The Columbia River

Kettle Falls Recreation Site, on Lake Roosevelt, near Kettle Falls WA. Kettle Falls - Shonitkwu in the native Salish language, was an ancient and important salmon fishing site for Native Americans, for more than nine thousand years. The falls were inundated by the rising waters of Lake Roosevelt backed up behind Grand Coulee dam in 1940. As no fish ladders were built at Grand Coulee native salmon are now extinct in Lake Roosevelt and upriver. The extinction of the Salmon destroyed a way of life for the Native People of the Colville. Native People whose ancestral lands Grand Coulee was built on, never benefitted from the irrigation waters, or were compensated for revenue from electricity generation produced by the dam. The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation filed a lawsuit against the United States government, which was settled in 1994 for $53 million, plus $15.25 million annually from 1996 onward. On Aug. 16, 2019 members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation released 30 chinook salmon above Grand Coulee Dam in hopes the fish will spawn and the fry will pass downstream through the turbines of the dam, then grow to maturity in the ocean and return, where they will be captured and transported above the dam to repeat the cycle.

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Contained in galleries: The Great River of the West

Kettle Falls Recreation Site, on Lake Roosevelt, near Kettle Falls WA. Kettle Falls - Shonitkwu in the native Salish language, was an ancient and important salmon fishing site for Native Americans, for more than nine thousand years. The falls were inundated by the rising waters of Lake Roosevelt backed up behind Grand Coulee dam in 1940. As no fish ladders were built at Grand Coulee native salmon are now extinct in Lake Roosevelt and upriver. The extinction of the Salmon destroyed a way of life for the Native People of the Colville. Native People whose ancestral lands Grand Coulee was built on, never benefitted from the irrigation waters, or were compensated for revenue from electricity generation produced by the dam. The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation filed a lawsuit against the United States government, which was settled in 1994 for $53 million, plus $15.25 million annually from 1996 onward. On Aug. 16, 2019 members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation released 30 chinook salmon above Grand Coulee Dam in hopes the fish will spawn and the fry will pass downstream through the turbines of the dam, then grow to maturity in the ocean and return, where they will be captured and transported above the dam to repeat the cycle.