Down into the Hungry Horse Dam in the 1950s and back up through the SKQ Dam in the 2010s. Dams create power, but unequally. This is a colonial history of rivers told through three dams.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

DAMS Daniel: Headwaters is brought to you by the park's nonprofit partner, [slow synth music starts] the Glacier Conservancy. Donations from listeners to the Conservancy are what make Headwaters possible. If you'd like to support the show, go to glacier.org. Beyond that, leaving a review in your podcast app or sending this episode to a friend is a big help. Sound Effect: [river sounds begin, music fades out] Woman #1: I can definitely tell you from personal experience that I just emerge a, a calmer person when I've been on a river trip and had that true mind/body rest. There's something about that constant sound of the river that, at least for me, completely drowns out all the noise of raising children and being gainfully employed and being a good daughter and advocating for public lands and all the things that I spend my non-river time doing. I guess the river is just the best. It's, you know, some people listen to white noise at night to go to sleep. And I listen to a recording of the river because it just takes me to that magical place that I wish I could always be on. Madeline [to Woman #1]: That's amazing. Is it specifically a recording of of rivers here? Woman #1: What a great question. No. I wish that it were. [Madeline laughs] It's just Apple Music: river noises [Woman #1 laughs]. Madeline: Courtney Stone is a board member of the Glacier Conservancy. That's the park's nonprofit partner that funds the show. But I wanted to talk to Courtney because she used to work for a guiding company that leads rafting tours on the park's rivers. Courtney: I've worked in and around Glacier National Park my entire adult life and first came out here in 1999 when I was nine years old. My first memory of Glacier is stopping on Highway Two as the Middle Fork comes out of the wilderness. And I asked my mother why the water was so clear, like what was wrong with it? And she laughed and laughed because I didn't know being from the southeast that rivers could be clear and that they could be turquoise. Madeline [to Courtney]: Wow. That's such a beautiful illustration of childlike wonder translating into the rest of your life. Madeline: And as she started guiding on the park's rivers, she also started to learn about the history of those rivers. Courtney: I learned about a proposal to build a dam on the north fork of the Flathead River, and that dam was going to be called the Glacier View Dam had it gone in [starting flute notes from "Wild West" by Frank Waln fade in, river sounds fade out]. And I was just absolutely astonished. What did it mean to protect lands via the National Park Service if we could flood them with a dam? Madeline: You're listening to Headwaters, a show named for the fact that Glacier National Park is the source of three major river systems [drumbeat begins]. The waters of the continent flow from these mountains and connect the park to everything else [string instrument begins]. So if you control the water here, you control the water everywhere. Music: ["Wild West"] Madeline: This season is called Switchback: stories about changing direction. I'm Madeline. Gaby: And I'm Gaby. [music fades out] This is the story of the back and forth pressure to dam [slow synth music starts] or not to dam Glacier's rivers. We will go down into the belly of the dams. As we descend, the pressure will build. We will journey down into a history deeper and darker than the dams themselves [music fades out]. It's 1931. Glacier's superintendent is exchanging letters with his supervisors in Washington, D.C. He tells them: Glacier superintendent: The need for additional power at Headquarters has even passed being urgent. During the early evening, [tense ambient music fades in] we do not have enough light to read by, and I have not been able to find enough power to run a motion picture projector, which has brought my efforts to produce a Glacier Park film to a stop completely [music fades out]. Gaby: The Great Depression is escalating and Glacier National Park is powerless. Figuratively, and literally. The park's only source of electricity is from gas generators and small hydroelectric systems on tiny creeks. But the generators are expensive and the creeks freeze up in the winter. It's 1932. The superintendent writes to his staff: Glacier superintendent: I think everybody has noticed that the lights at Headquarters, [music fades in] especially during the early morning and late evening, are so weak that reading of any kind is at times nearly impossible [music fades out]. Gaby: It's 1935. The superintendent, in a state of desperation, writes to engineers for help: Glacier superintendent: The power situation at Belton Headquarters is rapidly becoming critical [music fades in then out]. Gaby: It's 1937. The superintendent publishes a stern warning to all park employees: Glacier superintendent: [music fades in] Meter readings indicate there are still a number of persons whose electrical consumption can only be explained by the constant use of electrical appliances of one kind or another, especially heaters and hot plates [music fades out]. Gaby: The superintendent is publicly shaming his employees into reducing their electrical use because there's just not enough power being generated to go around. Glacier superintendent: Starting on the first of next month [music fades in] a list showing the consumption of power at Headquarters will be published for the information of everyone. Gaby: The park's electrical needs will eventually be met by two large dams built downstream. The Kerr Dam, which we'll come back to later, and the Hungry Horse Dam [music fades out, field tape fades in]. Madeline [in the field]: Okay. So Hungry Horse. It's the friendliest damn town in the West. Gaby [in the field]: That's their slogan. Madeline [in the field]: The friendliest dam town in the west, the friendliest... damn town... [laughing] You know, where is the emphasis there? Gaby [in the