B.C. researcher works for justice in the Columbia Basin

 

From her research on the Columbia River Basin (CRB), Joanne Taylor of Kelowna, B.C., sees a need for transboundary governance, especially because the Agreement in Principle (AIP) for the renegotiated Columbia River Treaty (CRT) still emphasizes hydropower sharing and flood control.

To explore next steps, she chairs groups organizing the 2024 Columbia River Transboundary Water Governance and Ethics Symposium from Tuesday to Thursday, Nov. 12 to 14, at Gonzaga University.

Participants will engage in education and dialogue on the treaty, emerging initiatives and governance options.

Born in Vancouver, B.C., Joanne moved at 10 with her family to farmland inherited from her Russian Doukhobor ancestors in the Kootenay region of eastern British Columbia. After high school, she moved with her family to Kelowna, B.C., for college.

She earned an associate bachelor's degree in political science at Okanagan College in 1983. Then she backpacked and worked in Asia, including eight years teaching English, when she met her husband, an architect in Tokyo, Japan. They moved to Kelowna in 1996 to start a family.

In 2012, she earned a bachelor's degree and in 2013 began a master's in environmental anthropology and in 2019, a doctoral degree with focus on the CRT.

Her doctoral research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), studied food security and food sovereignty in traditional lands of the Ktunaxa First Nation and the yaqan nu?kiy of the Creston Valley of British Columbia during climate change and the CRT renegotiation.

With a postdoctoral SSHRC fellowship, Joanne did research at UBC Okanagan, on agricultural adaptation to climate change in the Cariboo (Secwepemc) and Okanagan (Syilx) Regions of British Columbia since the BC Water Sustainability Act of 2016.

In 2023, she received a second SSHRC fellowship to explore what an International River Basin Organization (IRBO), a citizen-led governance model, might look like for the Columbia River Basin.

With this project, the Universities Consortium on Columbia River Governance (UCCRG) together with the One River, Ethics Matter project has helped the symposium for public education and citizen dialogue on water quality, salmon reintroduction, climate change and governance.

While Joanne's family is non-indigenous, her Doukhobor heritage has inspired her commitment to social justice. The Anabaptist Doukhobors fled persecution from 1885 to 1905 in tsarist Russia for breaking from the Russian Orthodox Church and holding pacifist beliefs. Invited to Canada, they settled in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, and finally the Kootenays in B.C.

"We did not experience what Indigenous people did with residential schools, Indigenous scoops, missing/murdered women and children, and ongoing violence, but we experienced discrimination," said Joanne. "My father and uncle went to residential schools which were used to break up ethnic groups by taking children from families that did not conform to the dominant power structure of the day."

"As part of immigrants who were marginalized, I seek to right historic wrongs colonization wrought on Indigenous people and to advocate for those in society who are oppressed," Joanne said. "People with privilege and power, as I have with postsecondary education, have a duty to use our knowledge to advocate with and by those without privilege."

With her drive for social justice activism, Joanne considers the CRT is an example of discrimination against groups to push them to conform to structures of colonial society.

"Salmon restoration is a human rights issue," she asserted. "Food is a human rights issue."

The original CRT was ratified in 1964 without consulting with communities or Indigenous people, she said.

In Canada, three First Nations—the Syilx Okanagan Nation, Secwepemc Nation and Ktunaxa Nation—were at the table to renegotiate the CRT. Still, ecosystem function and fisheries restoration were not included in the agreement that came out in July.

Canada plans a public review of the AIP in 2025.

"Climate change was only considered in that scientists and hydrologists will offer models of receding glaciers, unpredictable rainfall, fires, drought and heat domes. They will look at impacts on water for irrigation, agriculture, hydropower, flood control, fisheries, tourism, transportation, fish and Indigenous Peoples," she said. "It's a balancing act, given problems in the upper reaches of the Columbia Basin, such as extreme drawdowns of the Arrow Lakes," she explained.

The goals of Tribes and First Nations to bring back salmon require more fish ladders and ways to help salmon over the dams. The Okanagan Nation have returned salmon with collaboratively funded transboundary techniques like Swoosh, which "is a successful example of transboundary collaboration," she said.

In 2024, the Biden Administration gave $1 billion to revitalize salmon in Oregon and Washington. Canada also provided funds to the three Nations in 2019 to revitalize fisheries, restore ecosystems and repair habitats to return salmon.

"We need to think about the Columbia as one river and one ecosystem, a one river approach," Joanne said.

"We are at a critical time with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNRIP) and climate change. Renegotiating the treaty was an opportunity to seek solutions under ethical imperatives that guided Indigenous Peoples in stewarding the lands since time immemorial," Joanne said. "The Indigenous Peoples have the solutions, and we must continue to be led by their principles and values of respect and reciprocity," Joanne said.

At one time, the Columbia River Basin had enough salmon runs to feed all of North America—Turtle Island to many Indigenous people, she added. The salmon provided food security and food sovereignty and guided people to make decisions to protect natural resources for seven generations.

"We need to work with Indigenous people to protect the environment in a sustainable, ethical way," Joanne affirmed. "We recognize the complexity of socio-political problems colonialism created for Indigenous peoples. It is our responsibility to come together with federal governments, fisheries and NGOs to preserve, protect and restore salmon runs in the CRB."

Joanne urges Indigenous, non-indigenous, environmentalists and NGOs to gather, collaborate and advocate to restore fisheries.

At the symposium, organizers hope to create, engage and establish mutual respect for a future symbiotic, Indigenous-led IRBO.

The conference steering committee includes researchers from universities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia, plus NGOs, One River Ethics Matter, North American Youth Parliament on Water, Bringing Home the Salmon and the UCCRG.

Last year, more than 460 people heard more than 30 speakers at a virtual symposium, but said they wanted to meet in-person the next year, which is now.

The advisory committee of 23 experts, a steering committee of nine and nine volunteer youth planned the November 2024 symposium to propose policy for CRT negotiators, but they realize the treaty is not the mechanism for Indigenous-led, collaborative governance.

Nov. 12 includes a walk to Spokane Falls and the North American Youth training.

Nov. 13 offers presentations by CRT negotiators, basin people sharing perspectives, a panel on climate change, a break-out working session on transboundary issues and a keynote by Jeanette Armstrong, a Syilx Okanagan, who teaches Indigenous philosophies and ecological methodologies at UBC Okanagan.

Nov. 14 addresses water pollution, reintroducing salmon, governance models, intergovernmental agreements and mechanism for governance, next steps and youth ideas on where we go from here.

For information, visit gonzaga.edu/climate-institute/events/columbia-river-symposium and columbiabasingovernance.org.