This article is one of a pair of stories about the Skagit River and the federal process to relicense three major hydroelectric dams along its length. Read the companion story here.
As he explored his ancestral homeland, Schuyler visited the upper Skagit River Valley, where he encountered the Gorge Dam. When the city of Seattle decided to dam the Skagit River in the early 1900s, it chose a sacred area known as “The Valley of the Spirits,” without consulting the Upper Skagit, who at the time were fighting for their survival. “You look throughout the world’s cultures,” Schuyler said, “when they have their individual stories in their culture of how life began, this is it for us. I can’t explain the emotions of seeing this historic wrong, and the hurt.”
Read more here.
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