[env-trinity] Water For All Action Alert: Support Recognition of Winnemem Wintu Tribe

[Daniel Bacher]

Dear Water Activists,

Please support the Winnemem Wintu (Middle Water People) in their fight to 
stop the raising of Shasta Dam, which would result in flooding of sacred 
lands and loss of traditional way of life by taking action at
http://capwiz.com/friendsoftheriver/issues/alert/?alertid=6389796&type=CO

The U. S. Bureau of Reclamation has proposed raising the 602 foot Shasta Dam 
any where from 6 to 200 feet as part of a greater CALFED plan to increase 
water storage for a thirsty, wasteful and ever growing California. Raising 
the dam would flood the many of the last remaining sacred sites of the 
Winnemem Wintu Tribe. Cultural devastation of this scale is akin to razing 
the Vatican.

In 1851 the Winnemem signed a treaty with the U.S. Government ceding all 
their lands in exchange for a 35 square mile reservation. Congress never 
ratified the treaty, no reservation was established, yet the U.S. government 
took possession of Winnemem lands. Additionally, the Tribe was stripped of 
its tribal status in the mid-eighties due to a technicality.

Members of the Winnemem have been attending hearings on the proposed dam 
expansion in recent months, but they are at a disadvantage because the tribe 
is not formally recognized under federal law.

You can help the Winnemem Wintu tribe by urging Senator Feinstein to support 
legislation restoring tribal status to the Winnemem Wintu. To take action 
please click

http://capwiz.com/friendsoftheriver/issues/alert/?alertid=6389796&type=CO

More information:

McCloud River Indians Hold "War Dance" To Stop Shasta Dam Expansion

by Dan Bacher (www.fishsniffer.com)

For the first time in 117 years, the Winnemem (McCloud River) Wintu Tribe 
held a four-day "War Dance" at Shasta Dam that ended at dusk on September 
16. The dance's purpose was to protest the Bureau of Reclamation's proposal 
to raise the dam anywhere from 6 1/2 to 200 feet as part of the CalFed 
Program.

The tribe of 125 members, based in Redding, lost much of their remaining 
homelands and their salmon when the dam was constructed in 1937.  "Any 
raising of the dam, even a few feet, will flood some of our last remaining 
sites on the McCloud River - sites we still use today," said Caleen 
Sisk-Franco, Winnemem Spiritual and Tribal Leader. "Village sites, burial 
ground and ceremonial grounds will all be lost forever."

On September 12, just before dusk, tribal members lit a sacred ceremonial 
fire, beat a drum, began singing and started their fast. Eight barefoot men 
danced from dusk on Sunday through dusk on Thursday. The tribe held the 
dance under a permit from the Bureau.

Over 125 people supported the tribe either in the press conference held 
before the dance or during the dance.  Representatives of environmental and 
fishery restoration groups, including Steve Evans of Friends of the River 
and Dave Fink of California Trout, spoke in support of the tribe. The Hoopa 
Valley Tribe from the Trinity River and members of the Miwok, Redding 
Rancheria, Pit River and Shasta Toyon tribes also supported the dancers.

Besides flooding sacred sites, a higher dam would hurt salmon, steelhead and 
other fisheries on the Sacramento River, since the main purpose of the 
proposal is to provide more water to export to San Joaquin Valley 
agribusiness and other water users . It would result in a smaller cold-water 
pool in
Lake Shasta, creating the possibility of increased pre-spawning mortality of 
chinook salmon.

"We received emails of support from people all over the world as we 
conducted our dance," said Charlotte Berta, a member of the tribe. "The War 
Dance is used to ask for protection before we go into battle. We danced to 
tell the dam that it is our enemy and not the people. We danced for our
people and all our relations. We danced to ask for protection of the waters, 
the salmon and ourselves. We are going into battle, though not a physical 
one, and we danced to give notice to the dam."

Sisk-Franco said the last time the tribe invoked the "War Dance" was in 
1887when a fish hatchery on the McCloud River was considered the enemy and 
protecting the salmon and the Winnemem way of life was the focus.

