the film forum library tutorial contact

RFK Jr. Avoids Party Line by Eric Barker Moscow-Pullman Daily News, July 25, 2025

Health secretary backs breaching; says U.S.
treatment of Natives amounted to genocide

CHERRYLANE -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about a future without Snake River dams and called the treatment of Native American people by the federal government genocide during a visit to the Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery on Thursday.

The remarks by the Health and Human Services Secretary that veered from the Trump administration's official positions and policies tracked with his support for natural, unprocessed food and active lifestyles.

Kennedy's father, Robert F. Kennedy, the late senator from New York, former U.S. attorney general and a presidential candidate who was assassinated in 1968, exposed him and his siblings to Native American culture during family travels.

Kennedy said his father believed the country would never fulfill its destiny as a beacon of freedom and democracy without coming to terms with the "original sin of our country which was the continuing genocide of the American Indian," through extermination and movement to reservations.

"Today that genocide continues with a food system that is actually posioning the tribes -- poisoning all Americans -- disproportionately with the tribes, which have the highest diabetes rates of any demographic in our country, the highest obesity rates, the shortest lifespan, cardiac disease, autoimmune diseases, all of these diseases that were unknown even 20 years ago," RFK Jr. said.

The traditional foods of tribes like the Nez Perce centered on salmon, berries, roots and meat from big game animals. But they were replaced by ultra-processed foods high in sugar and saturated fats when tribes were moved to reservations.

For decades, the Nez Perce have been working to recover wild runs of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in the Snake River basin on which their traditional diets, economy and culture were centered.

"We call ourselves the salmon people, because that is what we eat," said Joseph Oatman, director of the tribe's fisheries department. "That is what we do. So our health, both physical and mental, comes from eating our foods as well as going out there, harvesting our foods, processing them and feeding ourselves. So as you go through the work that you do to make all Americans healthy again, please remember that we want to also make our people healthy again, and salmon is a big part of that effort."

The Nez Perce, in partnership with the federal government, other tribes and states like Idaho, Washington and Oregon, operate hatcheries like the one Kennedy visited to mitigate the harm dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers cause to salmon.

The hatcheries have replaced some fishing opportunity but have not restored the runs to healthy levels. To get there, the Nez Perce have long supported breaching the four lower Snake River dams that impede migration of the fish to and from the ocean and lead to low survival rates.

Kennedy cited his past work as an environmental attorney and conservationist as well as his working relationships and friendships with tribal leaders in the Columbia River Basin.

"We fought many years to dismantle the Snake River dams and to reopen them to the salmon," he said. "In the meantime, until that day happens, we need these hatcheries, and we need to keep the salmon stocks alive and flourishing.

"So I want to thank all of you for your commitment, not just to your tribe, but to our country, and pledge to you that I want to be your partner, your brother. I want to hear what you need, and I want to do everything that I can."

Kennedy played with the drum group Waaph qah qun during the ceremony. He scattered fish pellets to juvenile spring chinook salmon, intently gazed at adult fish that will be spawned later this summer and held squirming Pacific lamprey during a tour of the hatchery.

His boss, President Donald Trump, cancelled a deal his predecessor made with the Nez Perce and other tribes that centered on up to $1 billion for salmon recovery, investments in tribal-led renewable energy projects and studies that were designed to prepare for dam breaching.

He also nixed an executive order from former President Joseph Biden that called for a "sustained national effort" to honor tribes by restoring Snake and Columbia river salmon and steelhead to healthy and abundant levels.

The Trump administration had held back critical hatchery funding for this fiscal year but much of it was restored after the Nez Perce sought help from Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho's 2nd Congressional District. Funding for fiscal year 2026 remains uncertain.

Shannon Wheeler, chairperson of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, said Kennedy's visit may serve to improve communication between the administration and the tribe.

"We just hope that this visit with Senator Kennedy, or Secretary Kennedy is actually something that will resonate with the administration and the work that we're doing out here that really is meaningful work," Wheeler said. "We're trying to keep species alive, and we're trying to recover a species.

"I think it'll reach the President, and I think that the President will at least understand the position that the United States of America has with the First Nations and particularly here with the Nez Perce."

Deb Haaland, U.S. interior secretary under Biden, visited Dworshak National Fish Hatchery, which is operated by the tribe, in 2022.

Related Sites:
RFK Jr. contradicts Trump, talks salmon preservation at Nez Perce Tribe Hatchery Photo Gallery, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, 7/24/25

Related Pages:
Silas Whitman Helped Build the Nez Perce Tribe Department of Fisheries by Eric Barker, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, 10/13/24