optimism that at least under the current administration, there seems to be a desire to alter what has been the status quo.