Amy Bowers Cordalis, "The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life" (Little Brown, 2024)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Amy Bowers Cordalis
Episode: "The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life"
Date: December 23, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features a conversation with Amy Bowers Cordalis, Yurok tribal member, lawyer, activist, and author of The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life (Little Brown, 2024). The discussion centers on the intergenerational struggle of Amy’s family and the Yurok Tribe to protect and restore the Klamath River, a lifeline for their community. Dr. Miranda Melcher guides the conversation through themes of historical injustice, ecological restoration, Indigenous knowledge, activism, and collective healing.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introducing the Author and Book's Purpose

• Yurok Roots and Connection to the Klamath River
  • Amy introduces herself in her tribal language and highlights her heritage from the village of Requa at the Klamath River’s mouth (02:39).
  • The book is an intergenerational memoir, tracing her family’s fight to protect the river and their fishing-based lifeways:

    "Every generation of my family has lived and breathed and loved and fished... our way of life somehow revolves around fishing and the Klamath River..." (03:55)

• Why Now?
  • The recent victory of dam removal on the Klamath makes this a timely story, showcasing both ongoing struggle and transformative restoration (05:10).

2. Audience and Core Message

• Amy hopes the book is read "by the whole world," describing it as a vehicle to share Yurok instructions for living in balance with nature (06:26).
• She outlines the principle of reciprocity—taking what you need and ensuring care for the natural world.

  "We've been living that way since time immemorial but through colonization we weren't allowed to share that perspective..." (07:03)

• The book serves as a guide for a different relationship to the environment, grounded in Indigenous stewardship and hope for ecological restoration.

  "We do not have to move to Mars; instead, we can be here working to restore ecosystems using nature-based solutions..." (10:31)

3. Intergenerational Memory and History

• Reconciling Narratives
  • Amy grew up facing conflicting stories: mainstream US education taught Indigenous erasure, while her lived experience and family memory told otherwise (12:42).
  • Family stories ("tidbits") about the Salmon Wars, Supreme Court battles (Matz v. Arnett), and everyday acts of resistance were formative but often fragmented.
• The 2002 Fish Kill: A Turning Point
  • Witnessing the catastrophic fish kill in her early 20s was pivotal:

    "I witnessed that and thought... this is an act of ecocide... I vowed to dedicate my life to protecting the river..." (20:04)

4. Legal and Political Struggles

• Why Was Fishing Illegal?
  • Amy details the historical and legal mechanisms that criminalized Yurok fishing rights—rooted in a complex legacy of broken treaties, executive orders, and state racism (23:56).
  • Despite clear federal law recognizing Yurok rights, state and federal agencies repeatedly targeted the tribe for arrest and exclusion, especially during the mid-20th century.
• Supreme Court Victory... and Continuing Injustice
  • 1975’s Matz v. Arnett affirmed Yurok rights, but enforcement was thwarted by state resistance and federal “conservation” measures that disproportionately punished tribal fishers while leaving commercial and recreational interests unchecked (35:03):

    "Our minimal catch... was like two percent... meanwhile the offshore fishermen... accounted for something like ninety percent..." (38:36)

  • Notably, protest and ceremonial acts—like Amy’s grandmother singing to call birds—were decisive in ending the enforcement violence:

    "She started singing a Yurok song and she called in the birds... flying in a circle... the federal marshals got so freaked out they left and never came back." (40:57)

5. The River's Ecological Crisis

• 2002 Salmon Die-off
  • Pollution, damming, agricultural diversions, and mismanagement converged to turn the Klamath neon-green with toxic algae, culminating in the largest fish kill in US history (43:01):

    "It was like a neon green... the river was extremely sick... the salmon were just on its deathbed." (43:15)

• Community Mobilization
  • When media ignored the crisis, direct action—sending 500 pounds of dead salmon to DC—forced officials to pay attention (49:53).
  • This event catalyzed broad coalitions for river restoration.

6. Restoration and Present-Day Healing

• Dam Removal and Ecological Recovery
  • The removal of four major dams reopened 400+ miles of salmon habitat, resulting in rapid and unexpected salmon return and general ecosystem revival (52:19):

    "The river is fiercer, stronger, healthier than I have ever seen it in my lifetime..." (52:23)

• Cultural and Ecological Resurgence
  • Massive replanting efforts, cultural resource revitalization, and animal repopulation reflect the depth of healing—a direct result of blending Indigenous knowledge and scientific restoration (54:45):

    "We are restoring... nineteen billion native seeds planted... first foods and natural resources are growing..." (54:55)

