Photo from No Nestlé in Cascade Locks' Facebook*
Poised on sacred ground, Native Americans from the Columbia River tribes stand defiantly against illegal water usage by the multinational corporate giant, Nestlé, who, you might recall from a previous Tiger Lilies post, (1/9/15) still purchases chocolate harvested by children trafficked in slave labor in Africa.
Nestlé has filed a proposal to the City of Cascade Locks in Oregon to build a water bottling plant which would draw water from Oxbow Springs in the Columbia gorge.
According to that treaty, the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes, "gave up, or ceded, to the U.S. more than 6.4 million acres in what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. In exchange, a parcel of land was designated as the Umatilla Indian Reservation which the tribes would retain as a permanent homeland."
In the treaty, the tribes "reserved rights to fish, hunt, and gather traditional foods and medicines throughout the ceded lands. The Tribes still protect and exercise those rights within the 6.4 million acres of ceded land in what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington." As you can see from the map, the Columbia River runs through the northwestern sector of their ceded lands to which they have retained their rights to fish, hunt, gather traditional foods and medicine, and protect.
Anna Mae has fasted and stood vigil outside Cascade Locks, Oregon, since Monday (8/17) urging that city's leaders’ not to allow Nestlé to bottle and sell water from the nearby Oxbow Springs. She has been joined by a growing group of tribe members and others in her stance to protect the water and stop Nestlé.
The Columbia River and its water is sacred and protected by the treaty, the tribes assert.
Nestlé has filed a proposal to the City of Cascade Locks in Oregon to build a water bottling plant which would draw water from Oxbow Springs in the Columbia gorge.
“They’re blatantly violating the Treaty of 1855,” Anna Mae Leonard (third on right in photo above) with the Columbia River Tribes said.
According to that treaty, the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes, "gave up, or ceded, to the U.S. more than 6.4 million acres in what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. In exchange, a parcel of land was designated as the Umatilla Indian Reservation which the tribes would retain as a permanent homeland."
In this map, the small area in the center is the current site of the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The
larger yellow areas are the traditional lands of the Cayuse, Umatilla
and Walla Walla.
Anna Mae has fasted and stood vigil outside Cascade Locks, Oregon, since Monday (8/17) urging that city's leaders’ not to allow Nestlé to bottle and sell water from the nearby Oxbow Springs. She has been joined by a growing group of tribe members and others in her stance to protect the water and stop Nestlé.
The Columbia River and its water is sacred and protected by the treaty, the tribes assert.
“It is intrinsically a desecration to sell that water,” Anna Mae said to a KOIN reporter. “It is specific to our spiritual, cultural practices right here.”
The proposed water bottling plant would siphon off 118 million gallons of water from Oxbow Springs every year.
“It goes against our beliefs to sell water,” Anna Mae said to the television reporter . “You cannot sell water. It’s wrong, we have to have water to live.”
And, as if the violation of a treaty isn't bad enough or that the Columbia gorge is one of the most beautiful and pristine places in the world, the Columbia River is slowly being poisoned by seepage from the Hanford nuclear remediation plant in Washington. Already, the salmon are dying due to high water temperatures in some of the area's rivers.
Oregon and Washington states are virtually militant in protecting the environment as evident in late July when 13 people suspended themselves off the St. John Bridge in Portland to protest oil drilling in Alaska. They protested by attempting to block the departure of Royal Dutch Shell PLC icebreaker 'Fennica,' which is part of Shell's exploration and spill-response plan off Alaska's northwest coast.
They were, as are Anna Mae and the Columbia River tribes, crying out to the president, the country, and the world to stop the exploitation of the natural environment by faceless, soulless multi-national corporations, such as Nestlé and Shell Oil Company - among others - which have bought their way to rape, pillage, and exploit our Earth.
Are we, the people of the Northwest, the people of the U.S. and the people of the world, so complicit in this great and terrible evil that we would silently sit by and do nothing, say nothing, turn away while our Earth is slowly being desecrated?
Perhaps the Columbia River tribes and Greenpeace activists are crying in the wind - their voices snuffed out by raging wildfires, record-breaking temperatures and a 50-year drought. But, isn't that the point? Isn't the state of the climate directly related to our doing nothing to stop this kind of exploitation by corporations?
People are encouraged to sign a petition opposing the Nestlé bottling plant in City Hall, 140 SW Wanapa St., Cascade Locks, Oregon 97014. (541) 374-8484
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Updates:
1. Re: Shell Oil drilling in the Arctic:"Our Climate, Our Future": As Obama Visits Arctic,
Weeks after approving Shell’s plans to drill in Alaska, President Obama is heading to the state to warn about the dangers of climate change. "Alaska’s glaciers are melting faster, too, threatening tourism and adding to rising seas," Obama said in his weekly address. A protest is scheduled today in Anchorage to urge Obama to reverse his decision on Shell and stop all exploratory drilling in the Arctic. We speak to Richard Steiner, an Alaskan marine conservation biologist, who is speaking at the "Our Climate, Our Future" rally.
2. It seems the City of Cascade Locks also has concerns about the strain the water bottling plant would put on its water system, according to a statement on its website.
"The City of Cascade Locks' current water system cannot handle the amount of water Nestlé would bottle from the waters of Oxbow Springs. It shouldn't. It's not designed to."
Everyone is encouraged to sign a petition opposing the Nestlé bottling plant in City Hall, 140 SW Wanapa St., Cascade Locks,Oregon 97014. (541) 374-8484
Furthermore:
Nestle Pays Only $524 To Extract 27,000,000 Gallons Of California Drinking Water
(left) The Arrowhead Mountain Water Company bottling plant, owned by Swiss conglomerate Nestle, on the Morongo Indian Reservation near Cabazon, Calif., (AP/DamianDovarganes)
Activists have called for a boycott of Nestle Waters and all Nestle products until they are held accountable for their actions in California.
*https://www.facebook.com/pages/NO-Nestle-in-Cascade-Locks/1634554230089491?hc_location=ufi
*http://koin.com/2015/08/19/anti-nestle-protesters-gather-in-cascade-locks/
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