INDIAN COUNTRY'S LEADERSHIP ACKNOWLEDGED

Strong values and collaboration credited for tribes’ success

By Elizabeth Woody, Special to Today

Story Published: Jan 20, 2010

PORTLAND, Ore. – Ecotrust recognized five of the West’s most innovative indigenous leaders Dec. 3 for their efforts to improve community conditions. The Ecotrust Indigenous Leadership Award annually honors Western tribal, First Nation, and Alaska Native leaders who possess long-range vision, a sense of place in the growing global economy, sustainable societal values and integrated historical knowledge of the land’s marine and terrestrial ecosystems.The 2009 awardee, Jim Manion, general manager of Warm Springs Power & Water Enterprises and chair of the Deschutes River Conservancy, received $25,000.

The four finalists who each received $5,000 were Janeen Comenote of Wash., founding member and director of the National Urban Indian Family Coalition that comprises 24 urban Indian centers in 19 cities; Allen Pinkham, Idaho, co-founder of the Chief Joseph Foundation; Brian Wallace, who is serving four four-year terms as tribal chairman of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California; and Patricia Whitefoot of Wash., advocating in tribal, regional, and national efforts to improve Indian education at all levels.On the night of the Ecotrust honoring ceremony, the first fish since 1968 passed through a 270-foot high underwater tower rising from the bottom of Oregon’s Lake Billy Chinook behind Round Butte Dam into new waters. The fish was a beneficiary of Manion’s work and innovative leadership by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.

Under Manion’s pivotal leadership, CTWS worked with 22 federal, state, county, and nonprofit entities from 1994 on to develop a comprehensive plan to restore these fish to the Deschutes Basin, while becoming first time tribal co-owners of a hydroelectric dam. CTWS financed a restructure of debt from this purchase through Wall Street in November 2009.CTWS owns one-third of the 465-million-wattage project. Portland General Electric owns two-thirds. The 20-mile long complex of three dams, some 440 feet high, had blocked fish migration from 226 miles of streams and impounded the Deschutes River just above the section of river designated a Wild and Scenic River, and a tributary of the Columbia.

The new underwater tower, built by CTWS and PGE, allows the hydro project to blend water from bottom and top, creating ideal temperatures for the water quality required for optimum fish health. It can now attract seaward salmon smolts and allows them to migrate, while also allowing for continued production of low-cost hydroelectric power at the facility that improves the tribes’ fish harvest and benefits recreational fishing.Manion credits tribal leadership of both council and administration for support of his development. They charged him while still in his mid-20s to explore and learn the energy business to properly manage this asset. In the mid 1990s, his test of mettle occurred when the Warm Springs Power Enterprise and PGE sat at the table to renegotiate compensation for the dams situated on tribal land on the border of the reservation, a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requirement to license Pelton Dam.

The tribes felt the compensation proposed from PGE was inadequate and both parties left the table “agreeing to disagree.”Over the next three years, CTWS and PGE submitted competing FERC relicensing plans. Eventually PGE came back to the table to make a deal. Manion and the now deceased CTWS tribal attorney Jim Notebook worked out a global settlement with PGE agreeable to the Warm Springs tribal council and the tribal membership.At the award presentation in Ecotrust’s Billy Frank Jr. Conference Center, Warm Springs Chief Delvis Heath and CTWS tribal council vice-chair Aurolyn Stwyer-Pinkham spoke of Manion’s strength as an innovative and responsive tribal leader. Heath described their recent journey to Wall Street to interest institutional bond buyers skeptical due to a recent default by another American Indian tribe, in the restructuring of debt acquired in the purchase of Pelton Dam.


They convinced the buyers the financial restructuring of this debt was entirely different from a casino operation. This project rated as a reliable asset with a history of success by Standard and Poors, a bond rating company that rates risk of investments. In closing the deal they overcame a barrier greater to tribal peoples than dams are to salmon.Heath closed the evening with a song to strengthen all in attendance, honoring the goodwill of the tribes represented and future efforts of the leaders present.

Indian Country Today-Jan. 20, 2010