• Community Empowerment
  • The Shasta Indian Nation regains land and reconnects with ancestral sites.
  • Amy’s nonprofit, Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, now works to export these restoration models nationwide, advocating for hydropower reform and Indigenous rights (58:22):

    "There’s a model there that can be applied across not only the United States but across the world..." (60:00)

7. Looking Forward

• A Model for Global Restoration
  • The Klamath case demonstrates a pathway where business, ecology, and Indigenous rights align, offering hope to other river systems worldwide (58:22).
• From Scarcity to Abundance
  • The ultimate goal is a return to abundance—ecological, cultural, and economic—restoring sustainable ways for all communities connected to the river’s fate (62:16).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Amy Bowers Cordalis:
  • "The book... offers those instructions and shares those instructions with the rest of the world..." (07:33)
  • "The Yurok people have lived according to a set of instructions that were handed down to us when the world was created...to live in balance with the natural world..." (06:32)
  • "Our minimal catch... was like two percent of the overall harvest... meanwhile... commercial fishermen... accounted for something like ninety percent" (38:36)
  • "She started singing a Yurok song and she called in the birds... the federal marshals got so freaked out they left and never came back." (40:57)
  • "It was like a neon green... it looked like it was a scene out of a sci-fi movie and it did that every year... the river was extremely sick..." (43:15)
  • "One of the greatest things about having a book out... is I get to share the good news... The river is fiercer, stronger, healthier than I have ever seen..." (52:23)
  • "[Dam removal] is just the beginning... We're working on national hydropower reform to make sure that Indigenous rights are more present and uplifted..." (58:22)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Book Context – 01:35-05:56
• Audience and Message of the Book – 06:26-11:21
• Learning Family History, Education vs. Reality – 12:42-20:08
• The 2002 Fish Kill as Turning Point – 20:08-22:53
• Criminalizing Indigenous Fishing – 23:56-34:32
• After the Supreme Court Case: More Injustice – 35:03-42:00
• 2002 Ecological Disaster – 43:01-51:29
• Restoration and Present State – 52:19-57:58
• Ridges to Riffles and Future Work – 58:22-62:40

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Takeaways

• The fight for the Klamath River is a microcosm of native resilience, legal complexity, and environmental crisis—and a beacon for what restoration can look like when Indigenous leadership and ecological science work together.
• The Water Remembers is an urgent lesson in both the historical traumas that have shaped Indigenous communities and the pathways to healing—ecological, legal, and cultural.
• The rapid healing of the Klamath post-dam removal demonstrates the power and wisdom of traditional stewardship and collective action.
• Amy’s ongoing work offers hope and a blueprint for other communities facing environmental injustice, grounded not just in resistance but in vision and real-world results.

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Transcript

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

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[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

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Welcome to the new books network.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Hello and welcome to another episode on the new books network i'm one of your hosts doctor miranda melcher and i'm very pleased today to be speaking with amy bowers cordallas about her book titled the water my indigenous family's fight to save a river and a way of life published by little brown and company in twenty twenty five now i don't want to give too much away at this point because we're going to have a lot of things to discuss focused mainly in northern california where we're going to be talking i mean as the title suggests about water about a river about livelihoods and meaning that in the sort of economic sense of like livelihood but also in terms of life and the things that make life worth living for us now for things families for generations of families in the past there's all sorts of things that are very connected here and i think it's going to make for a very interesting discussion so amy thank you so much for joining me on.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

The podcast wak lau thank you for having me could you start us off.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Please by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

Write this book well thank you and i'd like to start with a proper introduction in my tribe's language the yurok tribe so i'll go ahead with that ayaqui neck now amy bowers cordalis nuwak requoi nu mate wak lao walk lao walk lao so that is a or an introduction in my tribe's language and i basically said good morning which is where i'm at it's the morning time and i'm from the village of requoi which is right on the mouth of klamath river and i'm really happy to be here so yeah it's a pleasure to be on the show to talk about my book the water remembers the book is as the the blurb sort of suggests an intergenerational memoir about my family's fight to save our our river the klamath river and our lifeway that has been based on that river since time immemorial my family is from the village of requoi right at the mouth of the klamath and every generation of my family has lived and breathed and loved and fished and you know done all the things that we do as humans on the klamath river right there at the mouth and through yurok country which is about the lower forty five miles of the klamath river and we you know it's been quite a wild ride in aboriginal times we enjoyed quite an abundant way of life based on the klamath basin's natural resources the klamath river historically was the third largest salmon producing river in all of the lower united states and so my family enjoyed you know three or four different salmon runs and we became you know heavy duty great fisher people because of that and everything in our way of life somehow revolves around fishing and the klamath river and we were never relocated during colonization and so we were able to stay on our home waters and continue our fishing based way of life but we had to fight for it and the book outlines that journey and that fight and you know one of the things that i'm that felt like i needed to to write about it right now and made this what made this book so timely is that we had a very big victory recently on the klamath river and we wouldn't have been here without that historical fight of my family and so many other indigenous families in the klamath basin that is a.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Lovely introduction and gives us a great foundation already for our discussion and clearly this book is in so many ways a love letter really to the klamath river and the whole community around it but it's also clear from what you've already told us that you're not just talking to people who already know the klamath river right so who do you hope reads this book whether or not they're familiar or have been to the mouth of the klamath the way you and your family have lived there who do you hope reads this and what do you want them to take away.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

