Cutting through the rocky canyons of southern Idaho, the Snake River was once home to millions of vibrant, red sockeye salmon. These industrious fish can travel over 1600km in their lifetimes (the equivalent of swimming from Mumbai to Muscat,) gliding across the American West to reach the Pacific Ocean, only to return home years later to spawn the next generation before dying.
This cycle has endured for millennia, even before the Nez Perce tribe settled across the Columbia River Plateau nearly 11,500 years ago. However, as is so often the story with climate change, the survival of the Snake River sockeyes is now in jeopardy. In 2015, amidst a record-breaking heatwave in Idaho, nearly 99 per cent of sockeye returning from the Pacific died — millions of them were cooked to death in the scorching waters.
For the Nez Perce, this loss is more than just economics. The tribe, like most indigenous populations, consider nature sacred. The salmon is not just a source of sustenance, but also a reflection of their way of life and their symbiotic relationship with their ancestral lands.
Once occupying millions of acres across the Pacific Northwest, the colonisation of the Americas resulted in the Nez Perce losing 96 per cent of their land and 40 per cent of their population as a result of violent conflicts with settlers and raging epidemics imported from the colonisers. Now, they risk losing one of their oldest cultural heritages.
Indigenous peoples are on average poorer and less educated than the rest of the population, according to US census data. A review of Federal Environment Management Agency (FEMA) documents by the New York Times also revealed that tribes are less likely to avail of and receive emergency funding grants in the wake of extreme weather events.
This, combined with their economic dependence on the land, a history of discrimination and an often vague and ineffective federal governance structure, makes tribal populations particularly vulnerable.
Across America, indigenous populations are suffering from the increasing risks of climate change. In the Pacific Northwest, home to the Nez Perce, coastal erosion and storms are destroying tribal lands, forcing them to move inwards.
According to a consortium of authors writing for the US National Institute for Health, “management practices conducted on many IP (indigenous peoples) lands, including indigenous community conserved areas and sacred sites, contribute to pollution buffering and nutrient cycling.” Moreover, the report notes, “the abandonment of these indigenous traditional management practices might result in increased levels of pollution.”
More than just their techniques, perhaps more importantly, the indigenous lifestyle was rooted in their respect for nature and, as such, tribes maintained a delicate balance of what they took and gave back to the earth. Hunting, fishing and agriculture were all conducted on a subsistence basis and as a result, indigenous lands were rarely overexploited.
As new challenges arise, indigenous peoples are once again responding to the crisis. According to a University of Oregon database, at least 50 tribes across the US have addressed climate risks and developed plans to tackle them.
To combat the decline in salmon populations in the Snake River, the Nez Perce tribe has worked with other tribal leaders and the US government to create a conservation framework, issuing an advisory report to Congress outlining what measures should be adopted.
One such measure, which has been supported by both senators from Idaho (in a rare bi-partisan agreement,) is the dismantling of four dams on the Snake. The Nez Perce have also purchased a conservation easement at the head of the Snake with the intent of using it to reintroduce sockeye salmon into the waters.
Representatives from the tribe have written an open letter to President Joe Biden, encouraging him to back this proposal and describing the preservation of the sockeye salmon as their duty to a species that has given them so much.
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