Reflection On The Film Damnation
Today in class instead of having a guest lecture we were fortunate enough to have a film day. The film we watched is DamNation, which is a documentary created by Ben Knight and Travis Rummel. Much of the information relayed by this documentary focuses on the effects dams have on the environment. These effects, which I will be elaborating on, include the creation of hydroelectricity, the rapid decrease of the salmon population, and the cultural genocide of Native American peoples. The film starts out with a 1935 dedication speech from President Franklin D. Roosevelt celebrating the completion of the Hoover Dam, in which he calls the greatest dam in the world.
Moreover, President Roosevelt goes on to say that this dam will contain the largest generators and turbines the country has ever seen, which will continuously supply a staggering amount of electricity to the people of the Southwest and that Americans should be proud of this amazing feat. Indeed, during this era dams and hydropower represented a pivotal time in America and produced half of the countries power. True, hydropower is one of the most efficient ways to generate power and releases less carbon into the air than traditional methods, which a positive effect dams have on our environment, but Americans may have taken it too far. In fact, between 1950 and 1970 the Bureau of Reclamation built thirty-five dams and considered any river that wasn’t dammed to be a waste. As a result, there are roughly seventy-five thousand dams in the United States. This plethora of dams has dramatically decreased the salmon population and even put the once abundant chinook salmon on the endangered species list. That is, the dams make it hard or prevent the salmon from completing their migration from the ocean, upstream to the river they were born, to spawn.
For example, along the Colombian River the salmon must pass through a labyrinth of eight dams just to make it home to spawn. Thus, the juvenile salmon stand no chance of making it back to the ocean and must be transported by boats and barges. As a result, every time a dam was built a fish hatchery had to be built at an attempt to restore the salmon population, but it was ineffective. When the fish were released very few of them actually returned because they didn’t know how to survive in the wild, beings that they were raised with no natural predators and no need to hunt. Therefore, humans risked killing of an entire species of fish just to gain electricity. Many Indian tribes along the Columbian River lost their way of life because of the construction of dams.
These Native Americans had built societies that revolved around the salmon. In addition, the salmon became their means for survival, commerce, and an important part of their religion. Furthermore, the Native Americans whose lives revolved around the fish had to correspond with the arrival of the salmon, and their fishing success depended on the size of the salmon run. But the construction of dams along the Columbian River flooded and destroyed the water falls, which led to the rapid decrease of the salmon population, as well as the rapid decrease of the Native American population that once relied on this river.
As I reflect on this film, I believe America needs to take a second look at the importance rivers play not only in the lives of humans but in the lives of fish and other wildlife. Therefore, since the earth is the only home humanity has, we need to work collaboratively to take care of it and take a deeper look into how our actions effect the earth and its ecosystem both short term and long term.