From it oh i love this question and honestly i hope the whole world reads this book because it offers us so much at this point in history the yurok people have lived according to a set of instructions that were handed down to us when the world was created and those instructions were to live in balance with the natural world and to never take more than what we needed and if we did that we would always have enough and the language that was passed down was that we would never want for anything because the world and you know you think about the depth of the ecosystems all the different first foods you know the fish the deer the elk acorns different berries and roots all of those things would continue to replenish themselves and regenerate so long as the humans you know were stewards of those and that meant that we could use them you know for our livelihood and that we were part of the ecosystem but we couldn't take too much and so yurok has been living according to that well to those instructions and the way that we talk about it is that we're to live in balance with the natural world right so balance meaning that principle of reciprocity where we get to be the great beneficiaries of all those first foods but we also have a corresponding duty and responsibility to care and take care of it and make sure it's not harmed and so we've been living that way since time immemorial but through colonization we weren't allowed to share that perspective and those instructions with others and so the book is essentially at its core it offers those instructions and shares those instructions with the rest of the world and then it shows through the generations of my family how we have implemented those instructions and how we've tried to live by those instructions and how we have fought with our blood sweat and tears to basically stay true to those instructions in that way of life and you know not spoiler alert that fight you know grounded in that foundational understanding of humans living in balance with the natural world is what has led to the largest river restoration project in history on the klamath river last year we removed four dams in the middle of the klamath river and reopened over four hundred miles of salmon spawning habitat and instantly seven days later salmon returned they went further way past the dams and into those historical spawning grounds this year they're back with force and a vengeance thirty percent more salmon have returned they've gone further up into the klamath system and are spawning and also the water is cleaner and cooler than it has been in a century and the river its life force is stronger and more fierce than i have ever known it in my lifetime and so the book what i hope it does for readers is offer them a different way of being and a different way of thinking about how humans can live and be in the natural world as part of the ecosystem living in balance with other parts of the ecosystem and also i hope that it gives people hope that we can restore our earth we can restore our planet we do not have to move to mars instead we can be here working to restore ecosystems using nature based solutions that are profitable that uphold indigenous rights and that is a path toward a healthy sustainable future for humans and earth i mean that's a whole.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Bunch of takeaways there so definitely listeners should keep that in mind as we continue our discussion and we're obviously going to talk about as you said the largest restoration in history i mean we're absolute how could we not talk about that right but i think we also want to talk about a bunch of other things because it's not just a book that's kind of saying here's a big landmark legal case or here's a book that's like really investigating the removal of these particular four dams like yeah okay that's part of it but there's a lot of other pieces too that i don't want to neglect so i think the first place i'd like to go is you've mentioned a number of times now right the idea of since time immemorial right and that idea of history and intergenerational memory and relationship is really key throughout all of this but that doesn't mean kind of automatically that any one person within a community is going to kind of be aware of all of that sort of history right especially when we're talking about instances where people are not allowed to pursue the family livelihoods that they have for since time immemorial so can we talk a little bit about that like explicitly like how did you you begin to learn about your family history was that sort of always automatically available or what was that sort of process like to understand the river and your family's engagement with.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

