Nothing new: How renewable energy projects perpetuate desecration of tribal lands

These Sacred Hills is a new documentary that chronicles a Yakama band’s opposition to a controversial Columbia Gorge energy proposal

Power to which people? Yakama Nation tribal member Elaine Harvey appears in a new documentary that shines light on the costs Indigenous people have paid in the push to electrify the Pacific Northwest. Photo: Matt Swain Photography

By Nick Engelfried. February 20, 2025. Elaine Harvey isn’t opposed to clean energy. Like many other Yakama Nation tribal members, she worries about how climate change will affect traditional landscapes inhabited by the Yakama.

Rapidly phasing out the use of fossil fuels is crucial to minimizing climate impacts already being felt in Yakama country and beyond.

Harvey just doesn’t think the renewable energy transition should once again force Indigenous peoples to bear the brunt of costs from development.

“First it was dams on the Columbia and the loss of our fishing and village sites,” Harvey says. “Then it was construction of the highway, then Hanford nuclear facility. Now we’re in another energy transition, and it feels like the burden is again being put on us.”

The struggle to protect the Yakama’s traditional territory from unwanted renewable energy is the subject of a new documentary, These Sacred Hills, recently released by filmmakers Jacob Bailey and Chris Ward and produced by Salem, Ore.-based Struck Films in collaboration with members of the Yakama’s Rock Creek Band.

While touching on multiple energy proposals in the region, the film’s main focus is the Goldendale Energy Storage Project, a pumped-hydro facility that would store water in a reservoir 2,400 feet above the Columbia River, releasing it to generate electricity as needed by the grid.

While the project site is on private land, it’s within the traditional territory of the Yakama on a mountain considered sacred by the Tribe.

For Harvey, its construction would represent the continuation of a pattern that has seen Indigenous peoples’ concerns repeatedly overlooked in the name of energy development.

By sharing the stories of tribal members like Harvey, the makers of These Sacred Hills hope to change the public dialogue about renewables in the region.

“We want renewable energy projects to move ahead, but in a responsible manner that avoids negatively impacting wildlife and tribal resources,” says Harvey. “That’s the central idea this film puts forward.”

Pumped-energy storage

Jacob Bailey first heard of the Goldendale Energy Storage Project in 2021, after his family purchased land near Goldendale, Wash.

“We were getting to know the area better, spending time up there and learning what was going on in the community,” says Bailey, who lives in Oregon.

Somewhere along the way, he came across an OPB interview in which Harvey raised concerns about the Goldendale Energy Project.

“It was the first I’d heard of it,” he says. “I was curious to learn more, so I started poking around for information.”

Uphill battle: In the Columbia River Gorge, the proposed area for a pumped-hydro facility is located around sacred archeological sites and other places important to the Yakama Nation for gathering juniper and other traditional foods. Photo: Jurgen Hess

Bailey sensed there was a story about the Yakama’s resistance to unwanted renewable energy development that wasn’t being widely told. He reached out to Harvey, who at the time worked downtown as the Environmental Coordinator for Yakama Nation Fisheries, with the idea of making a film.

“It took me a while to say yes,” says Harvey. “I’m a mother, active in our tribal community and I’d recently started a PhD program at the University of Idaho. So, I was pretty busy.”

Bailey was persistent, though, and eventually he and Harvey arranged to meet in person.

At first he envisioned making a single trip to learn about the pumped-storage project directly from Harvey and other tribal members, along with fellow filmmaker Chris Ward.

“We quickly realized that one day wasn’t sufficient time to tell this story,” says Harvey.

In all, Bailey and Ward would end up filming for their documentary on 25 days over the course of three years, at the invitation of members of the Yakama Nation.

First, though, the filmmakers had to demonstrate they weren’t just another pair of non-tribal members trying to exploit the Yakama’s story.

Risks and faith

“Jacob and Chris had to prove themselves to make this project work,” says Harvey. “They had to earn the trust of not just me, but our elders, community and youth. We were cautious at first, because we have a long history of people reaching out to us for projects that benefit someone else.”

An early test for Bailey and Ward came on their first day of filming, when they accompanied Harvey and other Yakama members to dig for roots near where the Goldendale Project would be built.

“We met up with them to drive to the site,” says Bronsco Jim, Jr., Chief of the Rock Creek, or Kahmiltpa Band of the Yakama. “I assertively told them I would ride with them, because I didn’t know who they were or what they wanted. I asked a lot of questions, wanting to find out if they were trying to make money off us. They gave good answers, and the energy felt fine, so I began opening up more.”

