Hey, you should watch this if Native/Indigenous are of importance/interest to you. And if they aren’t of importance or interest to you then you’re probably a fuckin’ asshole.
This is our tribe, the Winnemem Wintu of Northern California.
We are not really a “Ghost Tribe”, since we are very much alive, despite Gold Rush murders, boarding schools, and the Shasta Dam, which flooded our beloved McCloud River homeland, wiped out our salmon runs, and stole our water. We received none of the compensation promised in federal legislation.
Now the Water Mongers and Big Oil want to build the dam higher, and flood out more of our sacred sites, including the dance ground of our Coming of Age Ceremony. Fresno US Representative Jim Costa ® two weeks ago introduced a bill, co-signed by state Democratic congressmen, to raise Shasta Dam 18 feet higher. The expected water will be used to feed the growing fracking industry in the Central Valley, as well as grow export crops in the desert and service massive housing developments in the desert. This is all part of Gov. Jerry Brown’s “Brown Water Plan”, which includes destroying the California Delta with massive Twin Tunnels that could potentially draw off all of the Sacramento River’s fresh water, destroying the estuary, and the fish and other aquatic life that depend on it.
But we are not giving up. We know it is our responsibility to continue to be Winnemem, to continue to sing for the Water, and protect the places that make us Winnemem.
We will not be drowned without a fight!
Please contact your congressperson and tell them that we are already the victims of uncorrected government injustice, and to vote NO on any plans to raise Shasta Dam.
Looking this up right now, but you must be confused about the senator. Jerry Brown is the LAST person in California who would raise a finger to give water to farmers and frakkers. We’re talking about a Governor who still doesn’t understand how much of a failure he is for the high speed rail and for releasing murders on the streets to kill again.
Looked it up…the damn isn’t being proposed to be raised to drown native tribes. It’s being raised to accumulate more water in a reservoir, since the original damn was forced to build small due to restrictions imposed in WW2.
Farmers are losing business and they are denied water for their crops, less because of native tribes, and more for the “Delta smelt.”
And, unless you actually live in Cali instead of freezing your ass somewhere else, you don’t seem to understand the magnitude of denying water to farmers who make up a good chunk of the crops grown for the US and internationally.
Say goodbye to your corn, folks.
http://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/is-raising-shasta-dam-the-best-bet-for-californias-water-supply/
“Farmers are losing business…” That about sums up the push to raise the Shasta Dam. You have millionaire “farmers” (some are billionaires) who have made a lot of money after taking North state water from the Trinity River (Hoopa tribe) and the Shasta Lake (Winnemem Wintu Tribe) to grow cash crops in the desert, while doing so has proved unsustainable because of selenium levels and pollution. The Feds have sold more water contracts to growers than could ever be fulfilled in the best years. But now that the climate cycle is changing they are crying EMERGENCY!
And the big growers are indeed businessmen, whose main goal is to make a PROFIT any way possible. Now they see profit in selling water, at many times the contract cost, to municipalities and the expanding Central/Southern California fracking industry. So their boy Jerry Brown is pressing what we call the “Brown Water plan”, which includes raising Shasta Dam and building massive tunnels through the sensitive California Delta.
Nowhere in any of these plans is an acknowledgement of the unpaid debt, promised in an Act of Congress, to the Winnemem Wintu people from the original building of the dam.
And nowhere in any of California’s water discussions is there one word of Tribal Water Rights. No California tribe ceded water rights when our lands were stolen after the 1851 Treaties were torn up and hidden by the US Senate.
Please contact your US representative, here, no matter what state you’re in, remind them that a debt is still owed, and ask them to oppose any plan to raise Shasta Dam.
(via winnememwintuvoice)