The solar panels Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023, provide power to Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center, Mission.

MISSION — Preserving natural resources at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation has an awesome scope of responsibilities that range from First Foods preservation to generating electrical energy.

Of course, there’s much more than that.

Mason Murphy is the CTUIR energy and environmental science program manager, so he monitors how the many natural resources programs work.

A significant foundation of the overall program is historical.

“Our Strategic Energy Plan, which is really focused within the CTUIR reservation boundary, is one foundation,” Murphy said, “and then there is the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission energy vision for the Columbia River Basin. That covers beyond the initial reservation area. It goes well into our ceded territories.”

The Walla Walla Treaty Council of 1855 was responsible for the local tribes ceding “several million acres of land to the federal government in exchange for protection of natural resources, the right to hunt, fish, to gather and pasture animals and so on,” Murphy said.

The 1855 treaty also commits the federal government to protect those rights and the resources they hold in trust, Murphy said. There are rights that must not be abridged.

“A common definition of sovereignty is to have those rights and be able to practice them,” Murphy said.

A tangible success in exercising tribal sovereignty began in the early 1900s, Murphy said.

“Look at the hydroelectric system and see the impact that had on two of the tribes’ critical First Foods resources, one being clean water and the second being fisheries, typically salmon,” Murphy said. “Salmon were extirpated (stamped out) from much of the Columbia River after the dams were installed, and only until recently in the 1980s, where those fish restored through a series of actions and exertion of that tribal sovereignty.”

Murphy said much of the still-a-long-way-to-go salmon recovery was realized by financial backing from Bonneville Power Administration, a major producer and distributor of electrical power in the Pacific Northwest.

“That level of sovereignty has been one of the first ways that tribes have been able to exert their authority and their sovereignty on those resources in these lands,” Murphy said. “When we start to look at other areas, like the wind development in the 2008 time frame, we see big game habitats being disrupted. There are various agreements that came into place that allowed for the tribes to mitigate those impacts, and in some cases allowed access to areas that hadn’t been accessible before.”

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have a less-than-obvious relationship with the power generation that nearly destroyed the salmon fishery, and their business need for electricity.

The tribes own Wildhorse Resort & Casino and that electrical draw on the power grid is almost enough to send an electrical meter spinning into the earth. Murphy said the casino accounts for about 75% of the total electricity the tribes use.

The tribes have sought a do-it-yourself model as a way of relieving at least some impact on energy sovereignty.

“Part of the strategic energy plan within the reservation calls for us to generate our own electricity in a way that mitigates some of the impact to cultural and natural resources,” Murphy said.

The tribes have installed several solar-to-electricity conversion arrays on ground and rooftops, including apartments, car parking awnings and community buildings. A ground-based solar array next to the CTUIR Natural Resources Field Station, can generate about 90 kilowatts. Another array next to the Timine Way North Apartments can produce about 90 kW when the 366 panels are basking in the sun. An array on car parking awnings at Tamastslikt Cultural Institute produces about 107 kW, and there are others. The Tamastslikt Institute also has a single windmill, but its presence has been unwelcome by some tribal members, Murphy said.

Murphy said global climate change also has affected tribal sovereignty because some traditional plants are over time incrementally migrating to higher elevations, compelling the tribe to consider property purchases at greater land heights. Other land purchase considerations include cultural resources and cultural values that might be outside of traditional ceded boundaries and traditional tribal utilities.

The blend of the tribes protecting natural resources while conducting business was reflected on by Walla Walla and Umatilla tribal member Monica Paradise, who is the CTUIR business development and tax project manager.

“Oftentimes we have to remind people this is an ecosystem,” Paradise said, “so we’re actually giving back to the community as well as the programs that we’re able to offer in socioeconomics, in natural resources and our public safety.”