field]: Right? It changes. Madeline [in the field]: I get... I get that, I get that that's the point, but... Madeline: We're looking at this history through three dams: we're starting with the Hungry Horse Dam, which was completed in 1953. It's right outside Glacier on the South Fork of the Flathead River, which is the one fork that doesn't border the park [field tape fades in]. Gaby [in the field]: Are you a dam person? Madeline [in the field]: Definitely wouldn't come up in a top five [background laughter]. It be— okay. All right. Put a pause on that. We just rounded another corner, and the dam has come into view. It is a concrete behemoth, and it kind of appears out of nowhere. There's signs, obviously, that it's sort of foreshadowing... Madeline: In this case, behemoth means 564ft tall [field tape audio continues quietly in background], spanning over 2000ft across the canyon. Honestly, it's staggering. Madeline [in the field]: I'm thinking of the right words... and they're not immediately coming to mind because this is something that I haven't really seen anywhere else. It's a ginormous technical term, wall of concrete. It's curved... Downstream. So it's kind of like... a slice of a bowl was taken out and then kind of wedged into a canyon. Madeline: I'm here to meet M'lissa Morgan [field tape fades in]. M'lissa: Hey, how's it going? Gaby [in the field]: Hi, M'lissa! M'lissa: Hey! Gaby [in the field]: I'm Gaby. M'lissa: Nice to meet you, Gaby, Madeline. Sophia: I'm Sophia. Madeline: Hungry Horse Dam is managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, another Interior Department agency like the National Park Service. Our guide, M'lissa, is a historian for the Bureau. Madeline [to M'lissa]: [Water lapping] We're standing right on the edge of the reservoir, looking into it from the... dam itself, I guess. If you have any corrections, please. M'lissa: Yeah, I would just say we're on the right abutment, across the street from the visitor center, looking at the Morning Glory Spillway. Madeline [to M'lissa]: [Beeping and door opening] Wow. That was very cool [M'lissa laughs]. Madeline: Inside the dam, [tense ambient music fades in] It's all painted concrete, smooth walls, echoey sounds, and no people. Signs designate "hard hat areas" and warn about "invisible electromagnetic fields" [buzzing sound builds]. My body is filled with a constant hum, like a guitar string that's just been plucked. The note getting deeper, and deeper, as I go down [music fades out]. M'lissa: ...recollect, I think we're about 30ft down from the top. Madeline [to M'lissa]: What are the high magnetic fields that are present? M'lissa: So to create power through hydro-generation, you have to have magnets. Madeline [to M'lissa]: Oh, cool [beeping sound, humming audible]. I feel like I can feel sort of a hum in my chest. I don't know if that's from the generators or the machinery or if I'm imagining it, but like, my whole body just feels a little bit tingly if I really think about it and focus on it. And the air's pretty still in here [slow synth music fades in]. It's a lot warmer in here than it was outside, and coming down into this building. So kind of like a warm, diffused light with a, I don't know, this like, interesting vibration feeling happening. Music: [music plays then fades out] Madeline: Humans have dammed streams and creeks for millennia, but the massive concrete dams we're talking about today are a pretty recent invention. Most were built between the 1930s and 1960s, for flood control, for agriculture, and to create electricity. To some, they represented a pinnacle of human ingenuity and engineering, especially at certain times in history. Man #1: There's a lot of pros, if you will, to dam building. They're also symbols of American achievement, especially during the Great Depression. The federal government is putting the nation to work. It's putting its natural resources to work. It's not really an accident that some of our major dam projects are part of the New Deal. Madeline: This is Dr. Shawn Bailey, an environmental historian who studied the history of dams across the country, with a focus on Glacier. Shawn: We see in Montana the building, of the Fort Peck Dam, which is the cover story on the first-ever edition of Life magazine. It's a symbolic achievement. It was awe-inspiring for a lot of people. Madeline: The dust bowl of the 1930s was a massive drought that caused widespread crop failure. No one wanted to go through something like that again. And there was a feeling that we ought to be using the Earth's resources. Some called it the "wise use" principle. Shawn: The "wise use" of the Progressive Era was that basically it makes scientific sense to make the best use of the resources we have and to do it in a way that is... that it continues. So a dam is something that, yes, it will flood a valley. Yes, it will inundate tens of thousands of acres with almost a trillion gallons of water, but it potentially can provide power for generations to come. Madeline: This attitude grew increasingly popular among decision makers of the time. Shawn: Franklin Lane was Secretary of the Interior, and he used the phrase "sinful" at one point. That these rivers were sinful because they're the seven deadly sins, they're essentially "sloth," they're lazy. So we need to put them to work. And that's the best use of our our western rivers. Madeline: In the mid 1900s, the pressure to build more dams came from what sounded like moral, or even religious, arguments. Shawn: And so there's a spirituality on both sides of these, sort of almost a quasi-religious belief that these things make whatever side you're on, these things make the human experience better. You know, people disagree about what that is or what that should be. But both sides are making that argument. Madeline: And for a few decades, these are the prevailing sentiments. Dams, dozens of them, were built on the river systems of the West: the Colorado, the Columbia and the Missouri. Government agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation were building as fast as they could, like beavers with teeth that never dull. And their eager