"We prayed on what it was we were supposed to do about the raising of the 
dam and we were told to hold a war dance," said Fisk-Franco. "Our ancestors 
showed the way with the dance against the fish hatchery and this is the path 
that was shown to us. We gave up our homeland for the sake of the
California people and got nothing in return. Now you want to take our sacred 
places and again we get nothing in return."

The tribe lost all of its ancestral land on the McCloud River in 1851 when 
the federal government signed a treaty with them. In return, the tribe was 
supposed to receive a 25 square mile reservation, but the treaty was never 
ratified, and the government illegally seized the land anyway. Eventually, 
individual tribal members were given allotments along the McCloud River, but 
their land was completely flooded by Shasta Dam in 1937.

When Shasta Dam was first proposed, Congress passed a law authorizing the 
federal government to take the lands and the burial grounds that the 
Winnemem had for a thousand years.

"Promises were made to the tribe that still have not been kept," said 
Sisk-Franco "The tribe is asking the BOR to resolve these long standing 
debts before proceeding with these studies. The tribe, as part of the
ongoing CalFed process to meet water storage and meet California's growing 
thirst, wants to study alternatives to raising the dam such as better 
management practices for the existing reservoir and conservation options, as 
well as better protection of the fish populations."

The dam expansion would flood the burial ground that includes victims of the 
massacre at Kaibai Creek; Puberty Rock, where the young women's coming of 
age ceremonies are held; and Children's Rock, where the young ones place 
their hands for blessings to make them good people and to help them
understand and magnify whatever special gifts they hold, according to Mark 
Franco, Headman of the tribe's Kerekmet Village.

Bureau of Reclamation officials claim that dam expansion could help fish by 
providing steadier flows in the Sacramento River and maintaining colder 
water temperatures for migrating salmon and steelhead, but the tribe and 
environmental groups disagree.

"The Bureau says a higher dam is needed to benefit the salmon, but in fact 
they are changing the operations in a way that will eliminate the cold water 
pool in Shasta Lake," said Steve Evans, conservation director of Friends of 
the River. "They are actually proposing to reduce the amount of water
in the reservoir by exporting more water south. This dam expansion is tied 
into supplying Bureau contracts with irrigators while increasing Delta 
diversions."

Whereas under current operations the Bureau has to maintain cold water 58 
degrees and lower in the river down to Red Bluff, the Bureau's proposal 
would move the required cold water zone upstream to Balls Ferry. Operational 
changes could result in 26 percent mortality on Sacramento River spring 
chinooks in dry years and in up to 100 percent mortality in critically dry 
years, according to Evans.

Raising the dam would also impact houseboat owners, marina operators and 
fishermen on Shasta Lake, as well as potentially inundate sections of the 
McCloud River, a world-class wild trout fishery.

"The Bureau claims that the purpose of the dam is to help the salmon," 
concluded Berta. "But look at the facts: the Bureau in 1937 put in a big dam 
with no fish ladder that prevented salmon from getting upstream. Now they 
are saying that making the dam higher is supposed to help the salmon?
They are not talking to native people who know all about the habitat of the 
salmon. We could provide them with a lot of information that would help them 
restore salmon populations."

The Winnemem is not a federally recognized tribe - in a bureaucratic snafu, 
the federal government mistakenly left the tribe out when it transcribed a 
list of recognized tribes - and the tribe supported a bill authored by 
Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell that would make a "technical
correction" to give the tribe federal recognition.

However, the Winnemem rider to the technical correction bill, slated to be 
submitted to the Senate the week of September 20, was pulled. Passage of the 
technical correction was considered a sure thing until Senator Feinstein's 
office said she would not vote for it if it contained the language for
the Winnemem restoration of federal recognition, according to Berta. Since 
it's a technical correction, it contained several other issues, and based on 
the 100% requirement for passing, the Winnemem rider was pulled in order to 
get the other issues passed.

For more information, visit the Winnemem Wintu website at 
www.winnememwintu.us .


Juliette Beck
California Campaign Director
Water for All
Public Citizen
510-663-0888 ext. 101
www.citizen.org/california

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