Still Running Water

Still Running Water is an in-process video that follows the Columbia River over nearly 2,000 kilometres from a spring just west of the Kootenay Glacier in southeastern B.C., to Astoria, Oregon, where it dumps into the Pacific Ocean. At the river’s source spring, water gently gurgles up from blue-grey mud, past Bunch Grass and Wild Camus, eventually sending rivulets of silt towards the sea. At the mouth, the Columbia River is over six kilometres wide and known as one of the most hazardous waterways to navigate in the world. This massive river runs through the heart of many interrelated Indigenous cosmologies, and was historically one of the most ecologically (and spiritually) important salmon-bearing rivers in the Pacific Northwest. It is also home to fourteen hydroelectric dams on the main stem and over 400 in the entire Columbia River watershed.

The dams—in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon—are heralded for energy production, flood control, irrigation, and navigation for inland freight. However, their efficiency has also incurred irreversible ecological and cultural costs; these massive structures have irrevocably reshaped the course of the river. The Columbia is monitored and monetized down to the millilitre, drastically altering ecological rhythms both micro and macro. The hydropower projects have destroyed a culturally invaluable steelhead and salmon fishery;11The Grand Coulee dam, built between 1933 and 1942 in eastern Washington, cut off upstream salmon migration completely from the upper Columbia watershed. Chief Joseph Dam, constructed between 1950 and 1955, is located just downstream of Coulee also blocks salmon passage. reduced wildlife and wetland aquatic habitat and greatly impacted the lives of many in the watershed, including numerous Indigenous nations. Many communities were forcibly removed from their ancestral territories and their cultural practices centred on the river without meaningful consultation. The dam constructions also flooded and desecrated many sacred burial sites and several culturally and spiritually important fishing and trading sites, including Celilo Falls in Oregon and Kettle Falls in Washington.

Still Running Water records the river from source to mouth: the monolithic dams, as well as the demolished townsites and flooded forests in the reservoirs behind them. While the filming process was essentially an attempt to grasp the immense scale of the river and the complex geopolitical relationships playing out on its shores, these images are not meant to be exhaustive. Instead, they offer some reflections on the human hubris of large-scale industrial energy production and its impact on the Columbia River watershed.

Still Running Water is a contribution to River Relations: A Beholder’s Share of the Columbia River, which was a two-year interdisciplinary artistic research project undertaken by a collective of artists, geographers, and poets between 2016 and 2018.22This project involved Nick Conbere, Rita Wong, Fred Wah, John Holmgren, Emmy Willis, Matthew Evenden, Zoe Kostuchuk, and Genevieve Robertson, and can be found at http://www.riverrelations.ca. River Relations responds to the extensive damming of the river and the renegotiation of the Columbia River Treaty. Still Running Water is being produced at a timely moment. The treaty—between Canada and the U.S., signed in 1961 and ratified in 1964—attempted to align divergent bi-national interests. It set the stage for further hydro development33Four dams were built under the Treaty: Keenleyside Dam (B.C.), Mica Dam (B.C.), Duncan Dam (B.C.), and Libby Dam (Montana). in both countries and granted the U.S. some management rights over the Canadian portion of the Columbia River for American energy and flood control needs. While the treaty has provided notable economic, power-generation, and flood-control benefits, at the time of ratification there was little value placed on either Indigenous territorial rights or ecological impact, and this is clear in the cultural and ecological losses that the upper Columbia basin region has faced. With flood-control provisions expiring in 2024, the treaty is now under active re-negotiation. The changes will affect the environmental and social well-being of the Columbia basin on both sides of the border, and hopefully address environmental issues such as upstream salmon migration, the health of wetland ecosystems, and nutrient flow. Other emerging issues include agricultural water shortages experienced in central Washington, Indigenous sovereignty, and shifting climate patterns due to global warming. It is presently unclear what kind of meaningful change will result from the re-negotiation.

Still Running Water bears witness to the impact of this political deal, and the development of hydro-power along the Columbia at large, through a series of static video shots taken along the river over two years. The project does not assert a narrative structure, but rather allows the river and the changes impressed upon it to form a connective tissue. How does this riverine geography emblematize broader issues of ethical watershed governance, Indigenous-settler relationships, and trans-border dynamics—as well as regional, national, and global futures for energy production?