Caleen Sisk, Spiritual Leader and Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, who practice their traditional culture and ceremonies in their territory along the McCloud River watershed in Northern California, today issued a statement slamming the signing of a revised water plan (biological opinion) by President Trump in Bakersfield today that maximizes water exports to corporate agribusiness interests in the San Joaquin Valley.
She strongly urged Governor Gavin Newsom to “oppose this attack on California Tribes and rural communities and to stop Trump, as he promised.”
Here is her statement:
Winnemem Wintu Statement re. the Trump BO Announcement
- Today, the Trump Administration signed the last document before implementing new increased water diversion rules that represent a major new attack on tribal people, salmon and the Bay-Delta ecosystem and the major rivers, including the Sacramento, that supply it. A huge increase in water diversion under these rules could lead to more salmon killed at the delta pumps as soon as the next rain storm.
- The Winnemem Wintu are salmon people who are Indigenous to the Sacramento Valley watershed from the sacred waters of Mt. Shasta all the way to the Delta the only place where Chinook can acclimate. Wild Chinook are a central part of our genesis, our health, our culture and our religion.
a) We are asserting our rights under the UN DRIP to “free, prior, and Informed Consent on the Delta Conveyance Project as it affects our Indigenous Rights, the rights of our wild Chinook and the ancestral waterways.
b) The UNDRIP Article 10, 11, 12, and 26 pertains to our claims to ancestral rights that protect the Delta and the sensitive aspect of the largest Estuary on the Pacific Coast.
c) The very existence of the Winnemem Wintu people relies on the consistent healthy returns of the Wild Chinook. It is a tribal belief that whatever happens to the Chinook happens to the tribe. Therefore, if the Chinook cannot acclimate in the Delta they will not swim to the McCloud River and the extinction will be final, this will also affect the fate of the Winnemem Wintu.
d) The 1941 Indian Land Acquisition Act allowed for the Shasta Lake to be filled, yet failed in every way to honor the intent of the law. The Shasta Dam Central Valley Project made the Winnemem Wintu people homeless and jobless ever since the Dam flooded 26 miles of our homelands, sacred sites, and cemeteries.
e) The Shasta Dam blocked our tribe and wild Chinook from our homelands without mitigation. It sent my mother and father’s generation off to Riverside California to the Sherman Indian Boarding School and stripped them of their homelife on the river.
f) The new Trump water diversions intensify federal government attacks on the Winnemem Wintu Tribe’s existence. Just like the Keystone XL pipeline at Standing Rock. The Trump Biological Opinion brings on an intentional salmon extinction plan and detrimental to all Tribes and waters depending on Salmon.
- The Trump salmon extinction plan would end the current legal requirement to return salmon to our river, set the stage for the raising of Shasta Dam, which would flood more of our tribe’s sacred sites, give the federal Bureau of Reclamation permission to kill off our salmon below Shasta Dam, and allow the Bureau to kill even more salmon in the Delta. It would also divert and pump more water from the Trinity River, which supports salmon and tribes in the Trinity/Klamath River system.
- In November, Governor Newsom pledged to sue to block this federal attack on salmon and tribes. That suit has not yet been filed, but there is still time. We urge Governor Newsom to oppose this attack on California Tribes and rural communities and to stop Trump, as he promised.
- A few greedy agribusiness interests are trying to persuade Governor Newsom to embrace the Trump salmon extinction plan. We hope the Governor will see this plan for the disaster it is. The governor is being misled by big money interests that have never cared about California’s original Indigenous peoples nor people in rural communities. The Governor should be the governor for all of California.
- Governor Newsom has made some initial steps to begin repairing the damage that native people have suffered in California over the past 200 years. Fighting the Trump salmon extinction plan would be a truer action to realizing overdue justice for Indigenous California Tribes.
- Governor Newsom has said that he wants to move the California water debate away from conflict and litigation. But the Trump salmon extinction plan is designed to create conflict and litigation. It was written only after they silenced federal biologists who objected. Having purged the truth tellers, the Secretary of the Interior – Bernhart, a former lobbyist for the Westlands Water District - reversed the accurate conclusion that the Bureau’s proposals would endanger salmon.
- The state should write their own rules to protect salmon under the California Endangered Species Act. Those rules should be stronger than current protections – given the terrible state of salmon runs, fish waterways must be provided for salmon to get to the mountain waters. And the state should force the federal water operators to obey that state permit.”