Perseverance and Compromise: The Fight for Salmon, Culture, and a New Relationship with the Skagit River

Gorge Dam is the lowest of the three dams on the Skagit River, and the first impassable obstacle for salmon.

By Christian Murillo, with Scott Schuyler

Photographs By Christian Murillo

The Skagit has been dammed for over 100 years. Construction of Gorge Dam began in 1921 and delivered electricity to the city of Seattle by 1924. For most people, this was seen as an engineering feat and a sign of progress by harnessing the power of nature. For others, particularly the tribes along the Skagit River, this was a desecration of their culture and a violation of the rights granted. Now, a landmark $3.8 billion package has been made in a settlement between the city of Seattle and the Skagit Tribes; a compromise that seeks to continue delivering hydropower to the city of Seattle, while acknowledging the cultural and ecological damages of the dams and using a portion of those funds to restore cultural flows, habitat, and salmon in the Skagit River.

Scott Schuyler is one of us. He is a CELP board member, but more importantly, he is a member and representative of the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe. He is a direct descendant of Pateus, who signed the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. This treaty ceded the vast majority of the Tribes’ ancestral lands, including the land Gorge, Diablo, and Ross dams were built on. In return, the U.S. federal government legally affirmed and preserved the Indigenous peoples of the Skagit Basin’s right to hunt, fish, and forage on their ancestral lands in perpetuity. This is a testament to the importance of the Skagit River and its salmon to the tribes.

Scott remarked, “Historically, the river and its resources (the salmon) made our people wealthy. Not in the European sense of monetary or power, but basically the river took care of us. Our people were healthy and were wealthy in that regard… Now it is time for us to repay the river, to take care of the river, to bring the river back to its banks and bring back the salmon.”

Scott isn’t old enough to remember what the Skagit River was like before it was dammed, but the oral histories of a free-flowing Skagit River from the Skagit people are still very much alive. They tell of sacred sites of their origin story that have since been dewatered and covered by the development in Newhalem. Their stories also describe salmon spawning above Gorge Dam, which has long been a point of contention between the tribes and representatives of Seattle City Light. Now, Scott commends the City of Seattle for working together towards a path that offers a brighter outlook for salmon and future generations of the Upper Skagit people. Scott’s vision is that these future generations will be able to make their own oral histories with salmon in the upper watershed above the dams.

Where visitors of North Cascades National Park might see the glistening turquoise waters of Diablo Lake, Scott sees a reservoir that was never supposed to be there; masking the “beauty of the river, and the sounds of the river, (covered) by an altered and completely unnatural landscape.”

For many of us, the obstacle of three massive dams, each one hundreds of feet of stacked concrete, might seem too great to overcome. Yet, Scott and other representatives of the Upper Skagit Tribe, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe worked for over eight years to protect their culture and the ecology that their oral histories are based upon. Scott gives credit both to the Tribes and to the city and public utility for staying at the table, working towards a shared future.

However, this is not just a story of perseverance, but also one of compromise. The stance of the Upper Skagit people has always been that the dams should be removed. Scott acknowledges that living in the Skagit floodplain, they do benefit from the dams’ flood protection. However, it is difficult for Scott to see the Skagit as a natural and intact river as long as the dams remain. For the city, which still relies on these three dams for roughly 20% of its electricity, dam removal was never on the table.

Diablo Lake’s radiant waters attract hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, most blissfully unaware of the Skagit River’s heavily altered state.

Nevertheless, Scott, the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe and the other tribal nations propelled forward, acknowledging that improvements in dam operations and infrastructure could help the river, its salmon, and change the paradigm for the next two-and-a-half generations of their people. In our modern lives, attention spans are short and everything is split into dichotomies: good and evil, love and hate, opinion and fact. While these dichotomies help us simplify our understanding of the world, they often hinder our ability to make progress along a continuum.

All five species of Pacific Salmon (plus Steelhead, Cutthroat and Bull Trout) have existed in the Skagit since time immemorial. This settlement seeks to protect their existence in the largest river flowing into the Puget Sound

What Scott teaches us is that perseverance towards improved environmental and cultural practices can, and sometimes must, include compromise. Over the course of the 50-years that the $3.8 billion package will be spent, approximately $1 billion will go towards designing, building, and maintaining fish passage past the dams. While the exact design of this system is not yet in place, this spending will go a long way to returning salmon home, above the dams. Scott says “roughly 40% of the watershed is behind these three dams.” Opening up the upper watershed to anadromous fish like salmon will increase their chances of still being around by the end of the 50-year license.

We have much to learn from Scott’s experience. In this case, an eight-year negotiation ultimately resulted in an unprecedented investment in habitat, water quality, salmon restoration, and cultural acknowledgement in Washington. As we look to other watersheds throughout the state, we are reminded that our mission of protecting water quantity and restoring in-stream flows is not only essential for salmon and the environment, but it also aligns with our commitment to uphold and support the rights of Tribal people throughout the state. This is an endeavor that we all must emphasize as we push for improvements along the continuum of progress toward water, habitat and climate protection.

“We are here for just a blink of an eye, make it count while you can. Affect positive change, whether it’s the environment, or social issues, but just have a positive effect while you are here.” -Scott Schuyler on advice he gives his children.

Salmon fishing is both a right and a cultural practice for the Upper Skagit Tribe, who are working to pass it on to future generations

Christian Murillo and Scott Schuyler are CELP Board members

This article reflects an interview with Scott Schuyler of the Upper Skagit Tribe, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the other two Skagit Basin tribes. We reached out to them for statements and received a response from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community (which was also included in a published statement): “Chairman Edwards said the resulting Agreement represents the most balanced opportunity to protect and restore the Skagit watershed while supporting Seattle’s long-term clean energy generation. ‘The terms of this Agreement reflect a shared commitment to protecting the Skagit River while continuing to provide clean power to Seattle residents,’ Edwards said. ‘We believe this Agreement creates the strongest opportunity to safeguard the river, uphold our Treaty rights, and support salmon recovery for generations to come.’”