eyes eventually turned toward Glacier National Park. Of the three dams we're looking at, the first was Hungry Horse. The next one we're going to talk about is the Glacier View Dam, which was never built. Shawn: The Glacier View Dam was a proposal by the Army Corps of Engineers to dam what's the North Fork of the Flathead River. So the three forks two, sort of the three fingers of the Flathead River that sort of surround Glacier are the North Fork, Middle Fork, and South Fork. And the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to build about a 416-foot-high dam in this sort of small canyon between Huckleberry Mountain, which is in Glacier National Park, and Glacier View Mountain, which is in the National Forest. Madeline: If you've driven up the North Fork Valley, you've seen this spot. It's where the Camas Bridge is today. Shawn: In this 416-foot-high dam would have created a reservoir about 25 miles long and inundated about 30,000 acres of the North Fork Valley, including an estimated about 20,000 acres of Glacier National Park. Madeline: Today, it seems totally out of place to build a dam in a national park. But that wasn't always the case. Shawn: So Glacier's legislation includes a lot of language that allows natural resource use, the culling of mature timber, the building of railroad spurs throughout the park to facilitate visitation. And most importantly for for our conversation, the building of dams on dam sites in Glacier National Park. Madeline: One argument made in favor of the Glacier View Dam was that you were flooding mostly unoccupied land. Shawn: And the other major benefit from the dam builder's perspective is that it is in a national park. Basically, no one needs to be dislocated. Madeline: They figured a handful of homesteaders wouldn't be hard to remove. And the Kootenai people, along with the other tribes who use the area, had already been confined to reservations elsewhere. So that, combined with the fact that Glacier is the start of many rivers, and that there are so many narrow canyons, perfect for dams? It's not surprising that there were a lot of dam proposals throughout the 20th century [tense ambient music fades in]. But the Park Service had a plan to fight back [field tape fades in]. Madeline: How long is the elevator ride? M'lissa: Not very long. I mean, you're talking maybe 30s 45 seconds. Madeline: I can feel my ears pop a little bit. M'lissa: Yeah. Madeline: Are you stationed at the bottom? M'lissa: Um... not quite the bottom, but in... in the middle... middle of the dam [M'lissa laughs, music intensifies]. Madeline: Long hallways. Concrete stairwells, disconnected elevator rides into the dam. We descend. Madeline: [music fades, elevator opening, beeping sounds, background white noise audible] Okay. We're stepping out of the elevator. I don't know which way we're walking. M'lissa: Yeah. We're going to be going down through this hallway. It does get loud, though, so. Madeline: Okay. The light just got a lot warmer. Nice vibes. M'lissa: Yes, there's definitely temperature fluctuations depending on what space you're in. Madeline: [sniffing sound] And it's kind of an interesting smell in here, too. M'lissa: I don't know if I notice that anymore [M'lissa and Madeline laugh]. I think I've adapted. Madeline: Before my tour with M'lissa. I haven't thought too much about the inside of a dam. I figured it would just take a big, solid wedge of concrete to stop a river. But actually, from the inside, it feels like an office building. M'lissa: So yeah, we are on the fifth floor of the dam, roughly 3100 in elevation, and overlooking the machine shop. Madeline: [White noise intensifies] How much of the dam is... like is any of it just solid blocks of concrete...? M'lissa: There are, yeah. There's a lot more tunnels than one usually expects because a lot of people think they're solid, but obviously not [laughs]. But yes, there are definitely solid elements to it throughout. It's all about stability, right? When they create a space like this, they want enough concrete there to hold back over 3.5-million-acre-feet of water at full pool. But they need an operationally efficient space, too, with hallways and all that good stuff. Madeline: [tense ambient music fades in] When I thought about those miles and miles of water held back by a comparatively tiny plug of concrete, I felt a little uneasy. But M'lissa didn't seem concerned. She just said she wasn't claustrophobic [music fades out]. Gaby: It's 1960. Some friends are out for a canoe trip on one of Glacier's big reservoirs. As they paddle north, the morning light is glinting off Longfellow Peak. They can see the whole western side of Glacier National Park. The water reaches so far that with enough time it looks like they could paddle straight into the mountains. The boat glides across the glassy, blue green water. Their paddles barely making a sound as they dip in and out. [slow synth music starts] They're almost to the Bowman Marina when they remember they're supposed to be looking down. Faintly, through the clear water, they see a stone foundation, a cast iron stove, and the remnants of a chimney. They say: "that's where the Polebridge Mercantile used to be." The lake they're canoeing was created by the Glacier View Dam on the North Fork of the Flathead River. You used to see moose along the river bottoms in the winter. Now, you see people ice fishing for non-native lake trout. This scene is from the Glacier View Dam proposal. It's an alternate timeline that never came to be [music fades out]. Madeline [to Shawn]: How close was the dam ever to actually being built, would you say? Shawn: I would say pretty close. I would say this is all about human decisions, right? And people convincing other people... Madeline: Stopping the Glacier View Dam was one of the park's toughest battles. Shawn: Change any one variable and I think there's a—you know, there's a decent chance this dam gets built. Madeline: When the dam was initially proposed, World War Two was at its height. [archival audio fades in] The country was at war and it needed power. Archival Audio: [string music in background] But America