Multiple generations of First Nations dug the ceremonial shovels in what will be a new salmon passage to return the fish to Okanagan Lake for the first time in almost 100 years.
More than 200 people gathered at the rose garden near the Okanagan Lake Dam in Penticton on March 7 for the ceremony that is hoped to mark the beginning of the end to one of the last major barriers keeping the salmon from their traditional habitat.
"Most people don't realize that the Okanagan syilx people, we are a salmon people," said Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band and chair of the Okanagan Nation Alliance. "Today, the Okanagan Nation Alliance is the largest First Nation fisheries management team in Canada. Okanagan Nation Fisheries puts a lot of time and effort into bringing back this important source for not just our people because when the first non-native people came to this area, they wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for the salmon.
Once the passage is completed, which is currently being aimed at June, it will be opened up in July and provide salmon access to more than 350 square kilometres of habitat for the keystone species.
The $5 million project is being funded through several sources, with the largest amount coming from Washington State's Habitat Conservation Plan and the Habitat Subcommittee of the Priest Rapids Coordinating Committee.
The Okanagan River is a part of the Columbia River basin, and salmon restoration efforts benefit not only the waters north of the border but all the way downstream.
Brian Saluskin, council member of the Yakama Nation on the other side of the border and a fish biologist for over 18 years, also joined in digging one of the ceremonial first shovelfuls of dirt.
"I started my work with sockeye up here in Canada," said Saluskin. "In 2009, we started our own reintroduction back to the Yakama Basin. There wasn't any sockeye there for over 100 years because of the reservoir dams that they built within the basin.
"Because of the ONA and the work, you know, that we did up here and the experience that we gained working with sockeye, we're able to bring them back to the basin and re-establish them again after 100 years absence to our people."
Elder Richard Armstrong (caylx) has been responsible for conducting ceremonies to support the return of the salmon for years in communities on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, and he demonstrated the ritual for the public for the first time, speaking of the importance of the salmon and the natural world.
"One of the things that's important to remember about the salmon, is that the salmon is so devoted to you and to the land and to the water that no matter if that dam and some mile high and a mile wide, that salmon is gonna try every day until it dies to get up over it, around it, through it, or under to come back to you and the waters.
"That kind of determination has never stopped for all of the dams that are in the rivers. The salmon have never stopped trying to come back to you as a people."
When the current dam was constructed in 1953, a fishway was built on the west side of the structure. The ONA opened the fishway for the first time in 2019, however it was not adequately designed and was inaccessible at certain lake levels.
The new passage will allow unimpeded access for all species of salmon, from sockeye to Chinook, to pass through no matter what water level the lake or downstream river is at, with naturalized features such as boulders to break up the water's flow.
It will be open to the air and covered with a grating to allow light through and for people to observe the salmon as they make their way past the dam into Okanagan Lake.
There will also be a monitoring station installed, an invasive species barrier, and cobbles and boulders at the exit into the lake for the native Rockey Mountain Ridge mussel.
Students from the Outma Sqilx鈥橶 school from the PIB opened the ceremony with a singing of the Okanagan Song, and one of them also joined in digging out the first shovels.
"I'm so happy that our children will be witnessing today's event," said PIB Chief Greg Gabriel. "I'm going to invite you all back this fall when this project will be complete and you will see what happens as a result of today's start of today's project. You will see the salmon return to our lakes as they did well before the 1900s, the salmon that we lived with for thousands of years.
