A campaign led by Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment and KHIMSTONIK. Indigenous Just Transition stands in support — carrying education, outreach, and amplification to Yakama Nation members and Native communities and allies across the region.
Free the Snake,
Restore Nch'i Wána's relatives.
The four lower Snake River dams are driving salmon and steelhead toward extinction and standing in violation of treaty rights that stretch back to 1855. Breaching them is a matter of treaty law, food sovereignty, and the survival of a relative — the salmon — that Columbia Basin peoples have always been in relationship with.
Why this matters
A river blocked is a treaty broken.
Four dams, one river
Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, and Lower Granite dams block 140 miles of the Lower Snake River between the Tri-Cities and Lewiston, Idaho.
Since time immemorial, the peoples of the Columbia Basin — Nimiipuu, Palouse, Yakama, Umatilla, and others — have held a living relationship with salmon as a First Food and a relative, not a resource. The Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, and Lower Granite dams were built on the Lower Snake River in the mid-20th century, flooding villages and fishing sites and cutting off cold, free-flowing water that salmon and steelhead need to survive.
The result has been decades of population collapse. Runs that once numbered in the millions now return in the low thousands in many years, and several stocks are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Treaties signed in 1855 reserved the right to fish "at all usual and accustomed places" — a right that means little if there are no fish left to catch.
Breaching the four lower Snake River dams is the single most significant action available to restore a free-flowing river, rebuild salmon and steelhead runs, and honor the treaty obligations the United States made — and has not kept.
Families displaced
Palouse families — including those represented by KHIMSTONIK — were removed from ancestral village sites along the Snake when the dams were built.
Treaty rights at stake
The 1855 treaties with the Nez Perce, Yakama, Umatilla, and Warm Springs tribes reserved fishing rights the dams have made increasingly difficult to exercise.
A relative, not a resource
Salmon carry cultural, ceremonial, and nutritional weight across the Basin. Their decline is a loss felt in longhouses, kitchens, and ceremonies, not just fish counts.
The system, mapped
Eight dams stand between Idaho's salmon and the ocean.
Salmon and steelhead returning to Snake River basin homelands swim through four dams on the lower Columbia — Bonneville, The Dalles, John Day, and McNary — before turning up the Snake River to face four more: Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, and Lower Granite. It's the longest, most heavily dammed migration route of any salmon population in the continental United States. The rest of the Columbia's dams, shown here for context, sit on a different stretch of river — serving upstream stocks that never reach the Snake.
The route Snake River salmon actually swim (8 dams round trip).
Upper Columbia dams — a different stretch, different stocks.
Grand Coulee Dam was built in 1941 with no fish passage at all — it permanently blocked salmon from more than 1,000 miles of habitat across the upper Columbia and into Canada. That loss can't be undone. The four lower Snake River dams are the last major hydro-system stretch in the Basin where a loss like that could still be avoided.
Every dam a smolt survives lowers its odds of coming home.
Scientists track salmon and steelhead survival using a smolt-to-adult return ratio, or SAR — the share of juvenile fish that migrate out to the ocean and make it back as spawning adults. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council sets 2% as the bare minimum SAR to sustain existing population levels, and 2–6% (averaging 4%) as the range needed to rebuild healthy, harvestable runs. The more dams and reservoirs a young fish has to pass on its way to the ocean, the lower its SAR tends to be.
0.77%
Mean SAR for wild Snake River Chinook, 1994–2022 — well under the 2% floor needed just to hold steady.
5 of 20
Years since 2003 that Snake River stocks even reached the 2% survival floor. They have never reached the 6% recovery ceiling.
2 to 3.4×
How much higher SARs run for mid-Columbia stocks passing fewer dams, compared to wild Snake River stocks passing eight.
NOAA Fisheries' 2022 Rebuilding Interior Columbia Basin Salmon and Steelhead report names breaching the four lower Snake River dams a centerpiece action for recovery — pointing to shorter, faster migration, fewer injuries and deaths at dams and in reservoirs, and restored cold-water habitat as the mechanisms that would move Snake River SARs back toward the range wild salmon need to survive.
Sources: Northwest Power and Conservation Council SAR goals; Comparative Survival Study and Trout Unlimited, "By the Numbers on the Snake" (2024); Save Our Wild Salmon, Hot Water Report (2024); NOAA Fisheries, Rebuilding Interior Columbia Basin Salmon and Steelhead (2022).
When you put salmon first, everything else will follow.
— Angela Jackson, Nez Perce Tribal member,
at the Envisioning a Restored Snake River gathering
This campaign is Indigenous-led — here's who leads what
Led by the river's own people.
