Looters, Erosion Threaten Sacred Island Indians Say The Doe Hasn’t Done Enough To Protect Cultural Treasures In Columbia’s Hanford Reach

The government’s yellow no-trespassing signs mark the perimeter of a grassy Columbia River island local American Indian tribes call “K’watch,” where their ancestors lived, fished, traded and buried their dead.

“It is a sacred place, a place not meant to be disturbed,” said Lewis Malatare, cultural resources specialist for the Yakama tribe.

But holes left by grave robbers’ spades show that efforts of the U.S. Department of Energy and the tribes to keep the location private, including the threat of hefty trespassing fines, haven’t scared people away. Just as much a threat is the erosion that is eating away at the island.

Like the declining numbers of salmon that spawn in the free-flowing waters of the Columbia’s Hanford Reach, cultural treasures on its arid shores and islands are in trouble, tribal leaders and archaeologists say.

They worry about the looting as well as preserving the crumbling remains of atomic-age ghost towns, and that erosion eventually will reveal human remains and eat away what remains of the island.

Much of the Reach’s shorelines have been off limits to the public since World War II, when the land was appropriated to ensure security at the 560-square-mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

But the Energy Department is preparing to relinquish control of the pristine Hanford Reach, and Congress is arguing over the future of the 51-mile stretch of river. None of the proposals on the table directly address the preservation of archaeological resources.

Amid the many cultural resources in the Hanford Reach, the island “K’watch” is where bands of Indians from the Yakama, Wanapum, Umatilla and Nez Perce tribes gathered each fall to take advantage of the Columbia’s low waters to stockpile chinook salmon for winter.

Pillagers have desecrated the land the tribes consider sacred, stealing anything they can dig up that resembles an artifact: bone pieces from 2,000-year-old fire rings, gray cemetery markers, stone tools. Holes where 80 pit houses once stood have been vandalized.

Malatare and others are angry that the looters have ripped up the sacred ground without being noticed, while tribal members must be accompanied by federal employees when they want to visit the site.

“It’s like being Catholic and having someone go with you to confession,” Malatare said. “Then you find someone has desecrated your church, insulted your heritage. The whole Hanford Reach is not protected the way it should be.”

Federal authorities say they have done everything they can short of fencing off the island with barbed wire and setting up surveillance cameras.

Sheriff’s patrols are regular. The penalties are stiff: up to two years in prison and a $20,000 fine for the first offense; five years and $100,000 for a second offense.

Sometimes the looters are caught, as two were in 1995. Most sneak on and off the island without getting caught.

Meanwhile, nature is destroying the island.

After two consecutive years of high spring runoffs and water diverted by landslides, much of the island has been carried away by the river. On one side, erosion has cut an exposed 7-foot-high bank of gray clay where a beach once existed.