When your neighbor says no: green colonialism and Indigenous consent
The Yakama Nation fight to preserve Goldendale WA from a pumped hydro storage project
What happens when your neighbor says no?
Across the country, the rush to renewables is driving land-use practices and policy. The urgency of climate change has been largely ignored for decades. But, with the emergency now evident, the rush is on to electrify everything. Electrification means two immediate considerations. One, that land is needed for renewable projects such as utility-scale solar, wind, and hydro projects. And two, that materials to build those projects need to be dug up and refined, preferably here in the US.
The pressure, then, to green-light green projects is ramping up. But, are these projects truly renewable? Can projects that deplete land, contaminate life-essential water, and destroy food nurseries really be considered renewable projects? Or, is there a different and truly-sustainable path we can take, instead.
“What gives me hope is that we're at a juncture right now with this shift to renewable energy… we're still at a point in history where we can change this—tell a different story and write a different future.”
—B. Toastie Oaster
In the past and ongoing, mineral mining and fossil fuel companies have marched pipelines across wild rivers and left craters from mountain to mountain in the name of progress. Big companies pushed through projects by promising good jobs and food-on-the-table economics.
Yet little to none of that was or is renewable. The projects themselves last only one or two generations. To maintain profits and production, these projects have to tumble out and over each other, chewing up communities, leaving behind cancers, impacting and destroying aquifers, forests, and the life-sustaining ecological systems that humans and every other species rely on for life itself.
We cannot achieve renewable transformation with the systems that brought us to the emergency in the first place. We need a new, renewable way.
In June at the Climate Cafe Multifaith, we invited B. Toastie Oaster to speak about the proposed ‘renewable’ project in Goldendale, Washington. Oaster is a Choctaw citizen and journalist with High Country News and other publications. They have especially gained praise for their articles exploring what is being called ‘green colonialism.’
Central to our conversation was the proposed pumped storage hydro-electric project in Goldendale, Washington. The proposal would require use of the lands of the Yakama Nation, and it would destroy and degrade land used for thousands of years for religious ceremony and cultural practices. It would also destroy first-food root and seed nurseries essential to the tribe.
At first glance, the project can seem like a good idea. It is a renewable project—in theory—at a time when we desperately need to transition from dirty to clean energy. It is also partly sited on land that has already seen industrial use. Part of the area was an aluminum smelter, which ran from the 1940s until it declared bankruptcy and closed in 2003, leaving buildings and equipment to rust until a partial tear-down in the 2010s.
Then, for nine years, the county government worked with the landowner, and eventually with Rye Development, to develop a proposal to expand and use the site for pumped-hydro storage. Pumped-hydro storage makes energy by pumping water up into a reservoir on a mountain during periods of peak electricity generation by nearby wind turbines. Then, when the wind dies down, the reservoir releases that water through a turbine-filled tunnel. The running water causes the turbines in the tunnel to move, creating electricity.
All seemed to be full steam ahead with the Rye Development project. The catch came when the project was made public, and permit applications were filed. Prior to this, the Yakama Nation had no idea there was any plan at all. Then, with the ball already rolling, the Yakama had only 60 days to respond. They also learned that the site in question was Pushpum (Juniper Ridge), a culturally and religiously important site overlooking the Columbia River.
Oaster describes the mismatch between the nine years of research and investment by the developer, compared to the 60 days given to the tribes to respond. “The developers and the landowners have had nine years to build momentum, to invest financially, and they're flush….and then, bam! ‘What do you say about it, tribes?’ You can tell from the outset that it’s a system designed to disadvantage the tribes.”
The disadvantage is not only a time burden, but also a burden financially. Says Oaster, “Now, so you've got to think about this logistically. A tribe learns that there's this development proposed on their land. They've got to figure out what's there archaeologically, what's there in terms of first foods, endangered species? …Do they use it for ceremony? …they've got to go survey the grounds. …they have to get lawyers involved to study the laws. We're talking manpower and time.”
“Who is more of a champion of the environment than Indigenous people?”
—B. Toastie Oaster
The lack of consultation with tribes placed a huge burden on the Yakama Nation as they assessed the project, and its potential harms and/or benefits. Oaster explains, “The tribe was very clear with me when I spoke to officials there, that they support renewable energy infrastructure.” At the same time, “Pushpum is sacred to them.” The issue is less the project than the location. “They also gather food there. It's a regenerative seed bank for these endemic root species that are first foods and medicines for the different bands and tribes at the Yakama Nation.”
As vital as Pushpum is for first-food and cultural preservation, the trickiest part of the response to the proposal is the “spiritual concerns about this site,” says Oaster. There are ceremonies and practices that the Yakama tribes hold in trust with its members, only. Oaster explains that their “…spiritual practices and cultural practice …if these did become public, would be under threat of commodification by the general public or who knows. Use your imagination of the ways that that could go awry.”
