So I recently went to a really interesting museum about Coast Salish tribes and there I found out about a "conflict" between the Elwha Dam, which I like to call the Salmon-blocking Dam and the Klallam. The Klallam, a Coast Salish tribe, used to fish salmon for thousands of years. They basically lived on fishing. All was going well for so long but then there came a Canadian businessman in 1910 who built a dam there ruining everything! And since fish can not go through tons of concrete, the Klallam had a big problem. The dam blocked the fish from returning to the upper river which lead to the number of fish going from about 400,000 to just a mere 4000. Now there are a few things you can do if a dam is blocking your food and the quantity had reduced by almost a hundred times, you could protest peacefully or you can blow up the dam. Now thankfully the Klallam didn not blow up the dam and choose the logical option to protest which did take its time to get results, it took almost 78 years for the government to take it down (1992) which is absolutely horendous and it took a long time to restore the river which was done by 2014. The fish were finally able to get up river again and the Klallam celebrated with a traditional First Salmon ceremony, praying for enough salmon. It was their river first and it still is now. It is still very shocking how they had to protest so long for their food and how the dam was even allowed to be built even though it was on reservation land and against the Klallam rights.
(P.S This post was for a school project, I never actually went to this museum and don't even know if it exists and please don't blow up anything.)
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