The Fish Between the Falls

Ten thousand years ago, native people painted pictures of white sturgeon on the rocks near where they lived. These impressive fish, the largest and one of the oldest in North America, were an important part of the tribe’s diet and the inspiration for their elegant sturgeon-nosed canoes. But over the past 200 years dikes and dams have changed the river so much that the sturgeon no longer successfully reproduce. Now, the people whose culture is bound up with these fish and the people who control the flow of the river today are working together to restore the Kootenai River White Sturgeon to their ancestral home.