desperately lacked one vital element: electricity. Electric power, the essential ingredient. Madeline: [archival audio fades out] It became difficult to push back on the mounting pressure to build dams that would generate that electricity. Shawn: One of the key arguments for the pro-dam lobby, if you will, from the government's perspective is hydroelectric power to help win World War Two. It's not an accident that there are a lot of aluminum extrusion plants along the Columbia during the 1940s, and it's not really an accident that Boeing starts building aluminum airplanes in the Pacific Northwest, because they have access to this very inexpensive power. What was not told to the public, which we sort of now know, is where a lot of this power would have gone is to, to Hanford for the development of the atomic weaponry that ultimately does end World War Two. So the extrusion of aluminum and the refining of uranium, all this requires an enormous amount of electrical power. Madeline: The National Park Service does not want a dam to flood the park, but they are also under pressure to support the war effort. Shawn: They have to thread this needle where they can't they can't just flat out say, "no, you can't try to win the war by building a dam in Glacier" because that publicly is not going to work. So initially, they are hesitant to oppose the dam... Madeline: But the war wouldn't last forever. Shawn: It changes the tenor as soon as the war is over. We're not trying to win a war anymore. Therefore, we're not building a dam in a national park. And the opposition really ramps up at that point. Madeline: Sitting under the convenient glow of electric lights, powered by the Hungry Horse Dam, the Park Service devised a two-pronged counteroffensive against Glacier View. First, they decided to redirect attention to a different dam proposal. Shawn: The most popular alternative site was called the Paradise Dam Project on the Clark Fork River. The big issue with this, and this is extraordinarily important to understand, is that that would have about the same size dam would have flooded 20,000 acres, but in this case, it would have flooded 20,000 acres of the Flathead Indian Reservation, home of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai peoples. And so the Confederated Salish and Kootenai come out in favor of Glacier View. Not because they care about this dam all this much, they're not going to see any benefit from it. But it's going to stop the construction of this other dam, the Paradise Dam. Madeline [to Shawn]: So Paradise Dam, Glacier View Dam, both would have flooded 20 to 30,000 acres, but the Glacier View Dam would have flooded. Glacier National Park and Paradise would have flooded 20,000 acres of the Flathead Indian Reservation. Shawn: Exactly right. And so you get this situation where wilderness activists are making a decision and they're very... they come out in favor of the Paradise Dam. They're not they're not against all dams they're they just don't want to inundate Glacier. And so you have this historical sort of reality where Native Americans are dispossessed to create national parks. And now if things went a different way, they might have been dispossessed to protect the same national parks in terms of these dam projects. And they're, they're making a choice, a hard choice, I imagine, but a choice nonetheless to protect the perceived wilderness of Glacier as opposed to the sovereignty and the history of the Flathead Indian Reservation. Madeline: The park's next move to stop the Glacier View Dam from being built was to construct a road to the proposed dam site, which would hypothetically increase recreation in the area. Madeline [to Shawn]: Could you talk a little bit about the Circle-8 Loop Road? Have you heard of that or, I think some people called it the Akamina Highway. It's the road that would have connected Glacier and Waterton on the West Side. Shawn: So the National Park Service was created in 1916 with this sort of dual mandate to preserve the scenery, so to protect nature and to facilitate the enjoyment of the very same nature. And so for much of the National Park Service's history, they vacillate between which is more important? Is it more important to preserve and protect nature, or is it more important to facilitate the enjoyment of said nature? And so what the International Loop Road is was an effort to get people into some of the most scenic areas of Glacier. And the idea was to build about a 130-mile loop around both Glacier and Waterton National Park, this international road. The only piece that is built, to my knowledge at least, is the Camas Road, which goes into the North Fork. And the secondary purpose of this beyond international relations is to prevent any sort of resurgence of the Glacier View Dam. That basically if we build a road, we get tourists into the North Fork Valley, we increase our numbers, we show that there's an economic reason for keeping this undammed. That basically the road was used as a reason not to even think about the dam in any future context. Madeline: By the 1960s. Most conservationists are opposed to building new roads through parks. It is a surprising move: building a road to stop a dam. But it works. And the Glacier View Dam is never built. The alternate dam site down on the Flathead Indian Reservation, the Paradise Dam? That one isn't built either. And that leads us to act three of our story: the Kerr Dam. Shawn: Yeah. So the dam was built... it was a private dam. It was built by the Montana Power Company and basically against the wishes of the Salish and Kootenai peoples. This is an act of colonization. This is taking the sovereignty away from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai people against their wishes building this dam. Madeline: The Kerr Dam was built in the 1930s and by the 1940s there's a desire to expand it and increase its electric power generation. Shawn: In 1942, 1943, if they want to increase power in the Pacific Northwest, they're looking to the rivers of Montana. The absolute fastest thing they could do was increase the size of the Kerr Dam, increase the generation, the generating