Yakama Nation is not one to be underestimated. The Oregon Land Justice Project’s site visit to the Tribe’s reservation underscored the strong, deeply-rooted community ties to each other and to the land, all while the Tribe fights increasing encroachment from developers on their sacred lands and sovereign rights.
In early August, the Oregon Land Justice Project (OLJP) traveled with 28 land trust staff and board members to visit the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation in Toppenish, WA. This marked OLJP’s fifth site visit in the last four years as part of its ongoing commitment to showing up, learning and building relationships in a good way with Tribal Nations.
As each Tribe is unique, so too was this experience. Over two and a half days, participants heard from community members and leaders, spoke to Tribal council and toured projects and facilities normally not accessible to the general public. All that is standard for these visits. What stood out was the palpable pride and quiet strength of this nation, working hard to protect their people, their land, and their ways of life. This is a fight they’ve endured for centuries.
Time Immemorial to Treaty Rights
The present-day Tribal government that is the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation represents 14 unique communities: Kah-milt-pah, Klickitat, Klinquit, Kow-was-say-ee, Li-ay-was, Oche-chotes, Palouse, Pisquose, Se-ap-cat, Shyiks, Skinpah, Wenatshapam, Wishram, and Yakama.
Each of these individual nations and bands had their own important geographies–their areas for fishing, hunting, gathering roots and berries, sacred sites and homes they’d routinely occupy as they followed the seasonal rounds throughout the year. While unique, some maintained close ties through trade, kinship and agreements/political allegiances.
When lumped together as a confederation during the treaty-making period, the combined land area of the 14 bands exceeded 12 million acres, stretching from north-central Washington to the (now Oregon side of the) Columbia River Gorge and extending from the cascade range to the plateau of Eastern Washington.
In signing the Treaty of 1855, the now-confederated Tribe ceded over 10 million acres while retaining a 1.2 million acre reservation and their rights to hunt, fish and gather in their usual and accustomed areas. The boundaries of their lands and the rights they hold are all explicitly outlined in the Treaty. Still, there have been disputes about the full extent of Yakama Land, like in the case of Tract D, 90,000 acres of land that was taken out of Yakama control due to a filing error.
Other factors have threatened their lands, including energy projects like the Goldendale pump storage project or, in some cases, have already severely harmed the land, as in the case of the Hanford Nuclear Reserve.
Today, Yakama Nation is one of the largest Tribes (by population) in the Pacific Northwest with over 13,000 Tribal members and a strong voice in the political landscape of the state. That said, with so many looming threats to their land and sovereignty, the Tribe is strapped for capacity to fight each one.
Why would the “Oregon” Land Justice Project go to Washington?
State boundary lines are colonial inventions that often don’t align with the traditional geographies of Indigenous peoples. While Yakama Nation is technically a Washington-based Tribal government, their ceded lands and usual and accustomed areas also extend into Oregon.
For generations, Tribal members have maintained relationships with traditional root and berry sites, fishing areas and important places, like Willamette Falls, in Oregon. Several of our member land trusts also extend their service area into Washington, in some places overlapping with Yakama Nation’s lands.
With our mutual interests in the same places, OLJP believes in engaging and partnering with Yakama Nation on land access and return projects on both sides of the Big River out of respect for their geographical boundaries, not our invisible state and service area lines.
The Black Cloud Around Green Energy
A major theme to underpin the entirety of the trip was learning how green energy infrastructure projects are booming in Washington– at the cost of the land.
The OLJP group was incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to view the documentary film These Sacred Hills and hear directly from the film’s stars, Elaine Harvey, Council Member Jeremy Takala, and Chief Bronsco Jim Jr. The film documents these incredible leaders’ advocacy to protect Pushpum, the Kam-milt-pah’s (Rock Creek Band) sacred land and ancestral village site near present-day Goldendale, WA against a proposed pump energy storage project. The Goldendale project is just one of 60+ development projects, mostly geared toward green energy, that is threatening to destroy and block access to sites across Yakama Nation’s homelands.
There is more public support than ever for green energy alternatives, but the way it is being developed echoes the rhetoric of manifest destiny: more land is needed for our growth and expansion– and Indigenous people stand in the way of that progress.
In These Sacred Hills, leaders make a point to say that Tribes are not against green energy, they’re simply against green energy projects that undermine their rights and push them further away from the places they are trying desperately to protect.
For conservationists and environmentalists like those of us in the room, it challenged us to think about our work in a broader way and support Tribes, like the Yakama Nation, who are carrying the burden to educate and advocate against corporations, governments and the public.
We highly encourage everyone to sign Columbia RiverKeeper’s petition to protect Pushpum.
Lamprey Lovers
Probably the highlight for participants was visiting Yakama Nation Fisheries facilities to learn about their steelhead, sturgeon and lamprey conservation work.
