7-16-15

We came over to celilo longhouse, we where going to stay there a couple days there but there was a change in plans, we did pull weeds around the longhouse and cleaned it up a little bit, we also had a speaker come and talk to us named paul and he was talking about how our tribe needs more natives to help with the fishing rights but not just the fishing rights but all our rights, its almost making me want to change my mind in what i want to do i want to also help my tribes rights (yakima) i would really want to step up in these kinds of things. He also talked about the dam and how its effecting the fish,both pro and cons on it, but most of it was bad about the dam. The dam is really effecting the way the water is along with the fish, before the dam people used to drink from the water and see fish swimming in it and it would be just beautiful but now no one can drink from it anymore, cant see the fish in it like it use to be. The dam has stopped the fish from going other places, the fish is not the same way it use to be back then, the non-native people started to do there work on them and messed up the way things use to be.
There are people who don't understand how much our fish means to us, we have stories on how we go the fish and where it came from, stories from how the land looked before the dam was put up. The dam is also killing and putting some of the fish at danger, maybe if the dam was never put up we wouldn't have so meany problems with it. I think that the dam needs to be taken down, i would love for the water to be clear again so i can see what it was like and to see the fish swimming in the river, also to have them go back to where they use to be back then. Defending our rights is a big thing, we would have to bring up the treaty, why we think its to be taken down, whats the plan after its down, but to make it would the whole tribe would have to work together and make a plan and all come to a agreement.