It writing the book was a very profound experience because even through the process of writing it i learned so much and the first half of the book is devoted to essentially trying to answer your question because it's complex in the united states indigenous history isn't taught it's not something that is included in history books it's not included in mainstream media and because of that so much of the shared indigenous modern experience you know like i would say post eighteen you know ninety or so it's just not taught what we are taught in schools in the us is that you know frankly columbus showed up and discovered america and then all the indigenous peoples were killed by the late eighteen hundreds and that's it that's the narrative and so for me as an indigenous woman or girl growing up in the united states in the eighties and nineties you know that's what i was taught and yet the fact that i exist proved that that historical narrative was wrong right here i am as an indigenous person and i you know while i wasn't raised on the reservation we were raised close to it and so i was going back for holidays for fishing seasons for ceremonies for tribal government events and so it was sort of this reconciliation between what i was being taught in mainstream us education versus what i was actually experiencing as an indigenous people person which was you know i would go back to my home village of requoi and i would stay at my grandma's house which i talk about extensively in the book which was across the dirt road from the house of lauk which was or is our ancestral home which has been there since you know forever nobody knows how old it is and so i and i would learn these sort of i would call them tidbits of my family's history and culture and i was born in nineteen eighty not to date myself but my family at that point was just recovering from the salmon wars and i write about the salmon wars and what they were but they were a violent dangerous time where my well essentially and it's hard to talk about but the us government again outlawed our way of life and sent federal marshals with full riot gear machine guns out to the reservation to kick us off the river and my family fought back you know putting their lives on the line just to protect our indian rights that's what the family called them and so my family you know when i was born was just recovering from you know that event but also decades and decades and decades almost a hundred years of being under attack by the us government and the state government you know and it it's it is how do i say this the us government and the state of california had genocidal and assimilative policies towards indigenous peoples during that whole one hundred years that my family was fighting and so you know as a child i would hear little stories about the family's fight you know the salmon wars was one and i write about one of the big events where there was an interaction a fish protest between my great grandmother and my grandma and the federal marshals which we called the goon squads but then there was also much more there was a supreme court case that basically was the accumulation of thirty years nineteen arrests of my great uncle raymond matz for just fishing for just trying to continue our fishing based way of life and they legalized our identity they criminalized our way of life they illegally targeted us because we were native people and all of that was against the us constitution because we had vested federal rights through the creation of our reservation and we reserved our indian rights our aboriginal rights to fish to land you know to be on the water to exercise our inherent sovereignty and so you know you can imagine as a young girl here i am and i'm hearing these little nuggets of this legacy the holidays have a.

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[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

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[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

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[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

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[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

Taste and so i i was always curious and i was always a child that really listened and that really came to apex in two thousand two when the fish kill happened on the yurok reservation along the lower klamath river and in two thousand two and i was in my early twenties over seventy thousand adult salmon died on the klamath river as a result of bad river and water management at the direction of the then vice president dick cheney who ordered an excessive amount of water to be diverted for agriculture and then the result was the river conditions on the bottom of the river on the yurok reservation were so bad they were the historical low flows the lowest on record right when the salmon run came in and it killed all the salmon and i witnessed that and i thought to myself we are still at war with the us government and this is an act of ecocide against the yurok people and i vowed to dedicate my life to protecting the river and i wasn't the only one there were you know several indigenous peoples from the klamath that also had that same reaction and then also there were several people who were working in state and federal governments ngo's politicians who had a similar reaction and devoted their lives to undamming the klamath river to healing the river and so you know to to more succinctly answer your question i had to go through this like coming of age process of reconciling what i was learning in school with what i was experiencing as an indigenous person and i feel really lucky because i still had that connection to my home waters and my family had fought so hard to maintain our culture whether that was our religion our language our fishing way of life our sovereignty and so it's you know it was really a privilege like an absolute privilege to be able as an adult to continue my family's legacy see and then to write about it in the book and share it with the world there were.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

So many things there in what you've just described like seven different things i want you to tell us more about so that's great that gives us lots of threads to pull now this is absolutely my bias as a historian that i tend to kind of go chronologically through time because that's you know we have to pull the thread somehow so that's how we're going to do it today so thinking then about what you were talking about kind of with earlier generations so your grandparents your great grandparents why would someone be arrested for fishing in a river like i think that's worth unpacking in more detail the extent to which things that sound pretty normal like hey we've been fishing in this river for a really long time i'm gonna go off and fish today doesn't result in like yay now i've gone fishing it results in arrest so what is happening there with these previous generations of your family like why was fishing in a river you had always fished in such a problem.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

