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• 1 2020-05-05T20:59:54-07:00 The River 1 plain 1447 2020-05-05T20:59:54-07:00

  Considering the colonial impact of Washington State agriculture, especially concerning water rights.

  
  
  
  In the Washington State context, an understanding of terroir cannot separate nature and human activity. For example, growing wine in the Columbia Valley would be impossible without irrigation from the Yakima and Columbia rivers. As the Washington Wine Commission puts it: 

  Washington has the good fortune of having incredible water sources to rely on for irrigation in such an arid region. This allows absolute control as to when the vine is given moisture and how much is given, which contributes to grape ripeness, lack of sugar dilution, canopy management and dehydration controls at vital moments during its growth.

  Given settler colonists role in infringing on Native water rights, the terroir is built on colonizing actions. The Columbia Valley AVA lies predominantly on traditional Yakama lands, and uses irrigation water from rivers within those areas.
  
  Irrigation practices have infringed on Native sovereignty for many years. Vivian M Adams writes in a description of a 1923 appeal to the Committee on Indian Affairs for the Plateau People's Web Portal:

  "On reservations Plateau people had to learn a new way of livelihood because hunting and fishing were became limited. To the Indians It seemed unfair for the White Man to make them pay for water that in the past they used freely on the lands now "owned" and lived on by white people. This appeal speaks to the dramatic lifestyle changes Plateau people had to make in a new cash economy. They believed they were ruled by the laws of strangers that seemed made to restricted and make demands on only the Indians. Mr. Mann's passionate appeal was of a man wronged, an Indian man who tried to live by the laws made by white men. But he was constantly battling water loss, cattle rustling, and land theft. He writes: 'Irrigation water is the most important factor in crop production anywhere...That the earth and water all time here, but me and all of us short time here on this earth. And why not let poor people like me and my people live right like moneyed people do, from generation to generations we lived by hunting and fishing and when we abandoned hunting and fishing, we started making our living by farming with irrigation since the year 1878.' Water issues are still troubling for Indian reservation land owners. Many of them gave up the struggle and leased their lands to white farmers solely for lease income."

  Applying the concept of terroir to a North American context can lead to the erasure of these struggles. Because terroir suggests that qualities are inherent to the land, the concept masks the ways in which human activity contributes to the products. The Columbia Valley Viticultural Area can only exist because of the human practice of irrigation; it can also only exist because of the practice of colonization. By attributing wine qualities to the land, and masking human activity, viticultural areas make an argument for the naturalization of colonialism.

  Read about the territorialization of Columbia Valley lands here.