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The Legacy of Celilo
Courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers.
The unconscionable drowning of Wyam -- Celilo Falls -- marks a crucial point in our collective history. It destroyed a major cultural site and rent a multi-millennial relationship of a people to a place. After nearly four decades, Celilo Falls is still talked about and remembered as the heart of our homeland. It was like a mother, nourishing us, and it is remembered as a place of great peace.
-- Elizabeth Woody, Seven Hands, Seven Hearts
Celilo Falls is only one of many Columbia Basin native fishing sites inundated by dams. Over the course of the federal dam building period (from the 1930s to the 1970s) development removed Indians from literally thousands of river miles as traditional sites drowned beneath vast reservoirs. These same dams have played a significant role in the contemporary salmon crisis, another threat to native and non-native river fishers.
Celilo Falls also represents the significant cultural disruptions that are the legacy of dam building among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. These falls, like those at Kettle Falls and the Cascades, were sacred, a spiritual site as well as one of economic and social activity.