It was the manifestation of the us government the state of california's attempts to take indian resources and colonize us it was the you know nineteen hundreds continuation of the indian wars frankly it was a huge injustice we had you know i mentioned this earlier under us federal law well let me even take it back further so in the states native nations so indigenous nations pre colonization pre contact exercised inherent sovereignty and what that means is they had the ability to make laws and be governed by them within their territories and so you know you think about when settlers or you know people from other places arrived in the united states the native nations were nations they and that that's what they were and there were nations all over what is now the united states and so for us at yurok you know our aboriginal territory was about a million and a half acres of the far northwest corner of what is now california so think about redwoods which are the biggest and oldest trees on the planet the klamath river which was full of fish year round there were lots of deer and elk and just all kinds of first foods so this amazing territory and within that we exercised inherent sovereignty and we had a very complex set of aboriginal law which made sure that we interacted with the natural environment according to those instructions i had talked about earlier and that principle of balance we had religious practices that gave thanks to the creator for the abundance that was in our natural world there were ceremonies that i talk about to some extent and i tried to be really appropriate there in the book about world renewal ceremonies that prayed for balance between humans and nature and so we had this really complex society and we were very active in exercising our own sovereignty so when the united states came and what they had to do was essentially terminate indian land rights and do that through legal means which under the us constitution meant treaties and i talk about the historical i guess what would you call that essentially for lack of better words what happened in california with respect to treaties and it would have been my fourth or fifth great grandfathers and uncles signed a treaty with the us government but the state of california opposed it and so it was never signed but that treaty would have terminated yurok's aboriginal title to the land ceded but then reserved on the reservation our inherent sovereignty and our legal rights well because the treaty wasn't signed the reservation for yurok was created by what's called an executive order which is essentially an order from the president that reserved land for us and through a series of executive orders between eighteen fifty five and eighteen ninety two the yurok reservation was settled as a mile on either side of the klamath river from my village at the mouth up forty five miles to the village of witchpeck and within that reservation we reserved what my family called our indian rights so that inherent sovereignty and what that meant was that our rights vested in federal law as the what we call in the states the supreme law of the land so under the us constitution those rights our rights were supposed to be protected and given the highest legal protection so over state rights anything else but because the us government also had an agenda of first killing off indian people and the state of california supported that and this statistic proves this by nineteen ten over ninety percent of california's indigenous population had been slaughtered as a result of those policies and so there's this sort of like just what is that word justice position maybe pronounce wrong of like we had reserved these aboriginal indian rights to fish to hunt to exercise our sovereignty and those were still good law yet the state of california the state of or excuse me the federal government had this agenda and policies and enacted other laws that put price tags on our head that stole our children to take them away to boarding schools that prohibited those religious practices i was talking about and also in nineteen thirty three the state of california passed a law that prevented us well that sought to prevent us from fishing at all on our our river and that was like making breathing illegal because fishing is so important to us and so you have this sort of mess of laws but but at the top of it was supposed to be our indian rights right because they were the supreme law of the land and under the us constitution they were supposed to be protected and what i what just amazes me and through all the interviews i did with family preparing to write this book through the oral transcripts that my family members had done through interviews with historians through you know researching the treaties the supreme court cases and as a historian you probably appreciate you know all the different sources you can find of historical records you know i went everything i possibly could and including what is most important and most credible from a yurok perspective is talking with our elders right just talking with our elders what it all showed was that against the forces of one of the strongest governments in world history the united states you know my ancestors stood up and fought for their indigenous rights because they knew that those rights were given to us from the creator with instructions about how to live in balance with the natural world and that our ancestors had reserved those in the creation of the reservation and that those were supposed to be the supreme law of the land and so the reason you know uncle ray was arrested nineteen times for just fishing in his home waters was because he was protecting those rights and those were core to who we are as a people and you know why we are on this planet and you know the fact that he had to fight that way the fact that he went through you know in the family at large went through so much just to continue to be yurok people is you know reflection of the historical injustices and just how deep those were and it was a result of racism it was a result of you know the haves and the has not it was a result of colonization and the impacts you know the legacy impacts of colonization that continue to impact us today but what is remarkable and also a reason why i felt so strongly about writing this story is that against all those odds eventually we had victories the supreme court in nineteen seventy three or excuse me seventy five recognized you know through uncle ray's supreme court case mats versus arnett that the yurok reservation was still indian country and that we had federally reserved rights those supreme you know laws of the land to fish to hunt to be on our land and continue our fishing way of life and one of the cords primary you know factors in that holding was that the land and water continued its indian character because we stayed on the land and the water and kept fishing and so the family's resistance through you know the generations eventually paid off and the supreme court agreed but and you would have thought that would have been the end of it you know but then that led to the fish wars and then you know that was a whole nother thing where our culture and our i believe our the strength of our relationship with the natural world and the power of our religion and worldview really came in to protect us that happened and then you see the rise of the yurok tribe as a modern governor government and force that then led to the world's largest river restoration project in history i mean that's a.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Long but great answer to my question like there's so many things again there.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

So thank you thank you i'm so glad to have the space to talk about it too thank you well i.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Think the kind of piece of that i want to pick up more and is actually something that you said that like is exactly what i thought when i was reading the book which is hang on there's a supreme court ruling in nineteen seventy five i mean talk about top law of the land right and so i got to that part of the book and i was like amazing okay so that's gonna be the end of it right i mean that's literally what you just said why wasn't.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

