Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia
Empty Nets is a disturbing history of broken promises and justice delayed.
It chronicles the Columbia River Indians' fight to maintain their livelihood and culture
in the face of an indifferent federal bureaucracy and hostile state governments.
1n 1939, the U.S. Government promised to provide Columbia River Indians with replacements for traditional
fishing sites flooded in the backwater of the Bonneville Dam. Roberta Ulrich recounts the Indians' decades-long struggle,
in the courts and on the river, to persuade the government to keep its promise.
From the beginning, the battle was intertwined with the tribes’ larger effort to assert treaty-guaranteed fishing rights.
Ulrich deftly examines a host of other issues—including declining salmon runs, industrial development, tribal
self-government, and recreation—that became enmeshed in the tribes’ pursuit of justice. Her broad and incisive
account ranges from descriptions of the dam’s disastrous effects on a salmon-dependent culture to portraits of
the plights of individual Indian families. Descendants of those to whom the promise was made and activists who
have spent their lives working to acquire the sites reveal the remarkable patience and resilience of the Columbia
River Indians.
As Ulrich notes in a new epilogue to
Empty Nets, the story continues to the present. With most of the replacement
fishing sites now completed, the government’s promise will finally be fulfilled in this new century.
"An important and powerful book that stands as a metaphor for our continued injustices to Indians and
must shame us all. It is a stirring human document for these times, and I recommend it heartily."
—Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., author of
The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest
"Masterfully researched and lucidly told, Empty Nets gives a fresh, in-depth account of the chicanery and
environmental degradation that have confronted Indian fishermen on the Columbia River over the past half century."
—Charles Wilkinson, author of
Messages from Frank's Landing
'Empty Nets is a remarkable account of perseverance and tenacity."
—William G. Robbins,
The Oregonian
About the Author
Roberta Ulrich is a former reporter for United Press International and
The Oregonian,
where she created the paper's first beat covering Native American issues and came to
know many of the families dispossessed by the Bonneville Dam. She lives in Beaverton, Oregon.
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