Taking action: Filmmaker Jacob Bailey and members of the Yakama Nation’s Rock Creek Band set up a shot for These Sacred Hills. Photo: Chris Ward

Jim would become one of the main people featured in These Sacred Hills, along with Harvey, Tribal Councilman Jeremy Takala and tribal member Eddie George. However, even after Bailey and Ward demonstrated their good intentions, the decision to share key details about the Yakama’s struggles with development wasn’t easy.

“We don’t like to publicly identify our sacred sites, because we don’t want them to be destroyed,” says Harvey. “Already, people shoot guns at our petroglyphs and loot our cemeteries. It’s 2025, and our tribal enforcement officers still catch people robbing our burial sites. So, for us to come forward and talk about how development affects these places is really hard.”

Harvey, Jim and others decided the benefits of sharing their struggle outweighed the risks.

“We needed to tell our full story so it could reach the public,” says Jim. “It was the only way to make people really understand what’s going on.”

Renewable surge

Prior to colonization by Euro-American settlers, the peoples who now comprise the Yakama Nation inhabited a vast area stretching across much of Washington’s central plateau. They gathered edible plants, hunted deer and other game and fished in the rivers—including at Celilo Falls, a culturally important site flooded by construction of The Dalles Dam in 1957.

In 1855, under pressure from the U.S. government and territorial Governor Isaac Stevens, the Yakama signed a treaty ceding most of their land to settlers. The document also established the present-day Yakama Reservation, while preserving the Yakama’s right to hunt, fish, and gather across their traditional territory.

Yet, even in the face of pressure from state and federal authorities, some Yakama refused to leave their homes outside the reservation. These included members of the Rock Creek Band, whose descendants still live in the Goldendale area.

“People think we all got pushed onto the reservation, but that’s not true,” says Harvey. “We’re still here, maintaining our community, culture and traditions just as our people always have.”

Going deep: It took time to get the story behind the story of These Sacred Hills. Photo: Matt Swain Photography

Some of these traditions involve gathering wild foods above the Columbia River and in the foothills of the Cascades Range. Others require traveling farther afield, to places well outside the heart of Yakama territory where Harvey’s ancestors would trade and interact with other Indigenous nations.

Bailey and Ward accompanied Harvey and Jim on as many of these expeditions as possible, learning about Yakama culture as they worked on These Sacred Hills.

“We spent a whole day with the Tribe in the Blue Mountains, where an elder was teaching the process for gathering and preparing edible moss,” says Bailey. “It helped us better understand the people’s connection with traditional foods and what it means to the community.”

The filmmakers also saw camas fields threatened by a proposed solar farm, and areas where wind development has restricted access to gathering sites.

The number of such projects has increased dramatically in recent years.

“We’re struggling to evaluate all the energy projects coming down the pipe,” says Harvey. “There are over fifty we’re currently tracking.”

Energy transition

This spike is part of the surge in renewable energy development taking place across Washington, especially east of the Cascades, as the state attempts to meet its ambitious climate goals.

With the Trump administration backtracking on federal climate commitments, state-level climate action is now seen as even more important.

Many tribal nations, including the Yakama, are active participants in the clean energy transition.

In May 2024, the Washington Department of Commerce awarded $7.5 million in funds generated by the state’s Climate Commitment Act to clean energy projects under development by the Yakama and four other tribes.

What bothers Harvey isn’t that renewable energy development is occurring, but that projects built by outside entities proceed without meaningful consultation from tribes.

“Often, we don’t even hear about a project until the developer goes through the Environmental Impact Statement process,” says Harvey. “Then we get a draft (Environmental Impact Statement) thrown at us with sixty days to respond. That’s how tribes are treated. If we were involved at the beginning we could help address impacts on tribal resources.”

The goal of These Sacred Hills is to draw attention to the need for more tribal inclusion in decisions about energy development in eastern Washington.

So far the film has been shown at private screenings, but its makers hope to release it to a wider audience soon.

“Our message is that the primary community connected to the Goldendale Energy Storage Project is saying a resounding no,” says Bailey. “It is not right, it is not just, to ask people who have always been on the losing end of energy development to give up even more. The issue becomes pretty black and white when you understand what’s taking place.”

Columbia Insight’s reporting on issues related to social change and inequity is supported by Seeding Justice.