Federal water managers released a final environmental review in April that clears the way for upper Columbia River tribes to reintroduce salmon above Washington’s unpassable Grand Coulee Dam.

The move is the latest step forward in the Native nations’ 85-year march toward restoring populations of the iconic fish to the half of the Columbia’s 1,243-mile run that’s stuck behind America’s largest concrete structure.

“When the dams were constructed, we weren’t consulted. A lot of our elders didn’t know what was wrong, why the fish stopped coming,” Colville Tribe Chairman Jarred-Michael Erickson said. “So there’s a huge cultural significance with bringing the salmon back.”

The plan is rare among salmon recovery projects because it doesn’t require any sacrifices from powerful river users like

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