Klamath Salmon Youth Camp Aims to Help Families Advocate for Salmon
Fingerling landlocked salmon. [Crop of a photo provided by the CDFW]
On September 14th and 15th Tribal families and youth, and other salmon dependent people from all over Northern California will converge at the Bluff Creek Resort near Weitchpec, CA to to discuss how to protect, and honor, the Klamath and Trinity River’s salmon.
Trainings and discussions will be focused on ways to advocate for clean water and Tribal rights, community organizing, media skills, banner making, silkscreening, and traditional skills such as processing salmon. There will also be updates on the Klamath dam removal process and Trump administration water planning.
The Yurok Tribe, a co-host of the event says the camp is a way to involve more native families and youth in their work to protect the Klamath River. “Seeing how much passion our youth have for protecting the river fills me with optimism for the future. We have fought for our salmon since European contact and we will continue to fight until our rivers a filled with fish,” Joseph L. James, Chairman of the Yurok Tribe.
The Tribe has been fighting for dam removal and water for fish on the Klamath for decades, and is one of California’s only Tribes that has established fishing rights. Despite these efforts bad water management has lead to dismal salmon returns over the last five years. This has lead to issues such as poverty, food insecurity, and high suicide rates on the Yurok reservation. Attendees will discuss these dismal salmon returns over the last five years along with the is needed to improve these salmon runs.
Save California Salmon, the co-host of the event says the camp is part of a statewide effort to engage Tribal youth and others that depend on healthy fisheries populations in policy decisions that impact California rivers, including climate change decisions. They say all of Northern California’s Tribes should have the right to clean water and robust fisheries.
“Some of NorthernCalifornia’s Tribe’s have established rights to a harvestable surplus of salmon and some do not.” said Morning Star Gali, the Tribal Water Organizer for Save California Salmon. “All of them should, however no California Tribes are actually able to catch harvestable surplus of salmon and most do not have clean water either due to policies that favor irrigators and polluters. Most of Native Californians live many hours from where the decisions that impact us are made and are not included in decision making. We aim to change this dynamic by supporting communities that want to organize for rivers and salmon and by empowering new leaders.”
Gali said that in places like Washington DC and Sacramento, decisions are currently being made that will decide the future of California’s water and fisheries. She said the Trump administration is gutting key laws like the Endangered Species and Clean Water Act, while also rewriting the plans that decide how much water goes down the Klamath, Trinity, Sacramento Rivers and Bay Delta tributaries for fisheries. She says California has public vowed to fight this attack on the environment, and has apologized for its treatment of native people, however they still moving forward with harmful new water diversions, dam, and oil development projects despite the fact that it is predicted that the water in the Central Valley will be too polluted to be usable within 50 years and that 45% of fish populations in the state are facing extinction.
“It is time for California to change course and really respect the basic human right to clean water and a livable planet, along with California Tribe’s rights to healthy abundant fisheries.” said Gali “It is time to think about future generations.”
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
They might also think about how to deal with China et al when they take over what’s left of America, if tribes want to plan for future generations..
People have inevitably been basing there identities off of their persecution by Europeans. A short glance abroad tells us that in 100 years the American nation state may not exist in any recognizable form.
So many America haters may be granted their wish sooner that any of us would hope.
The treaty rights of tribes also go out the window with the collapse of the American nation state.
I’m no fan of generic corporate Americanism, just sayin’, but to start it all over from scratch with a new foreign overlord may not be beneficial for tiny soviergn governance concepts like tribes, klans, breeding cults, etc.
And on another tangent, there is again no mention of human population pressures. With more humans come more resource demands.
Tribes on the Klamath live in a anomaly sort of region where the human population is very low due to the upwards of 90 percent federal land status and the result is weird little bankrupt towns with meager stores.
We could flood the area with a refugee resettlement program like progressives want, but then we would have to come to terms with the nativism of natives and the willful ignorance of proud Americans like myself. We can Save the salmon by placing a moritorium on new immigration. We can ban industrial agriculturalists in the valley that use American water to produce crops for global export.
Big ag is the plantation owner after all, and responsible for much of the immigration problem in America
🕯🌳Boy you took the article totally off track and turned it in to your own personal political agenda. This is how shit starts on this blog. If he didn’t start the trade war than the farmers, fishermen and other industrial workers wouldn’t be hurting around the upcoming holidays.