Washington state is in many ways a leader in efforts to combat the climate emergency. But many of the tools necessary to reduce global-heating come from faraway places.
For the whole world to run on power from solar and wind, with battery storage and electric vehicles by the year 2050, one expert told us, humanity would need to open 56 more mines like one we visited, wherever possible, each year.
Over the past year, tracing the path of the Columbia from the Similkameen River in British Columbia to the Owyhee in Duck Valley, communities shared their stories about this new mining boom and its complex balance of influences.
Copper Mountain Mine, B.C.
About twenty miles north of the U.S. border, buses took families up a mountain road to an annual community tour of Copper Mountain Mine.
The mine is among the largest employers for residents of the town of Princeton, perched at the confluence of the Tulameen and Similkameen rivers. Hudbay is planning to expand its operations, and reopen a dormant pit flanking the Similkameen.
Similkameen Valley, B.C.
Follow the flow of the Similkameen downstream as it carves through the valley toward Keremeos. Just a few miles north lives Ulxanica, a knowledge keeper, drummer and fluent language speaker of n̓səl̓xčin̓, his first language. His horses grazed near his misty mountain home.
Enloe Dam, Washington
The Similkameen runs from its western headwaters in Manning Park across the border to spill into the Okanogan River. It feeds the robust agricultural lands of the valley along the way.
Water from the tributaries has been overextended. Climate change will make much of this uninhabitable for salmon without changes.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the Upper and Lower Similkameen Indian Bands and nonprofits are working to remove Enloe Dam and restore balance.
Icicle Creek, Leavenworth
The Okanogan empties into the Columbia near Brewster. About 60 miles south, the Wenatchee’s flows meet the mighty Columbia.
A tributary known today as Icicle Creek has nourished the šnp̍əšqʷáw̉šəxʷ for millennia.
Part of the salmon ceremony is to give back to the water what it gives to us, said Salmon Chief Darnell Sam, to make sure the nutrients stay within the system.
Colville Reservation
From the confluence of the Wenatchee and the Columbia heading east, the flows are silenced.
Dams drowned historic fishing sites and towns.
Displaced by mining and later declared “extinct” by the Canadian government, the Sinixt people, many of whom reside here today, have won recognition as a transboundary people and helped initiate cleanup after a century of mining pollution.
Duck Valley Reservation
Follow the Snake River along the Washington, Idaho and Oregon state lines to southeast Oregon where it meets a tributary, the Owyhee.
The town of Owyhee, Nevada, was alive in July, as the downbeats of the host drum, Black Lodge, reverberated through the arbors under burnt orange skies.
Owyhee Canyonlands
Brian Thomas is a councilmember and former chairman of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley and a fourth generation cattle rancher.
He’s a descendant of the Thacker family for which Thacker Pass is named and is a fluent speaker of his family’s Paiute language — his first language.
His ancestors joined the Bannock War against the U.S. Cavalry. After their release from the Fort Simcoe prison camp, they moved or were forcibly relocated to Duck Valley, among other places.
Remnants of people’s existence here for generations uncounted can be found all over the desert, said Reggie Sope, a traditional historian and an enrolled member of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley.
Thacker Pass, Nevada
In northwest Nevada, the lithium mine owned by Lithium Americas is just the beginning for this ancient, extinct volcano. More mining projects are on the table.
McDermitt (Oregon and Nevada)
West of the Owyhee River emerges the town of McDermitt, where heat waves radiate off the highway and members of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe gather inside a library to practice the Northern Paiute’s ancient language of Wayaduaga Apegan, the “language of the Rye-Grass Valley.”
Elder and teacher Jeralyn Brown guided students through the lessons with her warm gentleness.
This landscape, where a lithium mine is now taking shape, holds lessons of the past.
Fort McDermitt Reservation
Paiute tribal elder Inelda Sam grew up fishing for trout in Thacker Pond, hunting deer and groundhogs in the hills. Ruby red chokecherries fill her freezer today.
Northern Paiute tribal elder Inelda Sam talks at her home on the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Reservation in Nevada. Sam is a member of People of Red Mountain or Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
Northern Paiute tribal elder Inelda Sam talks at her home on the Fort… (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
Peehee Mu’huh, also known as Thacker Pass, is a sacred place. “That is where a lot of our people were massacred,” she said, referencing an 1865 killing of more than 30 Northern Paiute people by the 1st Nevada Cavalry.
“We don’t want that (place) to be destroyed,” she said.
Reporting for this project was supported in part by the Fund for Environmental Journalism of the Society of Environmental Journalists and EcoFlight, a nonprofit using small aircraft to provide an aerial perspective with a mission to educate and advocate for wild lands, watersheds and culturally important landscapes.
