Representatives of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were among those who attended the dedication of the dam in 1939.
electrical power, which use fossil fuels. Hydropower plants do not emit the waste heat and gases—common with fossil-fuel driven facilities—which are major contributors to air pollu- tion, global warming and acid rain.” The dam produces 1.1 mil- lion megawatt hours of electricity annually. Lipscomb said a “coal-fired power plant producing the same amount of electric- ity would produce 1,226,500 tons of CO2
per year.” This dam also was originally constructed to be a method
of flood control in the Columbia River Basin. However, such megadams take up an immense amount of the landscape and can have environmental consequences. For example, rather than the lake having its normal cycle of flooding and reced- ing, the dam keeps water in Flathead Lake nearly year-round. When the reservoir is manually lowered by 10 feet annually, it leaves behind a vast wasteland that would have repopulated with vegetation during its natural dry cycle during the year. The tribes worked closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to mitigate potential impacts to fish and other wildlife. They have also spent a half-million dollars replacing the more than 3,000 acres that circle the lake with vegetation annually. Though the tribes are reclaiming the projects on their land
and making revenue in the process, Lipscomb reiterated that the dam has had its other costs. During its construction, tribal members were given some of the more dangerous work and 11 died.
Harnessing the Wind If you drive along Highway I-8 in California, you can see the spinning blades of the towering turbines on the Kumeyaay Wind Farm on the Campo Kumeyaay Nation in southern Cali- fornia. When it reached commercial operation in 2005, it was the first utility-scale wind farm on tribal lands. Campo Kumeyaay Nation Chairman Marcus Cuero said he
can still remember the massive size of the wind turbine blades he saw as a child when his father served on the tribe’s council. “You don’t really appreciate the size until you get next to them, and then you get a real sense of how big they are,” said Cuero. That the tribe harnesses the power of the wind seems fitting.
As Cuero explained, the winds have always been a part of his tribe’s traditions, for the winds knock down the acorns and then dry and preserve them. “A lot of our elders still practice our traditions. We collect the acorn from the oak trees. It was a staple food for our people.”
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION SPRING 2022 27
“We’ve made some great headway in restoring our reserva-
tion. It’s important to us as part of the solution. Is it lucrative? I’m sure. However, it is greatly impactful from a lot of different perspectives,” he said. “This dam was imposed upon us. If it were left to us, if there was no dam here today, I doubt we would build it. Despite the value of it, not only did the tribes sacrifice natural and cultural resources, it was a tremendous sacrifice of life.”
COURTESY OF THE CONFEDERATED SALISH AND KOOTENAI TRIBES AND ENERGY KEEPERS, INC. (2)
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