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Many moons ago
Before this soil was touched by human hands
The Snake River ran wild
From the rocky mountains of what we now call Wyoming
To the southeastern corner of Washington
Where she met the Columbia and flowed west
To the open ocean
A river is like a vein
Sustaining a body of life
And so it was that the Snake
Watered the old growth evergreen forests who
Towered upon her shores
Bathed the native creatures that stumbled into her currents
Carried the boats of Indigenous peoples who dwelled along her banks since time immemorial
Over 11,000 years before European settlers drew borders upon the land
Teeming with the lifeblood of the region - salmon
150 years is no time at all to a cedar
To a boulder
To a drop of river water
Yet, under the light of the same moon, it is all the time it took to transform this corner of the world
Into a place unrecognizable from its origins
Today 20 dams stand between the mouth of the snake and the
Pacific ocean
And nearly 8 million people now reside in this, the evergreen state, building highways where there once were forests, and harnessing this sacred river water to power their cities
And the salmon - once so prolific that in springtime you couldn't skip a pebble cross a creek
Without hitting one
Are fewer every passing year, and should their rivers remain confined, we’ll soon find none at all.
Four dams hold the lower snake river captive
Built for ship canals that go unused today, rendered obsolete by the railway
Built for surplus hydropower that the indebted government can no longer afford
Built on Nez Perce ancestral fishing grounds, built across 140 miles of salmon spawning grounds
For the salmon, for the orca, for our children’s children to grow alongside these creatures that exist only here, within this mountainous moss-laden riverine corner of the universe
The removal of these dams is our only hope
Many moons ago the Snake River ran wild
It is the prayer of every forest
Every mountain mile
Every soul tied to this land
That someday she will dance freely
As the skies again
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2. |
Wild River
04:53
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Wild river flowing to the sea
Older than our written, our remembered history
You are our home
You hold our songs
Wild river flowing through the trees
Carrying the wisdom of our mothers back to be
You are our home
You hold our songs
Wild river flowing with the wind
All that's left us someday finds a way around again
You are our home
You hold our songs
Everything comes back, everything comes around again
These same waters wove the ground as our world began
Wild river flowing to the sea
So long shackled, so long bound from running free
You are our home
You hold our songs
You'll carry on
Long after we've gone
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3. |
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A thousand miles, a thousand miles to the mountain stream
The way is long to get back home from the open sea
Against the flow of a river strong, the same bed where they were born
Will weave new life in the coming dawn, so fleeting
I drove so far east
It’s hard to believe
This river is bound for the Salish Sea
Where the fresh and saltwater meet
Salmon grow
Since time immemorial tribes have survived
On the meat of these fish under hot summer skies
Creation myths tell long before we arrived
The salmon were guiding us home
Chorus
To die after spawning the eggs of their young
Into the riverbed soon to become
The nourishing soil for trees up above
who drink the sunlight in
We take what we want - surely they will keep on
As always they have, and as we’ve always done
We forget what it means for something to be gone
and how deeply our worlds intertwine
Chorus
The Snake River dams
Like prison gates stand
To shackle these waters that nourish our land
For concrete power, but these human hands
Can tear them down again
For if you go and sit upon the shore
Where the sage hills are endless
And pelicans soar
As the last light sinks beyond the fore
A river restored you can almost
imagine
Chorus x2
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4. |
By and By (Orca Song)
03:57
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Mother and child
Carried for miles
We live on the edge of a world unknown
Sea reaching wide
Turning these tides
As far as they roam they always come home
By and by
Language passed on
Weaving of songs
How little we understand from these rocky shores
A dance with the sky
A will to survive
As far as they roam they always come home
By and by
So we follow their call
Oh to be where they are
We breathe as they breathe
We share the same sea
It’s a balance so deep
A promise we’re learning to keep
We follow their call
For aren't we all
Creatures of water forest and stars
Wherever we’re from
We called the same ocean home
In joy and in grief
With children to feed
We live on the edge of a world alongside our own
Cold waters beneath
Trees evergreen
Wherever they roam they’ll find a way home
to these skies
By and by
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5. |
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I don’t know what I expected to feel upon visiting the Lower Snake River Dams
Anger perhaps
Fear
Desperation - and all this was present but
What I felt most was loss
The loss of what once was echoes through the river valley
It is woven in the wind
In the drone of highway traffic
In the dry, cracking soil
In the muted voice of a shackled river
Loss of the salmon that won’t return
Of the orcas that have starved
Of the tribes whose sacred lands were stolen away
Of the unfulfilled promise of prosperity, progress, and power
The dams grind on, obsolete, a reminder of what cannot be restored
And there are those who would give their lives to see them breached
And it has been 60 years
And it is here I realize we cannot move forward without grieving and honoring what is lost.
Yet
So many miles of these lands remain wild, untouched
They are not ruined beyond repair like countless waters of this region
There is so little time
And there is so much to be done
Ands still there is hope among all this, but turning away
is no longer an option. The dams must go, it is only way this can go.
For here it is, what we have failed to understand
That when the salmon die, we die
If this river home is unlivable for the ones that feed us, how can it sustain us
Our fragile water bodies, our polluted coastal cities
All life is connected, this we have always known and often forgotten
When we save the salmon, the orca, the waters that tie our world together
We are saving ourselves
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6. |
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I dig my feet into the soil
This land has grown me from a child
How it’s changed with every season
And so have I, so have I
Come the morrow we’ll be wiser
We’ll be bolder in our stride
We will learn from each other
Find our ways to the riverside
For all our voices raised together
Echo farther than we’ll ever know so
Tear it down, break the dams
Let the waters flow
A river flowing knows no borders
Dancing through these lines we’ve drawn
And there are endless paths to follow
The past does not define the dawn
Everyone has a reason
To go down to the water’s edge
To bathe our bodies, to play like children
To wonder how we ever left
For all our voices raised together
Echo farther than we’ll ever know so
Tear it down, break the dams
Let the waters flow
I dig my feet into the soil
Close my eyes and know I’m home
Here it is, our turning season
Here they are, our seeds to sow
When we listen for a moment
There is music everywhere
From the ocean, to the valleys
All across this world share
For all our voices raised together
Echo farther than we’ll ever know so
Tear it down, break the dams
Let the waters flow
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7. |
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Wild river flowing round the bend
This soil we’ve uprooted is the land we now must tend
Carry us on
Wild river flowing neath the stars
Any answer we are seeking can be born right where we are
Carry us on
Wild river flowing to the sea
A gentle hum becomes a soaring melody
You are our home
You hold our songs
And everything comes back around
Go to the water truth is found
Travel farther, voices sound
We are stronger
With each other
Father mother, sister, brother
Wild river
Everything comes back
Carried along
On river songs
In the light of the same moon we are one
And everything comes back
Wild river flowing to the sea
A new story weaves
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Claire Furtwangler Bellingham, Washington
24-year-old folk musician from Seattle, WA
email: clairefurt@gmail.com
band: themorningmoon.bandcamp.com
instagram: www.instagram.com/claire_furt/
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