‘Salmon Wars’ bonus episode: LiaDonna Lopez Whitefoot

The “Salmon Wars” podcast series tells the story of salmon in the Northwest in a way you haven’t heard before — through the voices of one Yakama Nation family who have been fighting for salmon for generations.

You heard from Randy Settler’s cousin, LiaDonna Lopez Whitefoot, in the most recent episode of Salmon Wars. She’s the one who was fearless in the face of a blockade of boats trying to block Native people from accessing fishing sites. She worked closely with Randy’s mom in the family fishing business. In this bonus episode, we’re bringing you more of her memories from that time, and of Randy’s mom, Mary, in particular.

Our theme music is by Kele Goodwin and Sean Ogilvie.

Special thanks to Katie Campbell at ProPublica.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

LiaDonna Lopez Whitefoot: And I looked at him and I said, “Put the throttle all the way down, and when the rooster tail comes up off our motor, they’re gonna move.” Everybody looked at me like I was crazy but he put the throttle down and the boats opened wide and we went through. We were gonna take our fish, because we needed it to eat, to live.

Tony Schick: That’s Randy Settler’s cousin, LiaDonna Lopez Whitefoot. You heard from her in a recent episode of Salmon Wars. And there’s no question that she’s a total badass. She worked closely with Randy’s mom in the family fishing business. We wanted to hear more of her memories from that time, and of Randy’s Mom, Mary, in particular. These days, LiaDonna lives on the Yakama Indian Reservation in southcentral Washington. So, last summer, OPB podcast producer Julie Sabatier went up there to interview her.

(music)

TS: I’m Tony Schick and this is a bonus episode of Salmon Wars.

Julie Sabatier: The first word that comes to mind when I think about the Yakama Reservation is “remote.” It’s vast and spread out over a rural area near the small town of Toppenish. It’s about an hour and a half north of the Columbia River off of Route 97. To get to LiaDonna’s house, I drove about 25 minutes from Toppenish through hop fields and other farmland. When I pulled up to the house, I was greeted by two dogs who seemed very friendly. LiaDonna’s granddaughter answered the door and showed me into the living room. I could hear some little squeaking sounds coming from the next room and LiaDonna told me one of her dogs had just had puppies. I got the sense that there’s always kind of a lot going on at her place. At one point in the interview I heard a sound I couldn’t quite identify.

LW: Oh, there’s a baby back there.

JS (on tape): Oh, OK!

LW: They flew here from Alaska yesterday.

JS: She even has a tongue-in-cheek name for her home...

LW: This is Old MacDonald’s Last Resort.

JS: Normally, if I’m interviewing someone at their home, I’d turn on my recorder before even getting out of the car — you know, to record sounds like the dogs in the yard and the granddaughter opening the door. But this time, I hesitated. I had been listening to LiaDonna’s voice for months while working on this podcast and I felt a distinct reverence for her. We’d also never met and I kept asking myself why she’d open up to me about her family history. As I was setting up my recorder and microphone in her living room, I told her I felt like I was talking to a celebrity. She looked at me like I was nuts and we both laughed a little nervously. I started the interview by asking her about her relationship with Randy’s mom, Mary Goudy Settler.

LW: Mary was my mother’s youngest sister. (laughs) My mother was the oldest sister. One you would say was the disciplinarian, the other one was undisciplined.

JS (on tape): Which one was which?

LW: More of a free spirit. My aunt was more of a free spirit

JS (on tape): Than your mom?

LW: Yes.

JS: LiaDonna wasn’t totally comfortable with a microphone in her face, and I can’t really blame her. She kept adjusting it so you’ll hear a little of that noise throughout the interview. She takes her time telling stories, and she reminded me that she’s had two strokes that can sometimes affect her memory. But her recollections of Mary seemed very clear. So, settle in. She has some very interesting and important things to say.

LW: Well, I worked with her every day. We got up at daylight. First of all, she’d make me drink tea before I went to bed so she could be sure she wouldn’t have to wrestle me to get up first thing in the morning, soon as it was daylight. And she was accused of selling a great deal more fish than I ever helped her with.

JS (on tape): But it sounds like she had a pretty big, like, fish operation, even setting that aside. Like how, how big was it? Who were her clients? Who was buying fish from her? Like how did it work?