Pacific lamprey are a First Food and a staple of Indigenous diets across the Northwest. Estimated to be 160 million (or more) years old, they have survived immense climatic and environmental change with little adaptation.
These fish are jawless and parasitic, feeding primarily on blood and fluids of their hosts. Spending their early years buried in sediment, they eventually make their way to the ocean before returning to rivers—scaling waterfalls like Willamette Falls in their determined climb home.
Willamette Falls is a particularly important site for harvesting mature lamprey. Every summer, at peak harvesting season, Yakama Nation Fisheries hosts the lamprey celebration, a day-long event for Tribal members and the wider community to learn more about the ecological and cultural importance of lamprey as well as Yakama Nation’s enduring connection to Willamette Falls.
Back in Washington, the Fisheries team monitors lamprey populations and raises juvenile lamprey for release. After learning a little about lamprey biology, OLJP participants “helped” Fisheries staff measure them. They had a little too much fun handling these eels and receiving lamprey hickies.
For conservationists, this was an invaluable opportunity to begin to feel and understand the connection between plateau peoples, like the Yakama, and their relative, the lamprey.
They have a sacred responsibility to protect and speak for these fish, and Yakama Nation is doing an amazing job upholding that promise.
Working Lands in Indigenous Hands
Despite the near-constant threats to their rights and lands, Yakama Nation is leading several thriving projects and enterprises. One of the newest is Yakama Nation Farms, the Tribe’s first foray into commercial agriculture. The Tribe purchased the working farm operation from a multi-generational Japanese-American family of owners at a steep discount in 2022. Since taking over the operation, the Tribe has hit the ground running. They now manage over 450 acres of prime agricultural land and grow a variety of organic and non-organic crops.
While agriculture isn’t a traditional part of the Tribe’s culture or subsistence practices, the Farm’s products represent a slate of “second foods”– those that round out a healthy diet; those like kale, cabbage and asparagus on top of varieties of corn, squash and melons, traditional staple crops for other Indigenous communities.
The OLJP group toured the packing and shipping facility with interim general manager, Jonalee Squeochs, to learn about the operation and food sovereignty. Beyond selling the produce (mostly along the I-5 corridor), they also work to ensure that produce stays on-reservation and feeds the community via a food box distribution program. Future plans include partnering with nutritionists and the Tribes’ health programs to encourage healthy habits by developing recipes, cooking videos and other resources.
While Yakama Nation Farms is first and foremost a business, its impact on the larger community is evident. It’s more than just an enterprise– it’s a vehicle for addressing health disparities within a food desert, direct consequences of more than a century of forced displacement from the land and food systems. While forced displacement is still going on all around them Yakama Nation Farms represents a “win” for the nation.
Through the Oregon Land Justice Project, we constantly emphasize that each Tribe is unique. This site visit emphasized that more than ever.
Not only is the Yakama Nation leading some incredible conservation and community work through their fisheries programs and farm business (on top of many other programs and projects), they are leading a movement against destructive development projects.
While the Yakama Nation is not the only Tribe fighting against the destruction of their sacred lands, they are uniquely positioned to push back and be heard. Their treaty rights are clear. Their voices are powerful. And their passion is immeasurable.
OLJP is grateful for the opportunity to visit Yakama Nation and learn more about their projects and priorities. We want to say a sincere thank you to our hosts for generously sharing their time and knowledge with us. We hope we, as individuals and organizations, can be in service and explore opportunities to partner, support, and return land.
Want to learn more about the Yakama Nation? Check out these other resources and articles:
- Yakama Nation website and The Treaty of 1855
- The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation
- Yakama Nation Fisheries: Restoration Stories, Land of the Yakamas, and Yakama Nation Fisheries Strategic Plan
- Land back: Former dam property along White Salmon River to be sold to Yakama Nation
- Co-management: Springwood Ranch agreement marks 1st tribal-state land partnership in Washington
- Columbia River Basin Agreement: Statements on Trump administration withdrawal from Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement – CRITFC and Trump upends historic Columbia River Basin agreement, bringing uncertainty to salmon recovery efforts – OPB
- Bison Restoration: Why the Yakama Nation has a herd of buffalo – and why it’s growing and Buffalo & Food Sovereignty: A Yakama Nation story
- Tract D: A filing error put 90,000 acres of Yakama Nation land in Washington state’s hands
- Goldendale Pump Project: In green energy boom, one federal agency made the Yakama Nation an offer they had to refuse and Goldendale Water Pump Project – Yakama Perspective
- Hanford Nuclear Reservation: Yakama Nation seeks to protect, preserve Hanford’s indigenous land
- Photo Essay: Fishing tradition never lets Yakamas down | Local | yakimaherald.com
- Columbia River’s salmon are at the core of ancient religion