power of the Kerr Dam. But they don't do that, not because they care about the Confederated Salish and Kootenai. They are defeated by other Montanans. So basically, Flathead Lake would have risen by something like 37 feet or something like that, at least in parts. And it woulda inundated some of these towns that surround this very beautiful, obviously very picturesque lake. Madeline [to Shawn]: So the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and the Wilderness Act kind of help put an end to that last era of dam building. Do you see any chance of a new era in the future? Shawn: It sort of depends on how in the future you want to me to imagine, because I think all of this is impermanent [laughs] on some level, you know, that we've this is only been 100 years of history. We decided to build dams, then we decided to stop building dams. The Glacier View Dam site at this point is one of the most protected spots in all of America. It has all these layers of different laws and different protections, but it's only protected as long as we want it to be protected [tense ambient music fades in]. It seems permanent to us, but it's it really isn't. It's still pretty fragile, if we're being honest about it. Daniel: Building dams for hydroelectric power generation is becoming a part of the past [music fades out], as too often they encroach on wilderness. Eventually it could be that the true conservationist will give up air conditioning, realizing that his own demands create pollution. Hungry Horse News, 1970. Gaby: [slow synth music starts] It's 1978. D'Arcy McNickle writes: "an Indian man named Bull, and his grandson, walk in the mountains to look at a dam, built in a cleft of rock. And what began as a walk became a journey into the world. Bull tells his grandson 'they can't stop water. Water just swallows everything and waits for more. That's the way with water.' [music fades out] His grandson replies, 'they put big rocks in the water. Then they pour the cement on top. The newspaper says that.' Bull squints and pauses. 'Am I talking to you, or to a piece of paper? The water was there when the world began. What kind of fool would want to stop it?' They follow a trail that slants upward on a mountainside and passes from the shadow of trees into momentary sunlight. [music fades in] Looking down from the clearing, he sees that the river is dry. The gravels and sands of its course have the look of bleached bones. So, it is true. They have killed the water." This fictional story is from the first few pages of the book "Wind from an Enemy Sky" by D'Arcy McNickle [music fades out]. The novel was published in 1978, just after McNickle died. He'd been working on it for almost 40 years. He grew up on the Flathead Reservation and, it's assumed that the dam in his novel was based on the Kerr Dam on the Flathead Reservation. But, with fictionalized names. About the novel, he said it was not an isolated example from history, but rather "a statement about the quality of human behavior when people of different cultures meet." [tense ambient music fades in] Madeline [to M'lissa]: [white noise fades in] This is a really blue elevator. M'lissa: Yeah. This is our third elevator. This is our— Madeline: Back at Hungry Horse. We found ourselves in yet another elevator on its way down into the dam. M'lissa: So we were currently at 3129 feet in elevation. We're going down to 3092 feet elevation. Madeline [to M'lissa]: It is so cool that there's elevations on the elevator buttons. I've never seen that. M'lissa: Well, because again, elevator elevator numbering schemes are not all created equal [laughs]. We have learned some numbers correspond with different places on different elevators. Madeline [to M'lissa]: So like the fourth floor isn't always... M'lissa: Is exactly, yeah. Madeline: We're descending deeper and deeper into the dam with Melissa, and we step out of the elevator to a rumbling that builds up in my body [music fades out]. M'lissa: [white noise builds] So, yeah, so the water's coming in down below us and spinning the force of that water and the gravity of it, is spinning the shaft. And the shaft goes up, sending kinetic energy up to the generators. And then that generator sends it into the magnets to increase that electromagnetic field, that turns into power. Madeline [to M'lissa]: [yelling over white noise] So this is just spinning with the force of water? M'lissa: The force of the water. Yep. Madeline: This is where the dam generates power, where electricity is created from what was once a river. Maybe it's the constant vibration. Maybe it's those magnetic fields I was warned about. But I almost feel dizzy. Madeline [to M'lissa]: How much of the water that's getting released from the dam goes through to make a turbine? M'lissa: Depends on how much power is needed. Now, we always have other factors involved, like there's a biological opinion that we have to follow in terms of keeping the ecosystem of the river and the different fisheries that function downstream of us. We have those to consider as well. So, it's a multi-agency effort to make all those moving pieces, no pun intended, work together and and so that the power gets generated that they want, the fish stay healthy, you know, all the different things— Madeline: In 1991, the government released a report on 40 years of negative impacts caused by the dam. Voice Actor: The construction and operation of Hungry Horse Dam caused extensive losses and impacts to fish populations, aquatic invertebrates and aquatic habitat. Also, the dam blocked access to 85 miles of the South Fork Flathead River. This blockage eliminated at least 40% of the bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout spawning runs from Flathead Lake. Madeline: When the operators prioritized power generation, the amount of water flowing out from the dam would vary wildly, both throughout the year and even in the course of a single day. Voice Actor: Seasonal flow patterns have changed dramatically. Operations caused significant losses of kokanee spawning beds. Reduction of the kokanee population in Flathead Lake reduced forage for trophy-sized lake trout. Madeline: At one point in the 1980s, the reservoir was drawn down to only 23% of its capacity. Both fish and boaters suffered. Voice Actor: Frigid water released from the deep layers of the reservoir have reduced trout growth from May through October in the South Fork and main stem Flathead rivers to a fraction of pre-dam levels and disrupted lifecycles of aquatic insects. Madeline: It's quite the juggling act to balance all of these factors: the fish and the river downstream, the power generation on site. Boating access on the reservoir. The release of the 1991 report started a shift in the way that the Hungry Horse Dam was managed with more concern for the broader environment. Madeline [to M'lissa]: Is there a natural life cycle for dams? Do they have an end date [tense ambient music fades in] or could they... or could this one operate indefinitely? M'lissa: I think this one could operate indefinitely. I think there's a couple of reasons why. One, we are we are we're considered what they called a thousand-year dam. And also because of our role in that federal Columbia River power system being the headwaters of that, the beginning of it. There's no reason, under my understanding, that we would not exist in this space. Madeline: M'lissa explained that Hungry Horse is at the top of the entire Columbia River watershed, so the dam plays a role in controlling water levels and power generation all the way to the Pacific. But it also plays a role in the local community. M'lissa: Being as its the first provider of power. It just continues that domino effect, that stacking effect, of not only power but water management, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. I don't think that there's anywhere else here that could do what it's done or what it's doing, even down to the recreating on the reservoir. In fact, generally speaking, everybody I talk to in the community can find some connection to this place [synth music fades in]. It's, I think, an integral component to not only the local area, but that bigger Columbia Basin system. Music: [synth music plays] Man #2: My grandma had an allotment about 14 miles up the east shore of Flathead Lake. And so my summers were spent there, with my grandma and grandpa. And several times my grandpa would load me and my younger brother up and go to the dump and then go to the dam [laughs], which is just past the dam, and take a walk up and down there. Madeline: The two rivers that form much of Glacier National Park's boundaries, the Middle and North Forks of the Flathead are undammed as they flow along the park. They are both designated as Wild and Scenic Rivers. Once they leave Glacier, they flow south to Flathead Lake, then through the Flathead Indian Reservation. Man #2: My grandma was a Tribal council woman in the 1960s, first-elected Tribal council woman, and she would tell us stories growing up of the long trips back to Washington, D.C., and the debate over the Tribe's payment for use and occupancy of this site by the Montana Power Company. And the legal maneuverings back and forth between the power company and the Tribes over that land rental payment, which was about $2.5 million in 1985. Madeline: In the heart of the reservation, the river is stopped with a massive concrete dam. It raises the natural level of Flathead Lake by ten feet. Think of the Columbia River system as a long thread interrupted by a series of knots. Dam after dam. Hungry Horse is the first knot. We've just arrived at the second. Brian: So my name is Brian Lipscomb. Tribal member from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Born and raised here on the reservation. I'm the CEO for Energy Keepers, Inc. Madeline: Brian Lipscomb and his team manage the SKQ Dam. It was formerly known as the Kerr Dam and helped keep the lights on at Glacier's Headquarters when it was built in 1939. We talked with Brian and his colleague, Robert, about the history of the dam. Madeline [to Brian]: Could you go back even further and talk about how the Tribe felt about the dam proposal? How did that all go down? Brian: So... the context of colonialism, as I think about it, is the idea that you're going to impose a set of values and thinking upon a place. And for us, as Tribal people, what God imposed upon us was the idea that you're going to dam up the river and generate electricity and create revenue from that and create power that at the time nobody had electricity. So it was like, "why do we need that?" [laughs] Madeline: Brian says the dam was part of the longer and broader effort of colonization. Brian: This is an important cultural site for us. This is a powerful place for us as Tribal people, from a religious context and from a resource context. And you're going to put a dam here. And our thoughts about it, our concept of, and thinking around relationship to Mother Earth just got thrown aside. Kicked to the curb. Madeline: The dam proposals came just after the Allotment Period when communally-owned reservation land was divvied up and sold off [tense ambient music fades in], including to many non-Tribal people. Then, there was the Era of Termination where the federal government decided Indigenous people should assimilate into broader American society. And the government attempted to dissolve its relationships and responsibilities with the Tribes. Man #3: The sacred falls in the Flathead River are known by the Kootenai word KwaT̓aq̓Nuk and by the Salish word st̓ipmétk͏ʷ. This was the place of the falling waters. Madeline: That's the voice of Roy Bigcrane from the 1991 film "The Place of the Falling Waters" by the Salish Kootenai College Media Center. Roy Bigcrane [narrating]: [background music plays] The falls of the Flathead River looked like an ideal site for a hydroelectric dam, ignoring all questions of Tribal sovereignty, the BIA merely saw a way to clear the debt on the still uncompleted irrigation project. Big business and big government together pursued the destruction of the Tribal way of life. Madeline: In the 1910s and 1920s, in the wake of allotment, the first idea for water management was to build a canal system that would encourage agriculture. But that