The Kinzua Dam was completed in 1965, built to help mitigate flooding for a watershed roughly twice the size of Rhode Island, but at what cost?
The price tag was $125 million, but the cost to the Seneca Nation of Indians can’t be quantified. “Lake of Betrayal,” a documentary telling the Seneca story, will be shown at 8 p.m. today on WPSU.
Producers Paul Lamont, Caleb Adams and Scott Sackett describe the film as such: “Completed in 1965, the dam was originally proposed to help mitigate flooding in Pittsburgh, almost 200 miles downriver, but the 27-mile reservoir that formed behind Kinzua Dam inundated vast tracts of the Seneca Indians’ ancestral lands, forcing their removal in breach of the United States’ oldest treaty then in effect.”
The description continued, “Set against a backdrop of a federal Indian termination policy, pork-barrel politics, and undisclosed plans for private hydropower during the post World War II boom, Lake of Betrayal reveals an untold story from American history — a one-sided battle pitting an impoverished Native American nation against some of the strongest political, social and commercial forces in the country as they fought to protect their sovereignty. And although the imposed changes resulting from the dam cost the Seneca irreplaceable cultural losses, the Kinzua crisis became a turning point to more aggressively protect and exercise their sovereignty and build a stronger Seneca Nation.”
Lamont told The Era the response to the film so far has been “humbling.”
“The Ray Evans Theater in Salamanca, N.Y., where we held a two-night world premier was a full house for both nights,” he said. “The screening at the 700-seat Struthers Library Theater in Warren, Pennsylvania, was a full house.”
The film has been screened at colleges and universities in the area, too. The most common reaction is audience members thanking the producers for making the documentary.
“I think that for many people, seeing the story play out on the screen has been cathartic,” Lamont said. “For many who suffered through those tumultuous years, silence was their defense but with this film, they were able to talk about their experiences and finally, there was a sense of release.”
The filmmakers set out with a single objective — “to tell the Seneca story from the inside out but to tell it within the context of the national story that was playing out in the background — most notably the federal policy of termination that sought to eliminate tribal sovereignty.”
Lamont said the Senecas and others whose land was taken and submerged beneath the waters of the Allegheny Reservoir, in violation of the Pickering Treaty of 1794, had little to no voice.
“In essence, yes, this was a Seneca story but within the larger American narrative, it was a story that we believed would resonate across cultural boundaries,” Lamont explained. “It is part of our shared history.”
“Lake of Betrayal” is a national film, and is being distributed to PBS stations across the country by the National Educational Telecommunications Association.
