Hupa Indians battle to reclaim Trinity River
- Tim Holt
Sunday, August 22, 2004
The Hupa Indians of Northern California are a
tenacious people. In the mid-19th century, when the U.S. Army tried to drive
them out of their villages along the
One hundred years later, the government has started draining their river,
damming it and diverting most of its water through mountain tunnels to
farmlands to the south.
For the past 40 years, the Hupas have struggled in
the courts and the halls of Congress to bring their river and its decimated
fishery back to life.
Up until now, this has involved a lopsided battle between the impoverished
2,500-member Indian tribe and Westlands, the largest irrigation district in the
But the balance of power is beginning to tilt in favor of the Indians -- a
seismic shift in
Last month, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in
The increased flows, which will take effect this fall, are part of a broader
Trinity restoration program launched four years earlier by then- Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt. It had been blocked until now by a lawsuit filed by
the Westlands Water District, representing the farmers of the
The judges' decision bodes well not only for the Hupas
and their river but for the cause of restoring ravaged watersheds throughout
the West. The decision, stripped down to its essentials, says that minimum
standards for the health of a river take precedence over the demands of water
consumers.
The Hupas are looking out for their own interests,
to be sure, but with their growing clout, they're adding an important new
perspective to the debate over
The
In their view, a river that flows to the sea is a waste of water. In the
Indians' view, a river that flows naturally to the sea produces a healthy
fishery. For all but 40 of the past 10,000 years, that has been the basic tenet
of their survival.
The next big task facing the Hupas is the physical
restoration of their river, whose configuration was dramatically transformed by
four decades of minimum flows.
Heavy equipment will be needed to remove brush and sediment that filled up
the old river's side pools. These quiet pools are crucial to the rearing of
juvenile fish. Also, several bridges built during the low-flow era will need to
be raised.
The seeds of the Hupas' victory were planted in
the 1980s, when they began hiring some well-connected and highly respected
advocates, including
That, and countless studies by federal biologists, led to Babbitt's order to dramatically increase the river's flows
to 47 percent of their historic levels -- the minimum needed, the studies
showed, to increase fish populations to sustainable levels.
The environmentalism of the Hupas, like that of
West Coast commercial fishermen who fight for clean, free-flowing streams,
grows out of their need to protect their livelihood and their way of life.
But the Hupas' commitment goes even deeper than
the calloused-hand environmentalism of the fishermen: The salmon the Hupas fight for is not only their staff of life but a
centerpiece of their culture, one that involves elaborate ceremonies
celebrating their return to the Trinity each year.
Native Americans' deep reverence for the natural world has given them a
mythical, iconic status within the environmental movement. But in the real
world, they often live in the shadows, struggling with poverty and alcoholism.
The Hupas have tied their future to the natural
resources of their region -- they're too far off the beaten track to capitalize
on the casino craze sweeping other reservations.
Theirs is an important contribution to the public debate over
Tim Holt is an environmental writer and the author of "Songs of the
Simple Life."
Page E - 3
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/22/ING8689JT21.DTL