irrigation system would require electricity to pump the water out of the lake basin and to the fields. So they wanted to build a hydroelectric project that would power those irrigation efforts. Here's my producer, Daniel. Daniel [to Brian]: So before even the thought of the building, a big dam, you're saying that the motivation to generate power here was to power pumps for irrigation, for big irrigation projects. Is that right? Brian: Exactly. Exactly. And so it was it was for the irrigation project primarily. And then there was going to be a little bit left for, they said, powering the reservation, but it was just the City of Polson [laughs]. Daniel [to Brian]: Ok. And then and then the power companies, basically, companies, get involved and they're like, you know, let's we can do bigger. Brian: Exactly. And you really got to think bigger from the standpoint of that Anaconda Smelter. And the Anaconda Copper Company making the Anaconda Smelter the biggest smelter in the world. And they needed power. Roy Bigcrane [narrating]: [background music plays] The Montana Power Company and its corporate twin, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, had established a way of life very different from the Tribal ways of the Flathead Region. Madeline: The Anaconda Copper Smelter, over 100 miles away, near the town of Butte, was part of one of the biggest mining operations in the world at the time. Brian: Prior to this dam being built, that was powered with wood from the forest. In order to make it the biggest in the world, they needed electricity. And so, this facility was built to bring electricity to Anaconda. And it did. The first power line that still exists today? Runs from this switchyard right out here, straight to Anaconda and powered the smelter. Madeline [to Brian]: Is that electric line still live? Brian: Still live, still used today. It's now part of the NorthWestern Energy grid system. And so there's a big transformer still at Anaconda. Of course, there's no smelter there, but it's all part of the system now. Madeline: After years of back and forth talks between the state government, federal government, the Montana Power Company and the Anaconda Copper Company, but notably not the Tribes, construction of what was then called the Kerr Dam began fully in 1936. Madeline [to Brian]: So the federal government came in, Montana Power Company came in, the Anaconda Smelter Company was involved. It was all these different interests that came together to make this dam happen against the wishes of the people that were affected? Brian: Exactly. Yeah. And the way you just summarized that, you know, you start putting all those big, giant, economic forces together and it went beyond the dam. You know, there was timber harvest that existed across the reservation as well to build the railroad across the reservation. And mills that were built not by the Tribes or Tribal people for Tribal members. And so you had non-Tribal interests coming onto the reservation, exploiting resources for economic gain early on. And the dam was just a continuation of that. Allotment was a continuation of that. You know, it's all that imposition of these, you know, big moves to get control of resources, which is true across the West. And it really happened here, on our reservation. Madeline [to Brian]: Could you talk about, I guess, the establishment of the dam who who worked on it? Who built it? Brian: They were required to hire Tribal members. And so you've got to again, put it in the context, in the 1930s when this was being built, most of it's by hand. The Tribal members that were employed out here were classified as "unskilled labor." So you can imagine they were given the hardest jobs and the most dangerous jobs. Roy Bigcrane [narrating]: [drumbeat and vocals play] Native people had become poor and dependent on a cash economy for their survival. So the sudden chance to earn good wages loomed larger for many people than their cultural and spiritual objections to the dams. Brian: Cave-ins, or those rockslides, killed a lot of people. And then you might imagine there's a lot of trench work getting done as well. Trench work still today kills a lot of people. And 11 of those Tribal members were killed, including one of the chief's sons. Pretty, pretty impactive for us as Tribal people, the construction itself. Madeline: Through the completion of the Kerr Dam in 1939, and during efforts to dismantle the reservation in the Termination Era, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes spent decades planning for the future. Knowing that the federal license to operate the dam would be up for renewal in the 1980s, they prepared. Roy Bigcrane [narrating]: By the time the federal power license for Kerr Dam was up for renewal in 1980, the Tribal Council was ready to challenge the Montana Power Company for control of the dam. [vocals in background] In the meantime, Tribal members organize an encampment at the dam site to express their opposition to the power companies' continued control of the dam. Madeline: In 1984, Tribal members set up a protest camp. They spoke out, not just against the Montana Power Company, but also against the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for not helping them. Roy Bigcrane [narrating]: [drums and vocals] So many Tribal people in 1984 were outraged by the Bureau of Indian Affairs' lack of help to the Tribes in trying to get the federal license to run the dam [water sounds]. The final settlement did not give the Confederated Tribes what they wanted: immediate control of the dam. But they did get a rental fee for the dam site of $9 million per year for 30 years. And then in the year 2015, the Tribes would take direct control of the dam itself [flute fades in]. Madeline: In 2015, after decades of work, the Tribes take control of the dam. They form a business called Energy Keepers, Incorporated. and appoint Brian to lead it. To symbolize their work, they design a logo of a fox jumping over the river in a bright swoosh of orange [music fades out]. Brian: Yeah, so the logo is is the fox and it's jumping over this site. And so you can you can see it on my hat where