‘Salmon relatives come back to their homeland’: Okanagan fish passage, blocked for decades, set to be re-opened

‘Salmon relatives come back to their homeland’: Okanagan fish passage, blocked for decades, set to be re-opened

More than 70 years after a dam blocked salmon from moving through their historic habitat, members of the syilx Okanagan Nation are celebrating the creation of a future fish passage.

'Salmon relatives come back to their homeland’: Okanagan fish passage, blocked for decades, set to be re-opened

An adult sc̓win (Okanagan sockeye salmon) swims alone in kɬúsx̌nítkʷ (Okanagan Lake) by a shoreline in kiʔláwnaʔ (Kelowna) in syilx Okanagan territory in November 2022. Due to settler-colonialism, any presence of salmon in the lake in the last 70 years has been rare, but efforts to create a waterway that would result in unimpeded salmon passage from sq’awsitkʷ (Okanagan River) into the lake will soon change that. Photo by Aaron Hemens More than …