Anna Mae Leonard has gone without food or water for four days, sitting from sunup to sundown across from City Hall in Cascade Locks, a tiny town east of Portland on the banks of the Columbia River. Leonard, who is a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and lives in Cascade Locks, is on a hunger strike to call for city administrators to block Nestlé from sucking pristine water—which it wants to bottle and sell under its Arrowhead brand name—from Oxbow Springs.
“I am suffering here for only five days,” Leonard wrote on August 17, prior to beginning her hunger strike. “I am suffering because this is how it will be for our precious salmon and all of life within the river—all plant life, all animal life. We will all suffer and die without water.”
Leonard’s opinion is that the proposed—and complicated—water rights swap between the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the municipality of Cascade Locks, which would grant the mega-corporation a decades-long contract to take water from the Columbia Gorge, violates rights the Warm Springs Tribes gained when they entered into the Treaty of 1855 with the US government.
In a July 4 conversation with the Mercury, Leonard explained that tribal members use their rights to Columbia River fisheries to gather enough fish to fill the longhouses each year, enough to feed the entire tribe. The treaty gives the tribe rights to fisheries on the Columbia River—part of the tribe’s aboriginal lands—in exchange for establishing reservation boundaries.
E. Austin Greene Jr., Chairman of the Tribal Council of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, in May sent a letter to Governor Kate Brown saying he also did not support the water swap, and calling treaty rights v. Cascade Locks’ rights into question.
“Water quantity and quality and hatchery operations are of paramount importance to ongoing treaty-based rights of the Tribe in the Columbia River area and to ongoing federal litigation,” the letter reads. “These factors are not only reasonable to evaluate but of critical importance for ODFW’s proposed water transfer, particularly in the context of climate change… and more frequent droughts and/or dry years.”
The good news: Greene and Leonard might be right. The Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) is expected to make a preliminary decision in the matter around the end of the summer. The decision can then be appealed by any concerned party, according to OWRD spokesperson Racquel Rancier.
Leonard and Greene are among a growing group of people opposed to the city partnering with Nestlé, a company that’s a notoriously bad steward of human, animal, and water rights.
Deanna Busdieker, who is the only Cascade Locks city commissioner who’s come out in opposition to Nestlé, says she spent several hours today with Leonard.
“She says she’s feeling a little light-headed today and isn’t really thinking straight,” Busdieker says. “She sits out there in the sun all day without water or anything, so it’s going as well as it can.”
Busdieker says there’s been a constant stream of people coming to offer support, including many tribal members. Leonard told Busdieker that on Wednesday a Warm Springs Tribal Council member stopped by the site. City Administrator Gordon Zimmerman, who supports bringing Nestlé to Cascade Locks, visited briefly with Leonard on Monday.
“He just kinda said good luck,” Busdieker says.
Who signed off on this at the ODFW? Who is making these decisions? Mayor Cornblatt of Cascade Locks? Who are these people? Nestle may be faceless but these are Oregonians selling us out. It would be interesting to find out who is for it among the Tribe. It is illegal to store too much rain in Oregon. So we can sell it to the corporations?
She sounded pretty good on the radio an hour ago – surprising since she hasn’t had water in 4 days…
Let me get this straight, the water Nestle’ wants to bottle doesn’t even run through the tribal area?
Huh?
FRANKIEB, from my understanding of the article, a condition of the tribal agreement to the reservation boundary, which separates the people from the Columbia, is seasonal salmon rights. If the salmon are compromised, so too are the people and the treaty
Yeah, IF….
I am of the opinion if fools want to buy bottled water, it may as well be from here.
If it harms fish, etc, well let’s rethink it, but I have yet to see much science supporting this point of view.
I would imagine if it was a ‘non-GMO, Organic brewery’ wanting the water that there would be no opposition at all.
I have never understood how a hunger strike was supposed to pressure anyone. I highly doubt that the people she is targeting to change their minds, really cares if she is starving. If they don’t care about the environment, fish, and the animals… Then , they are not likely to give a crap if she is starving or dehydrating in the sun (possibly to death, eventually).
The only thing I could see strengthening her “stand” would be for other tribal members to do the same. But, even though they seem to be “visiting” her, nobody seems to care enough to JOIN her. I’m sure her opposers are thinking the same thing. If she seems to be the only one who cares enough to do this, they aren’t worried about opposition in large numbers. And they aren’t worried about having to change their plans.
Wow I’m shocked!!! By these comments this is not about science this is about the future of our sacared salmon. Its known that as our current situation the salmon are being compromised due to drought and high water temperature. We as tribal people matter our voice matter the salmon matter. Honor your word!! Honor our Treaties Rights!!! We care about this situation this is many Natives livelihood. I agree in that we need to have more in our number show up a protest this atrocity!!
Greed is going to be your demise. We are in a drought Mt Hood barely has snow and Nestle wants more. This is not just a Native issue. We all need to protect our sacred water. Water for salmon.