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Time for government to fulfill its promises to the Winnemum Wintu Tribe

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 27, 2007 at 6:41 am

In a piece that demonstrates the interconnectedness of California’s water system, here’s an article which discusses the water rights of the Winnemem Wintu tribe, who live in Northern California, and how they are connected to the Westlands Irrigation District, located in the southwestern portion of the Central Valley:

Westlands’ receives its water from the Central Valley Project, a vast system that delivers water from Northern California to Central Valley agricultural empires. What Westlands and the federal government don’t realize is that the entire Central Valley Project rests on an unfulfilled act of Congress, a betrayal of the Winnemem people.

The Central Valley Project relies, in part, on the water that the Winnemem Wintu Tribe has been set on the Earth to take care: the McCloud River. “Winnemem Wintu” literally means “middle water people,” because the McCloud River is the middle of three rivers that flow into what is now the Shasta Lake Reservoir, above the Shasta Dam.

Shasta Dam is the keystone of the Central Valley Project. When the Shasta Dam began construction in 1938, more than 90 percent of Winnemem ancestral land was lost. Indian allotment land, granted by the federal government, was seized. Our sacred sites were flooded and the remains of our elders dug up and moved. Today, the federal government consistently disturbs our traditional prayer grounds by raising and lowering the water table behind Shasta Dam, without consultation or concern for our tribe.

The 1941 Central Valley Project Indian Lands Acquisition Act gave the Winnemem lands in compensation for those taken and funds to replace the infrastructure that was lost when the Shasta Dam was built. To this day, we have not received any of these things. It is time the federal government lived up to its end of the bargain. We have paid many times over.

There has been talk about raising the height of Shasta Dam, the centerpiece of the Central Valley Project, but if this is done, the remaining tribal lands will be flooded.

To read the full text of this article from the San Francisco Chronicle, click here.

August 27, 2007 · Filed Under Central Valley Project

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