Robert Lundahl's Unconquering the Last Frontier, a film depicting the epic drama of the damming and undamming of the Elwha River, takes viewers from sea-level at the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the high glaciers of Mount Olympus, near where the river begins in a retreating "snowfinger," melting in the slow drip of an overheated climate. This fragility is evidenced downstream as fisheries workers race against time to save the genetics of the last stocks of wild salmon on the Elwha as politics threaten an unraveling of their efforts.
It's a memory taken for granted today by some, in the years following a 14-year, 325-million-dollar process of dam removal and ecosystem restoration which was begun in 2011 with the breaching of the Lower Elwha Dam and continuing later in 2014, with the removal of the Glines Canyon Dam.
The salmon and seagoing anadromous trout species -- including steelhead -- are now returning in steadily increasing numbers, but not without threats and obstacles of the man-made kind as logging upstream on a major tributary, The Little River, augurs dangers ahead for the spawning fish and young smolts from mudslides and sediment deposition. Those dangers also include fire, as evidenced by the man-made Bear Gulch inferno, currently blazing in Olympic National Park.
Unconquering the Last Frontier depicts the harm created by damming and logging of the Elwha River watershed from the perspective of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, as told by tribal members Beatrice Charles and Adeline Smith. In the film, the past comes alive through a remarkable collection of historical photographs. There's no running from the conclusion that there was an ongoing series of atrocities in these woods, culminating in a genocide, a willfully blind destruction and desecration of nature’s bounty and the people who depended on it.
On the Skagit River, out to the East along the slopes of a predominant volcano known today as Mt. Baker, the forgetting decimated the ecosystem and bountiful resources as it did to its western counterpart. Only the Elwha was re-thought, reconnected with her people, and is rebounding. The Skagit, on the other hand, supplying power to the heady technology centers of Seattle, is a cultural and environmental sacrifice zone, diverted and "dewatered," stifled by three dams. Referring to the waterless riverbed, Upper Skagit Tribal Elder Scott Schuyler says, "The tribe would prefer to take out the dams and restore a free-flowing river."
Unconquering the Last Frontier will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by veteran journalist and author, Lynda Mapes, and tribal citizens and elders Linda Wiechman and Vanessa Castle (Lower Elwha Klallam), J.J. Wilbur (Swinomish), and Scott Schuyler (Upper Skagit) who will answer questions and tell their stories.
Sponsored by Sierra Club Mount Baker Group and Sierra Club Washington Chapter.
Film Prices
Lincoln Theatre Members get $3.00 off on the following prices when buying tickets at-the-door:
General: $14.50
All prices include a $2.00 Preservation Fee that goes directly into our capital account for the preservation of the Lincoln Theatre and its programs.