LW: I guess I could tell you in a way like this: When it was time to go to prison, she had a choice. The government offered her: Give them the name of 10 Indians that she bought from or give them the names of the people that she sold to. And she asked me, what would you do? And I said, go lay down in prison for a while. It’s time to lay down. That means you did the crime. Now go do the time. We already discussed this. There’s no changing it now. Just go serve the time. What 10 Indians do you hate so much that you would cause them to go to prison?

JS (on tape): So she did know that she was breaking the law.

LW: She knew that as the law was written, according to the state regulations, that she violated the law. But who was really being violated? Was there any law for us?

JS (on tape): So it was almost like she was protesting by selling.

LW: Yeah. She could say, you could say that very clearly that she protested because she said we have an inherent right to fish, a God-given right to fish. And that’s just a paper that says that we cannot, it’s just a paper.

JS (on tape): And do you, I mean you said you worked closely with her every day…

LW: Every day.

JS (on tape): So did she try to protect you from the illegal stuff that she was doing?

LW: She was protecting me by allowing me to earn money to be able to feed my own three children. I was well-educated in the law from since at least the fourth grade, but I was raised with it all my life to hear all the conversations at the table. They were commonplace. We didn’t talk about football and fashion shows or soap operas. We talked about what affected our lives.

JS (on tape): So you talked about fishing laws?

LW: Yes. It was common.

JS: LiaDonna clearly admired her Aunt Mary. She painted a picture of a savvy woman who always had a mind for business.

LW: She started out as an entrepreneur selling soda pop at Celilo Falls where her brothers fished and she walked along the shores and sold pop. At a very young age she was already an entrepreneur. So, selling the fish was another, another expression of her entrepreneurial skill.

JS (on tape): yeah.

LW: She had a product and she was gonna sell it.

JS (on tape): But she was doing things differently than other tribal members in terms of…

LW: Not so differently

JS (on tape): No?

LW: It occurred many, many places along the river. I think she was more notorious and that she was highlighted. But yes, many people did the very same thing because they needed to survive and feed their families just like everybody else in this world.

JS (on tape): And did she protect them? I mean, you were saying...

LW: Yes.

JS (on tape): She didn’t give the names of other people…

LW: She could have, she could have completely avoided prison if she was willing to sell her own people. So when she asked me what would I do, I said, “Well, you always have to come back and live with your own people. How would you feel if they didn’t want you back?”

JS: LiaDonna told me that Mary never really considered this option, and she had already made up her mind about going to prison when she asked her niece what she would do. We also talked a bit about LiaDonna teaching Mary to read when LiaDonna was a teenager.

LW: Well, I did tell her that, “If you’re gonna keep getting in trouble, you have to learn how to read. What if nobody’s there, you make a big mistake? Or you sign the wrong thing? You have to learn how to read effectively to protect yourself. You can’t put all your trust in any other person.” So, then we start reading things like Cosmopolitan magazine. Instead of just looking at the pictures, we would read the story. Or if it was an ad, she had to read the whole ad in the back of the book. Not just, you know, see what they’re selling. And I made her read aloud to make sure that she wasn’t skipping all over.

JS (on tape): And what did she think about that?

LW: She enjoyed learning to read. And she became one of the most avid, avid readers. She didn’t buy one newspaper when we went to the airport on certain days, she would buy five newspapers and she read all of them. And she made sure that we read all of those newspapers too, to know what’s going on in the world and what the world was really like and what economics were really like.

JS: LiaDonna and I talked for quite a while and towards the end of the conversation I asked her what she wished non-Native people understood better about the fish wars.

LW: Well, I wish they’d worry more about cleaning up the Columbia River, controlling all the taking of water for farming, foresting, all the things, the development along the river, all the businesses, everybody that uses the water. If they understood more about that, we would have more fish. I think they said it was Thomas Jefferson that said, we have to harness that river to work, to build a great country. But they harnessed it so well, they put in Grand Coulee dam with no access for the fish to get beyond there. They die at the foot of that dam. And when you stand on that bridge, stand on that dam, you can feel death beneath their feet. Why would they do that? That’s what I can’t understand. Why would you just wipe out a species? Yeah, you must know that it was planned to wipe out the Natives. We were not supposed to be still here. The government planned to exterminate us, and it’s been discovered in government documents. And I used to collect those kind of things and live off them. But I realized that they were making me have a hateful use of my life. Maybe it made me hard to deal with, but I decided I’m not gonna live a life that’s predicated on hate.

View all episodes of the “Salmon Wars” podcast here.