Confidentiality, then, was a high priority as the Yakama Nation worked to respond to the proposal. The US Government, however, through their primary permitting agency, FERC, was and is “unwilling to conduct consultation in culturally appropriate circumstances.” Says Oaster, “they [FERC] won't keep any information confidential. They take everything from their hearings and their consultations and they document it and they file it in a public place…. You can go and just download it from their website.”
“The right to practice ceremony and religion … that's not something that someone should have to negotiate for.”
—B. Toastie Oaster
Without real communication there can be no true consultation. The system itself seems to treat consultation as just another step in the inevitable build out of the project, rather than a genuine effort to decide a rightful course of action. Says Oaster, “It's kind of a mushy term, ‘consultation.’ It's something that can be effective, and can be meaningful, but in practice is often just a venue for tribes to air their gripes before they're dispossessed or before their rights are trampled on.”
The problem of ‘mushy consultation’ is prevalent not just in the US but around the globe. Dispossession of land and resources of Indigenous people is a hallmark colonialist behavior, regardless of the project. Even if the project is designed to support the renewable transition, without meaningful consultation the result can be a similarly bleak outcomes for tribes.
The opportunity right now is to address a just and fair transition at all levels. Recently the UN adopted a new standard of Free, Prior and Informed Consent, or FPIC. But, explains Oaster, though the US has “verbally acknowledged” the standard, currently “the US does not recognize the tribes’ right to consent, or to withhold consent, to development on sacred sites.”
The true opportunity right now, as the US and the world undergoes a tremendous shift from fossil fuels to renewable and sustainable global practices, is to wrestle with the colonial harms of the past in order to stop those harms. Because, throughout US history, the response to the concerns of Native people fighting destructive projects has been dismissive, “this is just the inevitable march of progress,” and even violent, “Indians are in the way,” explains Oaster.
Real consent would be a gamechanger for everybody—people, land, and species. True collaboration needs to be part of a true green revolution. Says Oaster, “every tribe is different, but my experience has been that tribes are just remarkably collaborative. It's just part of Native values, Native people and Native governments. They like to collaborate and they like to bring partners in to help. They have a way of bringing people together and solving problems.”
“I can ask myself, ‘what kind of ancestor do I want to be remembered as?’ and conduct my life accordingly.”
—B. Toastie Oaster
An example of the power of collaboration is the work of the Yurok Tribe together with US Fish and Wildlife and the Redwood National Forest to restore condor populations in Northern California. Oaster covered the project and remembers the thrill of seeing Yurok leaders together with US officials celebrating the effort together. Both state and federal agencies recognized and valued the leadership of the Yurok people.
A new model for mutual benefit for people, land, and species is growing. And Indigenous people, who safeguard the majority of the earth’s biodiversity, can and should be leaders and partners for a green future. Oaster explains, “Tribal leaders are our bridge builders, and they'll do anything to help those condors, anything. Nobody will protect those birds and rehabilitate those birds better than the Indigenous people. So it's happening, tribal co-stewardship of public lands is happening.”
You can help. If you want to support the Yakama Nation’s effort to safeguard their land and culture, one way is to contact Washington State Governor Jay Inslee directly. Says Oaster, “This project in Goldendale needs federal permits. It also needs state permits. And the whole state permitting process ultimately comes down to agency recommendations to the governor and the governor says ‘yea’ or ‘nay.’ So Inslee could stop it.”
Other ways to help can be found on the Yakama Nation’s website.
Join Columbia Riverkeeper’s efforts in support of the Yakama tribes.
Learn more: Green colonialism is flooding the Pacific Northwest The Yakama Nation is fighting a pumped hydro storage development near Goldendale, Washington – but it’s just one of many. From HCN by B. Toastie Oaster.
B. ‘Toastie’ Oaster (they/them) is a staff writer for High Country News. Their journalism has appeared in a number of publications including Street Roots, Underscore News, the Portland Mercury, Willamette Week, Columbia Insight and Foreign Policy Magazine, and has won awards from the Native American Journalists Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, Oregon. This year their feature on the tribal fight for Pacific lamprey was a finalist for a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and they were awarded ProPublica's Local Reporting Network grant to continue their investigation into green colonialism in the Pacific Northwest. Toastie is a Two spirit person and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Find more articles and video at the intersection of faith, climate change and climate justice here on substack, or on the Faiths4Future blog.
Rev. Richenda Fairhurst is here for the friendship and conversations about climate, community, and connection. She organizes the Climate Cafe Multifaith as a co-leader of Faiths4Future. Find her in real life in Southern Oregon, working as Steward of Creation with the nonprofit Circle Faith Future.