Name: This 300-Mile River Was Destroyed By Dams, But This Tribe Is Fighting Back | Guardians of the River
Uploaded: 2021-04-12T17:45:22.000Z
Duration: 20 min 21 s
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The Klamath River, this nearly 300 mile river runs through Oregon

And for the last century, dams have decimated this once abundant resource and blocked the

With this next documentary we learned about the Yurok tribe, this 1000 year old community

relies on the river for survival, but over the years have learned to be resilient as

they aim to restore clean water and food to their community.

If you want more about how this documentary was made, stick around to the end where we

And now from American Rivers and Swiftwater Films, this is "Guardians of the River."

Everything around us, it's all tied into this one beautiful place.

And it just inspires us to take care of this place.

And that ties into our values as indigenous people.

If you take care of yourself and make sure your self is healthy enough to take care of

your family and make sure they're taking care of themselves, then it should inspire everybody

to take care of the land that we all need.

It all starts with being able to catch that fish and bring it home to your family.

Back in the day you did this all year round, you caught fish in the spring, there was fish in

the fall and there was fish in the summer.

But nowadays, it's only this one time a year where we get a really good fish run.

And it's really sad because this fish run is so small, there's not going to be enough

fish pulled out of this river to give every tribal member one fish.

So we do the best that we can to make sure that we share the fish that we do get with

people who might not get the ability to come down here and catch it themselves.

My grandpa thought he'd never see the day where he'd catch less than 50 fish

But reality of it is that our people need to be fed.

You know, the salmon are so important to everything that we've come to understand

as Yurok people, that without the salmon, our way of life  is impossible.

Being a Yurok person, the river is our lifeblood.

It's just as important as the air we breathe.

The Klamath Basin is really big as stretches from southern Oregon down into northern California

It's really diverse as far as the physical aspects of it.

Historically, this was the third largest salmon producing river on the west coast.

There's been significant declines in all anadromous fisheries to a point where some fish have

There's probably a number of reasons why things have changed so drastically.

But one of the main reasons is those dams that were put in and basically cut the watershed

in half and took away 400 miles of anadromous spawning habitat.

These dams have such a big effect on our lives.

And when you're younger, it feels like people are talking about or like a monster or something

They make a small percentage of what Pacific power and Berkshire energy's profit is.

Where river should be naturally fluctuating up and down.

These dams are regulating the water flow towards one kind of stagnant flow.

So it allows algae all along the bottom of the river to pop up and grow and just flourish.

At times the Klamath River and the reservoirs behind the Klamath dams can be

1000s of times higher than the threshold that is recommended for humans to be in.

So the water is toxic, extremely toxic, and then that water is in turn

State of California says that you're not supposed to drink it, you're not supposed to swim in it.

You let your animals drink it they possibly die.

It's just become a part of our norm which it shouldn't be.

Or my kids or my kids' kids to be able to swim

Another very serious impact that we believe dams are responsible for is some fish disease

One fish disease in particular that we're we're really concerned

We call it C. Shasta, it's deadly to juveniles.

90% of the fish sampled have this disease.

Another disease aspect that is exacerbated by dams is a fish disease that we study here

Dams warm the water unnaturally and so warm water can lead to delays in migration here

Congregations lead to stressed out adult Chinook salmon and stressed fish are susceptible to diseases.

"Ich" is responsible for the 2002 Klamath River Fishkill, where we lost over 60,000 adult

Chinook salmon as they were returning upstream, here's. It's the largest salmon die off in United

States history happened right here on the Klamath River.

So we believe that fishes are our relative so we're here to take care of them like they take care of us.

Every year, there's this fear that builds up in us right that we're gonna see those

fish, you know, floating down the river dead and stinky again.

That's basically what started Climate Justice Coalition and us getting together to start

We've worked really hard for a long time on this.

Man, it feels like we're just right there at the finish line to get these dams taken out.

We've dedicated years of our lives, our young lives, to give opportunity for the next generation

Unfortunately, we've had to raise our children in this way to have to fight for what we live

Not because we want to, it's because we have to.

Right, it's an obligation for us to take care of this place to take care of us.

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This 300-Mile River Was Destroyed By Dams, But This Tribe Is Fighting Back | Guardians of the River

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