It well because the state of california came back and the governor of the time called up the secretary of interior which is the leader of the federal agency that manages indian affairs and said to it was cecil anders if you don't regulate and heavily monitor yurok fishing and then he named raymond matz i'm going to as a state step in and regulate it again and throw raymond matz back in jail basically and so in response well and i should add that a part of the reason the state of california so adamantly opposed yurok fishing rights was to protect the sport recreational fishing and in that moment in the states there was a battle happening across the pacific northwest over indian fishing rights and again it was one of the symptoms of the legacy of colonization where there was still a fight over resources between indian people and non indian people and also the undertone of that moment was the civil rights movement in the states through that same time period you know late sixties and then to the seventies the united states was experiencing a civil rights movement you know mostly focused on the rights of african americans but there was this other layer for indigenous peoples where we were also experiencing a civil rights movement which manifested in the pacific northwest through the indian fishing wars and so you know uncle ray's case was sort of i mean it was a huge victory in that overall movement for indian civil rights because for us being able to fish being able you know to be on our river that's our way of life so it is a civil right so that was a huge victory but then yet we still were underneath these forces of the state of the federal government and so they put a full moratorium this is the federal government put a full moratorium on all yurok fishing which meant they kicked us off the river again and then that launched us into the salmon wars where they sent out federal marshals to again kick us off the river and i through the through the book i went back and did historical research to try to understand why and and in the federal register which lays out the reasons for the moratorium because that's the due process required in the us essentially the reasoning for the federal government was conservation purposes and so the feds were saying well the yurok fishery it's not regulated right now and we need to just stop and prohibit all yurok fishing because they're fishing is a thing threat to conservation of the salmon that was not true and there was nothing in the historical record to suggest that our minimal catch which was like two percent of the overall harvest of klamath salmon was causing the decline of the salmon or any kind of threat to the conservation meanwhile the offshore fishermen who you know the commercial fishermen of the ocean salmon catch of klamath salmon runs in both oregon and california doubled in that in the years that the moratorium was in place doubled and there was no conservation measures there was no limiting of those salmon and their harvest accounted for something like ninety percent of the overall clam of salmon harvest yet they weren't regulated at all and meanwhile we were completely prohibited under the name of conservation and so it through this research and this hasn't been done before you know this huge injustice was discovered and i can't i mean there's no there's no reason why other than to say you know we were viewed as underprivileged underpowered you know lacking power marginalized community and they didn't want us to have rights and i i don't tend to talk that way about indian rights or you know sort of historical injustices but in this case having done the research having you know being in my position as a lawyer i don't know how else to describe it it was a great illegal historical injustice and it ended in some ways you know we continue that fight but the the fish wars ended you know in in the the scene in the book that i talk about where it was getting really violent inefficient protests with my grandma and my great grandma and my grandma stood up started singing a yurok song and she called in the birds and the birds came from all directions and all different kinds of birds and she kept singing and the birds started flying in a circle around the boats and diving down and squawking really loud and the federal marshals got so freaked out they left and they never came back so good so good so good give big save.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

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[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

Drink responsibly they left they literally packed up and they never came back to the reservation and then after that there were some well after that there were regulations that were passed that that regulated yurok fishing and our government was formed and there were some more court cases that helped kind of clear some of the remaining legal issues up and we've been fishing ever since that is very.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Much a long and prolonged process to get back to this point of being able to fish in the river we do have to talk though about the river going green that doesn't sound great this moment in two thousand two that you talk about very evocatively in the book because you literally saw it right there so i know you mentioned that this was done through this happened because of mismanagement but can you give us maybe a bit more detail on exactly what was going on here yes so.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

