ALONG THE ELWHA — Where a dam once stood, life coursed through. Kingfishers trilled as they zipped through the canyon, and young salmon darted in the pools below.
Lower Elwha Klallam tribal families have returned in recent years to this free-flowing river, bringing laughter to the shore and fish home to eat. Twelve years ago, the last piece of two Elwha dams came down, in what was at the time the world’s largest dam removal project. It was hard-won by the tribe after generations of declining salmon runs and community health.
Now, the so-called project lands, where the dams were blasted and a river freed, are slated to return to the tribe, marking the capstone of the federal project.
Congress this fall passed a bill that would transfer the roughly 1,100 acres of federal project lands back to the tribe. It now awaits President Donald Trump’s signature. Tribal leaders toured the lands with national park staff last week, as they prepared for the transition. They reflected on the importance of this land transfer.
It would mark the first time the lands have returned to the tribe since the signing of the Point No Point Treaty of 1855, when Native nations ceded their vast lands for the promise of healthcare, education and the right to hunt, fish and gather in their usual and accustomed areas.
The transfer would ensure the tribe can oversee the restoration and long-term healing of the river, said Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe Chair Melissa Gilman, with its headwaters melting from the Olympic Mountains and spilling into the saltwater on the tribe’s reservation west of Port Angeles. It would also secure tribal members' access to their traditional foods and medicines.
The Elwha’s $325 million dam-removal project and ongoing restoration serves as an international example for ecosystem-wide recovery and cultural renewal. Since the two dams fell, Native nations have had additional successes, like on the Klamath River in Oregon and California, and more are underway. Tribal leaders continue to visit, as recently as this month, to learn from the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.
Sacred places long passed down in oral tradition were revealed as the dams came down. Among them, the tribe’s creation site. It had been flooded a century earlier.
“Our land isn't just land. The river isn't just the river. The salmon aren't just salmon,” Gilman said. “This is part of who we are as people.”
Ancestral sites
As Frances Charles peered over the canyon wall, the former site of Elwha Dam, a salmon leapt from the water.
“We had seen a lot of the Chinook that were just beating against the dam, trying to get out prior to us removing them,” Charles said, walking along the canyon last week. They found their way back as soon as the last piece of the dam was removed.
It was hopeful and heartbreaking, said Charles, the longtime former chair of the tribe and a current member of the council. For a century, the salmon had lost the connection to their upriver habitat.
It validated the work of their ancestors. The leaders who went door to door on the reservation asking for donations to travel to Washington, D.C., to speak for dam removal, who rallied the sportfishers and environmentalists and tasked their children and grandchildren with taking the dams down.
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s ancestral lands emerged from under Elwha Dam and its reservoir. They span nearly 1,100 acres from Highway 112 to the Highway 101 bridge.
Fishing grounds, village sites and the tribe’s creation site had been submerged for a century. Carbon dating revealed Klallam life dating back more than 8,000 years in at least one place.
Here, as told in Klallam teachings, the Creator bathed and blessed the Klallam people, and tribal members for generations have returned to the creation site to hold ceremonies and learn of the journeys they would take later in life.
“There's a lot of stories that the elders had,” Charles said, “but it was always considered a myth.” After a national park archaeologist saw the legendary site emerge, they notified the tribe.
A group of tribal leaders, cultural resources staff and youth hiked in to confirm the distinctive attributes of the site sacred to their people. They collected water to share with members of the tribe. And they got on the phone with one of the elders. “Adeline,” Charles recalled telling an elder, “this isn’t a myth: Here’s the reality.”
Vanessa Castle was among the members of the tribe who received a bottle of water from the creation site. It was mailed to her while she was supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline proposal, with a note reminding her to remember where she comes from.
Today, cougar scrapes and bear and possum tracks dot the former reservoir, where dippers dance along the river stone. Young salmon and trout dart through the calm pools dug behind logjams. Verdant green curtains of cedar and moss-cloaked maple hang high. At dusk, a raven’s flapping wings pierce the silence.
“That last missing piece was the Klallams, the people of the land,” Castle said. “And now that can happen in a way that feels fulfilling and respectful, and that we have a space that we can call home again.”
Reclaiming the land
Where the Elwha meets the sea, a harbor seal raced, diving and surfacing in pursuit of a fish. Nyle Hepfer joked that the speedy little pinniped may be responsible for the slow fishing day.
It’s the fourth year members of the tribe have been able to fish the river since dam removal. Families are again passing down knowledge of caring for and preparing salmon, and sharing with the community.
“That's what the river was missing,” said Russell Hepfer, former longtime vice chair of the tribe and Nyle’s dad. “Not only the fish, but it was missing tribal families that made the river whole.”
Nyle Hepfer, 20, says, as his dad tells the story, he’s been fishing the Elwha since he was 2 weeks old, snug in a baby carrier. He was 8 years old when the fishery halted. It wasn’t until he was 17 that he could fish again.
On this day, he and his friend Joaquin Robideau, members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, were soaking up the sunshine, cleaning fallen leaves from a set net near the mouth of the river. The two described how they’ve witnessed the river healing. Just recently, they saw Chinook salmon making their way up to the cool pools just near the creation site. “That felt good in our hearts,” Hepfer said.
Seeing the news of the land being returned to the tribe is a blessing, Robideau said. The sacred places are powerful, he said, “you could just feel it when you’re up there.”
Gilman, the Lower Elwha Klallam chair, said that’s exactly the connection she’s hoping for tribal members to access and feel as the lands return to the tribe. Something she felt as she visited some of these places for the first time last week.
Gilman envisions expanding the tribe’s restoration efforts here and opening opportunities for youth to come and learn. She hopes to ask tribal members to help shape the plan for the future.
“It's a part of who we are,” Gilman said. “And I think it'll bring great healing to our people.”
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