Over the past two years I have repeatedly traveled to the Klamath River near the California border to report on the demolition of four dams. They looked at the excavator crew, covering the remains of Cocco No. 1 and Iron Gate Dam with their claws. And when the enormous reservoir was discharged, I saw newly planted seeds rooted in soil that had been in the water for generations.
When the last dam was breached in August 2024, the river was breached along the river for the first time in over a century, about 40 miles.
While working on Andamting in Klamath, I spoke with Indigenous leaders and activists who had been campaigning for 20 years to remove the dam, including filing lawsuits, holding protests and speaking out at utility meetings.
I learned that the historic process of destroying dams is also a moment when we saw how the dam looked, even in the long history of resistance by native leaders and activists, and aimed at unleashing water to restore Kurama to a healthier state.
I recently read a new book that tells a powerful story of multi-generational resistance leading up to the removal of the dam. The book is by Amy Bauers Kordalis, a member of the Jurok tribe, a lawyer and environmental advocate who first met in 2023 in a village of Lek Wye’s ancestors near the mouth of the Klamath River. In the book “, she tells an incredible story about how relatives for the right to fish salmon on the Klamath River face discrimination, raids and arrests by law enforcement officers, and even violence.
Talking about the history, she wrote: However, there was a state law adopted in the 1930s, which for decades banned fishing along the river. It was a battle that ultimately led to affirming the tribe’s fishing rights, laying the foundation for years of efforts by tribe members campaigning to remove the dam.
In the book, which will be released on October 28th, Bowers’ Cordalis eloquently describes her deep connections between the river and the salmon, as well as her own experience of catching salmon using a gilnet to carry fish along the same river where her ancestors lived.
She worked as an intern in the Fisheries Division of the Jurok tribe in the summer of 2002, floating on the Klamath River.
The massive amount of fish murders became a critical event for her and others, indicating the seriousness of the river ecosystem. There were multiple causes. That year, water detours for agriculture had a dramatically reduced river flow. And the hydroelectric dam in Klamath reduced water quality and contributed to the outbreak of toxic algae flowers and diseases among fish.
Bowers Cordalis writes that in response to the murder of the fish, she and others decided to fight to save the salmon by restoring the health of the river.
She denounced Vice President Dick Cheney for the decision to send water to farmers and steal the river. She was in her second year at a law school in Colorado. Bowers Cordalis confronted her wearing a t-shirt that read, “Bush Kills Fish, 70,000 Salmon Dead on the Klamath River, Yurok Reservation.”
Over the next few years, native activists repeatedly protested to demand the removal of hydroelectric dams built without tribal consent between 1911 and 1962.
The dam was only used for power generation, not for water storage. Warren Buffett’s Pasikolp, who owned the aging dam, agreed to abandon them after he finally decided they were cheaper than bringing them to current environmental standards. The agreement, which includes Pacifolk, California and Oregon, was negotiated to remove the dam in the end.
The project took over a year and involved hundreds of workers was American history.
Bowers Cordalis, co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit, says he is confident that dam removal will heal the river ecosystem, rebound fish and show that nature-based solutions work. She also writes that destroying the dams helped justice because these dams “embodied the dark underbelly legacy of the country’s establishment, which supports the industrialization of nature at the expense of indigenous peoples, the environment and marginalized communities.”
I recently caught up with Bowers Cordalis over the phone to talk about her book The State of the Klamath River, and the salmon that was in a body of waters the dam had inaccessible for over a century.
“I deeply moved writing the book, telling the story of the whole family about all the generations who worked to maintain Yurock’s culture and sovereignty, telling me the health of the river and salmon, and how it all accumulated in this historic moment when we were there.
“This current generation wasn’t the only one who worked on that fight because I wasn’t the only one, it’s been built ever since colonization,” she added. “And I wanted to tell the story from my perspective, to be able to tell the story all inclusive of the history and family of Yurok and his advocacy, and to tell the world all the stories that can tell the world how deeply dam removal is, how deeply river health is for people, and how important river health is.”
Bowers Cordalis said they hope that people will be inspired by showing effective solutions to help damaged ecosystems thrive again.
“We used nature-based solutions to heal ecosystems, which in doing so not only heal ecosystems, but also people, cultures, and economy,” she said.
She said it was important to understand how Indigenous people were deprived of Indigenous people after most of the land was arrested and charged for fishing for salmon along the Klamath River in the 1970s and ’80s.
“We had to fight for generations just for the right to continue our lifestyle, and we weren’t hurting our resources. We weren’t overfishing. There was no real legal justification that we weren’t allowed to fish. It was just racial,” she said. “And that took a lot away from us — the way we live, the way we survived.”
I asked her what the river and its drained reservoir would look like a year after the dam was removed. She said last week she saw the crew at work next to a stream on the land of drainage storage devices to use excavators and other equipment to move the planet and restore more natural flood plains. The crew have helped to regain the native vegetation.
“They build salmon playgrounds and are essentially promoting the healing of Mother Nature,” she said. “They set all the conditions right so that the rivers heal faster and aquatic life is better in those areas. That’s incredible.”
This summer, Bowers Cordalis has been out river fishing with his family and she is confident that salmon will flourish again in the coming years.
She recently took part in their journey when they paddled the river, and she was impressed by how she looked different from what she had seen before.
“It moves with this force I’ve never seen before, and the water is also clean. It used to mean that you couldn’t see the bottom of the river. Now you can,” she said. “Previously, we would see algae moving in the river, but there are still a few, but not many.”
She said the water was also cold and she lost the rotten smell of decay.
“I’ve always said, I want to bring back the great grandmother river and I feel like I’m just starting to know my great grandmother river,” she said.
Her great grandmother Geneva was born in 1904 and died in 1986. In her childhood, Geneva looked at the river before the dam was built.
“Now, I feel like I’m starting to give a little glimpse into what she saw: a beautiful, healthy and vibrant river,” Bowers-Cordalis said.
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