You know we've talked about how the indigenous peoples along the klamath were colonized but so too was the klamath basin and that legacy impact of colonization of the klamath basin was the reason that the fish died that the water turned green with toxic blue green algae and and and it was like a neon green it wasn't just like a you know green river that you might commonly see it was like neon it looked like it was a scene out of a sci fi movie and it did that every year so the river was extremely sick and it felt like the river and the salmon were just on its deathbed and what happened was and i'm all there's so much that happened but i'm going to summarize so it was mining it was logging it was the four dams that were built in the middle of the river without fish passage it was the development of the klamath reclamation project at the top part of the basin that converted two hundred thousand acres of wetlands into agricultural lands and then diverted the river water to irrigate those lands redid the piping and the plumbing of the historical klamath system by rerouting the river channel to support irrigation and also draining the lower klamath lake and so all of this greatly altered the traditional ecological functions of the basin so the whole basin is huge it's something like nineteen thousand or twenty thousand square miles the basin is large it's a big river sometimes they call it an upside down river it's got at its headwaters there's some tributaries that come in and then there's a very big lake but the lake used to be surrounded by all those wetlands and then a lower lake that then drained into the clam plymouth main stem and went down about i would say about three hundred river miles to the ocean and you know so all of that completely disrupted the natural functions of the river and made it sick and so by two thousand two all of this development the colonization really just came to an apex and the salmon died and you know you can imagine how the family and many other indigenous families had gone through almost one hundred fifty years of just fighting to be on their place on their river to continue their fishing way of life and then finally we you know won and secured those rights right about you know the the two thousands really and then the salmon die and the salmon runs start collapsing and the river is just getting sicker and sicker and sicker and it was heartbreaking it was awful and we as yurok people you know we go back to those instructions from the creator and our duty to protect the river and so all of that was triggered so you know for me there i am and i am a junior in college i was home for an internship with the yurok tribal fisheries my job that year was to count yurok salmon catch that was a part of how we regulate our own fisheries we count every fish that is caught under the yurok tribe's right and so that was my job to do that and by the end it was september it was hot it was a drought and there was a large chinook salmon run that was expected to return that year and because it was a drought there wasn't enough water for full agricultural deliveries at the top of the basin and also to meet bare bare minimums i'm talking like life support water flows for the klamath river so the vice president of the united states stepped in and ordered the water to be diverted and it was and what happened then was flows dramatically dropped at the very top of the river and then they went through the reservoirs there's something like two thousand acres of reservoirs behind the four dams and the water from the agricultural projects you know which goes directly into the river is full of agricultural chemicals and so then it was blocked by the reservoirs and it just stayed there stagnant and all the chemicals the heat basically created perfect conditions for an explosion of toxic blue green algae and then that went down the river and you know when it met the salmon and i talk about this as a poison that went down the whole river and when the salmon met that poison and those really low flows it killed them they were infected by a fish disease called ick and it spread through the whole run and it killed the salmon and by the end of it you know and i i talk about this in great length in the book there were you know the bodies of dead salmon that were floating in circles in the eddies of the river and then eventually they would go to the bank of the river and their bodies were lining the river three four layers deep and they were rotting and it smelled like a war zone it was just awful and what was terrible about that time was my aunt sue maston she was the chairperson of the time of the tribe and she called the media no one would come nobody cared enough and so she actually ended up sending five hundred pounds of dead salmon to washington dc and to the secretary of interior to say look what you have done and she didn't make very many friends by that but she had to do it because we had to let people know that this was happening on our river and so that was you know this awful terrible tragedy it was the largest fish kill in american history and it was done and it happened completely because of bad management and the legacy impacts of colonization of the river and it was a real turning point for the klamath and for my community the other thing that was happening around that time was we well there were many indigenous peoples who were working on reviving the world renewal ceremonies and they held one of those dances for the first time in a hundred years and the dance ended the day that the fish started dying and you know there's a lot of ways to interpret all of that but how i talked about it in the book is that i think the creator and the salmon made an agreement through that ceremony that the salmon were going to die to alert the humans that the world was gravely out of balance and we needed to drastically change how we manage the river and the basin at large in order to create a future for the salmon for the river and for the people.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah and as you said that was a clear turning point because it wasn't just the sending a bunch of dead salmon to go hey hey guys look what you did right that was one obviously very stark example of mobilizing in response to this but what you then go on to describe in the book is a multi generational multi person multi you know every like so many things coming together to get to the point where we're at kind of right at the beginning of our conversation where last year the final dams were removed with pretty immediate effects so what is the state of the river kind of now what is the state of the community organizing around it like that's such a change from that moment in two thousand two can you sort of give us a state of the nation i suppose of kind of twenty something years later yeah well.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

