It takes a river of people to bring the salmon home, and that is exactly what the Bringing the Salmon Home Executive Working Group Chair Mark Thomas is asking of all levels of government.
The Syilx Okanagan, Secwépemc, and Ktunaxa Nations are calling on the federal and provincial governments to commit to sustaining funding to ensure salmon return to the upper Columbia River in B.C.
According to Thomas, the Columbia River was once the source of the greatest salmon runs in the world. Millions of lifegiving sockeye and giant chinook swam upriver to spawn each year.
But massive dams, beginning with Grand Coulee in Washington State, have blocked salmon from returning to the Columbia River’s Canadian headwaters for almost a century.
Forty percent of the Columbia’s total 2,000-kilometre length originates in British Columbia.
After years of negotiation to modernize the transboundary Columbia River Treaty, an agreement-in-principle was announced July 11, 2024. And now they want action to the salmon reintroduction commitments.
Bringing the Salmon Home: The Columbia River Salmon Reintroduction Initiative, established in 2019, continues the longstanding collaborative work of the three Nations to bring salmon back to the upper Columbia.
“This is a continuation of our work through the decades, along with U.S. Tribes, in a One River, One Voice cultural process,” says Thomas.
“It is our sacred responsibility.”
The U.S. government recently committed to contribute over $1.2 Billion over the next 20 years to Tribal-led salmon reintroduction on the American side of the Columbia River.
However, government funding for the Bringing the Salmon Home Initiative in Canada runs out in March 2025.
“We call on B.C. and Canada to provide the Bringing the Salmon Home Initiative with the sustaining core funding required to support our Indigenous-led salmon reintroduction work for a minimum of 20-years, in parallel with U.S. Tribal-led salmon reintroduction programs,” says Jason Andrew, Executive Working Group representative, Ktunaxa Nation.
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