the fox is jumping over where the dam is. And so typically when Coyote's out there, ridding the world of of evil and and but he always gets himself in trouble, he always messes up, and he gets killed. And Fox comes along and jumps over and brings him back to life. And so here Fox is jumping over the facility and bringing it back to life for the Tribes. Madeline [to Brian]: Could you talk about the name change of the dam? Brian: When we took it over, yeah. So that the original dam was named Kerr. It was named after Frank Kerr, who was the president of Montana Power Company when it was built. And so when we took it over, obviously we weren't going to leave the name "Kerr" [laughs] associated with it. So we renamed it the "Seli’š Ksanka Kalispel’" hydroelectric facility that's named after the Tribes that are here and live here on the reservation. Madeline: The Seli’š Ksanka Qlispe’ Dam, also known as the SKQ Dam, is now fully managed by the Tribes. Roy Bigcrane [narrating]: Until now, the dam has been a part of the loss of Native American sovereignty and culture. But depending on how it is used, it may now become a tool of regeneration and hope. Brian: I'm proud of the work that we do as a company. You know, we as I said, my relationship to this facility is long and deep. And like everything, we take it over and we do... as a Tribe, we do good with what we take over. You know, we took it over after 15 years of neglect and... deferred maintenance. And have completely rebuilt it. We've rebuilt all of the generators, two of them, we have rebuilt all the way to the core, taken them all the way apart and rebuilt them all the way. We have one more to go. In addition, now, because of the transition from fossil fuel-based electricity generation to renewable-based [flute fades in], we also have plans for being part of that transition and building assets to generate power and be part of the solution going forward and part of that energy economy going forward. So we're not standing on again, not standing on the sidelines having it done to us, but we're being part of the solution. So we've really taken over this facility and now take care of it and made it into a facility that will last another, you know, 80, 100 years for our next generations coming. Roy Bigcrane [narrating]: [slow synth music fades in, layers with flute] Ironically, a dam which helped destroy Tribal culture may now be used to restore it. Music: ["Nature Healing" by Frank Waln builds and plays. "Healing. Healing. Nature has a way of healing. Nature has a way of healing." Beat and bird sounds. "We learn that when protected, nature has a way of healing some man-caused impacts."] Madeline: [synth fades out, flute continues] From the depths of the Hungry Horse Dam, to the dark history of the SKQ Dam, we stared into the electric heart of the Flathead River. We met with the blur of turbines and made it out the other side into a bright June day. A pair of bald eagles circled high above as we ascended out of the river canyon. Lower in the sky, white-throated swifts danced in the wind, filling the air with energy. Not that tremor in my bones energy I felt down in the core of the earth, but a bird in my stomach excitement of standing at a cliff edge. The communications director for Energy Keepers, Incorporated, Robert McDonald, led the way to a viewpoint that juts out 1000 feet over the dam [bird sounds]. Robert: I would trade so much to be able to go back in time and see it, to experience what this was like [flute fades out, bird sounds], the original falls and this was a place of power. To us. It was a special place and that was taken away [wind sounds]. And a lot of sad conversations I've heard among the elders about that. And then to have it kind of come back to life like Coyote jumping over. I was in my yard playing basketball with my sons in my driveway, and somebody in my community walked into my property, up my driveway, feet from me, pointing at me, saying, "thanks for messing up the name of the dam." He started talking Indian gibberish. "Uh-duh duh duh duh duh duh duh-buh. Great name." And my kids are looking up at me saying, "Dad, how are you going to react to this?" Madeline [to Robert]: Did that feel like an isolated incident or was that reflective of a larger... feeling? Robert: My hunch is that conversation played out at a lot of dinner tables for years and still is. People smarter than me call it colonialism [bird sounds, people talking in background]. Maybe it's just a resistance to change. Maybe it's a threat of equalization [laughs]. I mean, who knows? But it's a resistance, and it plays out in many ways. I can't wish the history to be different. I have to deal with what it is. [string instrument starts] Just like the dam operators have to deal with the conditions that come from Mother Nature. You know, if it's getting hotter or colder or snowing less, you can't wish more snow into existence. We have to deal with the conditions that exist. It's a sad history, warts and all, it's about loss. And ultimately it's a story of success and survival and perseverance. And and us being here today is part of that. Music: [string instrument builds, beat begins, "Runaway" by Frank Waln plays] Gaby: This show is only possible because of donations to the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Learn more at glacier.org. If you like this episode, share it with a friend who might appreciate it. Also, we'd love it if you gave us a rating and review in your podcast app. Frank Waln makes our music and Stella Nall created our art. Check them out on Instagram. Headwaters is made by me, Gaby Eseverri, Daniel Lombardi, Peri Sasnett, Madeline Vinh, and Michael Faist with support from Lacy Kowalski, Melissa Sladek, Elizabeth Maki and Sophia Britto. Thanks to our good friends in Glacier's Cultural Resources Program, including Jeanne, Anya, Keiko, Sierra, Brent, and Kyle. We couldn't make the show without them. Special thanks this episode to Dr. Shawn Bailey, Roy Bigcrane, Julie Cajune, Brian Lipscomb, Robert McDonald, M'lissa Morgan, David Roemer, Thompson Smith, Courtney Stone and the SKC Media Center. Thanks for listening.