The state of the river and the nation is we are healing and we are healing faster than anyone anticipated and you know one of the greatest things about having a book out that talks about this project is i get to share the good news right which is the river is fiercer it is stronger it is healthier than i have ever seen it in my lifetime and it is remarkable how quickly it has begun to heal and how like the depth of its healing so like you know i i mentioned earlier the salmon the salmon surpass everybody's expectations clamid dam removal was studied for twenty years by really the world's top scientists and none of them anticipated how quickly the salmon would go home and how far they would go back up into their historical spawning grounds i had the distinct pleasure of over the last two years participating in the monitoring of them and a part of the process is that you pit tag these fish so that you can basically track where they're going and you have to catch them and then insert this pit tag and just a few months ago you know i'm at the river just below actually just above upriver from the former irongate dam site you know which used to be a place that was covered in toxic blue green algae bloom water and salmon carcasses everywhere but now i'm in the river it's the water is cool i can see the bottom of the river it's clean you know the water is clean and i've got this beautiful i don't know how big maybe fifteen pound eighteen pound salmon that has beautiful sparkly scales and i'm holding it in my hand as someone is working to insert the pit tag in its fin and i can feel its strength i can feel its sort of thriving almost pulsating energy and its mission to get up to its historical spawning grounds and spawn it just was so alive and that feeling is present throughout all the creatures on the river one of the things that is really exciting is we are restoring you know through different restoration projects the riparian lands around the dams and some of the tributaries by reconnecting you know the channels of the tributaries to the main stem and then we're replanting native seeds so there's been something like nineteen billion native seeds planted in these areas and already things like first foods and cultural natural resources are being are growing one of them are willow shoots along the tributary not the tributary but the riparian areas and we use willow shoots to make our basket caps or to make our baskets another common first food is acorns and those come from oak trees and so they planted hundreds of thousands of acorns which will grow into oak trees which will produce acorns and then we will have acorns and acorns bring deer because the deer like to eat the acorns and so then we will have deer you know and these are all our first foods and all these creatures are coming back to these thriving ecosystems so even beyond that there's otters in the river there are beautiful poppies which are native plant and they're attracting bees and butterflies and there's eagles and birds and everything is restoring itself and through that way we are you know implementing those instructions and bringing balance back to the natural world and it is so remarkable how quickly nature is healing and what's awesome is it's showing us that when we work with nature to restore it you know and those fundamental principles that we have used are the traditional knowledge of the tribes that understood how those ecosystems work together pre colonization and we're merging that with the modern science to recreate these ecosystems that are restoring balance the other thing is that the shasta indian nation their territory was within the former hydroelectric project area and now that the project is gone they've been able to get some of their land back and so they're working and very active in restoring this land they're reconnecting with some of their historical villages and so it's just this this beautiful healing of both nature and people and restoring relationships to each other it's remarkable.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah it is absolutely remarkable and i'm so glad that you're here to as you said share the good news right with a global audience and clearly this is something you're continuing to work on and share that news and work with the community is there anything else you want to tell us about kind of upcoming work that you're doing on this or should we end with this lovely positive note well i'd love to share.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

What'S next so dam removal is just the beginning i co founded with molly myers and i'm the executive director of the ridges to riffles indigenous conservation group and we are a nonprofit that works to restore and protect cultural natural resources so of course like climate dam removal is our flagship project but we're also continuing the work by in a couple different ways we work on national hydropower reform to make sure that indigenous rights are more present and uplifted in the united states law and policy related to hydroelectric dams and that's important work because so much of the american west was dammed in these places that had historical salmon grounds and native fishing places i think about celilo falls on the columbia river is one of those places the snake river is another one of those places and so we're trying to spread the model that we developed on the klamath and help use that in other communities where indigenous rights and salmon rights river rights are threatened by hydropower but the model and this is an important point the model is to also allow for economy allow for business to thrive but to put back into balance you know the value that we place on business and make sure that we as a matter of you know natural resource policy law and business that we equally value the rights of nature of indigenous peoples and business and we proved on the climate that we can do that you know all of this work was done by a settlement agreement it was a five hundred fifteen million settlement fifteen million dollars settlement agreement with one of the world's richest men warren buffett his companies own the dams and we were able to reach an agreement to remove those dams that was still profitable for the company but then also for the contractors that we hired to do dam removal and so there's a model there that can be applied across not only the united states but across the world and i think that's really an important important point because as we look to figure out like how do we continue to provide our power needs our energy needs how do we continue to be capitalist there is a different approach and it does require different ways of thinking and doing business but it's a part of the process so at r two r we we're working on that r two r is the abbreviation for my nonprofit but we're also working on putting indigenous voices and leadership at the heart of all the restoration that we're doing on the klamath so we're continuing to uplift the tribal voices we're also working on in stream flow work to make sure the river has the water it needs to survive so we're excited what we're seeing overall on the river is we are moving from that colonial period where especially the indigenous peoples were put in this place of fighting over resources and scarcity and we're moving back towards a culture of abundance and of being grateful for what we have and working together to restore nature and you know that necessarily includes all of the people of the klamath basin and you know trying to figure out how do we have sustainable fisheries sustainable cultural lifeways sustainable agriculture so that's you know that's that's the goal and the work that we're.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

We'Re doing now well and if anyone wants to read more about everything we've been discussing and the work that you're very clearly carrying forward the book we've been talking about is titled the water remembers my indigenous family's fight to save a river and a way of life published by little brown and company in twenty twenty five amy thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[Amy Bowers Cordalis]

Thank you so much for having me walk la.