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KUOW Public Radio
Northwest tribes' salmon hatcheries get $240 million federal boost
By John Ryan,
1 day ago
West Coast tribes are getting nearly $240 million from the federal government to improve their salmon hatcheries.
Twenty-seven tribes, including 21 from Washington state, will get an initial $2 million each to repair and modernize their aging hatcheries, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Thursday.
The remaining funds will be awarded competitively among the tribes “in the coming months,” federal officials said.
Jennifer Quan, regional administrator of NOAA Fisheries, called it “one of our greatest commitments of support for tribal fisheries since the treaties themselves that first assured the tribes access to the fisheries.”
Treaties between the U.S. government and many Northwest tribes in the 1850s promised tribes the right to keep fishing and hunting in their traditional places in exchange for the tribes’ giving up most of their land.
“Today, hatcheries provide many of the fish that no longer come from the salmon rivers, the rivers that have been impacted by our dams and development,” Quan said.
Councilmember Lisa Wilson of the Lummi Indian Business Council, the governing body of the Lummi Nation, said the funding will help preserve tribes’ treaty rights to their traditional foods.
“We have salmon in every funeral that we have, which unfortunately, with the fentanyl crisis, it's been a lot of funerals in the last few years,” Wilson said. “It's very important that, any kind of celebration, we have our salmon, and if it wasn't for the hatcheries, we wouldn't have that salmon.”
Wilson said it has been a fight to secure federal funding for the tribal hatcheries, with tribal leaders even going to the White House to block an earlier federal plan that did prioritize tribal treaty rights.
“I do feel like we are a lot like that salmon that has to go out and go through so many different issues just to survive,” she said.
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