Free the Snake is not a new campaign, and it is not ours to lead. Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment and KHIMSTONIK have organized this work for years, on the ground, in the places the dams displaced — and the Nez Perce Tribe's own government has stood behind dam breaching since 1996. IJT's role is to walk alongside them — not in front.
Leading the organizing
Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment
A Nez Perce-founded nonprofit based in Lapwai, Idaho, defending 1855 treaty rights and hosting the annual Free the Snake Flotilla at Hells Gate State Park, bringing together tribal leaders, policymakers, and community members.
Leading the organizing
KHIMSTONIK
Founded and led by Ione IronHorse Martel Jones, an enrolled Yakama Nation member and lineal descendant of the Palouse people displaced from the Lower Snake River by the dams. KHIMSTONIK leads the annual Snake River Healing Canoe Journey and rematriation work near Ice Harbor Dam.
Sovereign Government
Nez Perce Tribe
The Tribe's own government has supported breaching the lower Snake River dams since 1996. Its Department of Fisheries Resources Management, founded in 1981, runs fish recovery work across Idaho, Oregon, and Montana, and the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee — chaired by Shannon Wheeler — presses the case at the federal level as a matter of the Tribe's 1855 treaty rights.
IJT's lane: education, outreach, and amplification — not front-line organizing that belongs to Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment, KHIMSTONIK, and the Nez Perce Tribe itself. Our own vision as an organization began in the Nch'i Wána homelands of our Yakama and Umatilla leaders, and that history shapes where we can be most useful here: reaching Yakama Nation members and other Native communities across the region who may not yet know this campaign exists, translating the issue clearly, and directing people, letters, and support to the organizations already doing the work.
Concretely, that means: a plain-language education campaign for Yakama tribal members and Native communities region-wide; a toolkit for contacting Tribal leadership; a sign-on petition from fishing families and allies; and consistent pointers toward NPE's and KHIMSTONIK's own events, petitions, and donation pages, so support flows to where the organizing is rooted.
Contact your Tribal leaders.
Tribal Councils carry real weight in this fight — through formal resolutions, testimony, and government-to-government relationships that state and federal agencies are required to take seriously. A short message from an enrolled member can be the reason an issue reaches the Council agenda.
1
Find the right contact
Reach out to your Tribal Council office, your district or zone representative, or your Natural Resources / Fish & Wildlife department. Most Tribal government websites list direct contact information for Council members.
2
Send a short, personal message
You don't need to be an expert on dam operations. Speaking as an enrolled member, a fisher, a parent, or a relative of the river carries its own weight. Use the template below as a starting point and make it your own.
3
Ask for something specific
Ask your Council to support breaching the four lower Snake River dams, to issue or reaffirm a formal resolution, and to stand publicly alongside Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment, KHIMSTONIK, and the Nez Perce Tribe's own government.
Sample Message (Edit before sending)
Dear [Council Member / Chairperson name],
My name is [your name], an enrolled member of [Tribe]. I'm writing because the future of salmon and steelhead on the Snake River matters to me and to my family.
The four lower Snake River dams are pushing our salmon toward extinction and making it harder to exercise the fishing rights our people reserved in the 1855 treaties. Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment, KHIMSTONIK, and the Nez Perce Tribe's own government have been leading the work to breach these dams and restore a free-flowing river — and I'm asking our Council to stand with them.
I'd ask that our Tribe:
— Publicly support breaching the four lower Snake River dams
— Issue or reaffirm a formal Council resolution on this issue
— Share information about this campaign with our community
Thank you for considering this. I'm glad to share more information or connect you with Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment, KHIMSTONIK, or the Nez Perce Tribe directly.
Respectfully,
[Your name]
Copy this, personalize the bracketed sections, and send it as a letter, email, or read it during public comment at a Council meeting.
A petition from fishing families and allies.
This sign-on names who this issue reaches first: the fishing families whose First Foods, income, and ceremonies depend on healthy salmon runs — and the allies standing with them. Every signature is a record that this movement is wide, and it strengthens the case Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment, KHIMSTONIK, and the Nez Perce Tribe are already making to decision-makers.
Already signed the Flotilla sign-on or a petition through Save Our Wild Salmon? This adds your voice through IJT's network — it doesn't replace it.
Beyond this page.
Free the Snake Flotilla
An annual gathering at Hells Gate State Park, Lewiston, Idaho — film screening, flotilla on the river, and speakers, hosted by Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment.
Snake River Healing Canoe Journey
KHIMSTONIK's multi-day canoe journey and rematriation camp along the Lower Snake, reconnecting families with the river and its history.
Support the organizing directly
Donations to Nimíipuu Protecting the Environment and KHIMSTONIK fund the on-the-ground work this campaign points toward.