Klamath Tribal Chairman William Ray Jr. and Tribal Member Jeff Mitchell speak at Salmon Celebration in Yreka, offering tribal perspectives on removal of 4 dams on the Klamath River
On Saturday, Oct. 5, the “Celebrate Klamath River Salmon Homecoming” was held by the Klamath Dam Removal Host Committee. Tribes from Hoopa, Karuk, Yurok, Shasta, and the Klamath Tribes attended the event. The four dams on the Klamath River have all been removed, with final work conducted at Iron Gate Dam on Oct. 4, officially closing the work on removing the dams, allowing the Klamath River to flow freely for the first time in a century. The reintroduction of salmon to their home waters is the next step of many to restore the river to its historical natural condition when it provided plentiful salmon and trout for the Indigenous Tribes.
Hundreds of people attended the event, with speakers from Tribal Nations offering their perspectives on the decades-long battle to remove the dams, as well as other community members and representatives from organizations and federal and state agencies that worked together to have the largest dam removal in the history of the world become a reality. Klamath Tribes Chairman William Ray Jr. and Klamath Tribes member Jeff Mitchell spoke on the stage, addressing the lengthy process and final resolution of removing the four dams of the Klamath River.
Chairman William Ray Jr., in his opening remarks, first thanked the Klamath River Renewal Corporation for its leadership in removing the dams, then continued stating, “Now the question is, what and how will the salmon face when they begin to return decades of water degradation, and now the drastic climate change has caused the entire Klamath watershed to be in serious peril in order to adequately deal with the ESA species and plant Life of the c’waam and koptu, and also the return of the salmon, there will need to be a concerted effort to restore the Upper Basin.”
“This degradation is and has harmed the Klamath culture and our time and memorial rights,” he continued. “We as a First Nation will not stand by waiting for changes by the Federal, states, and local governments and water users to improve decades of water and watershed degradation and loss of fisheries, aquatic species, and plants by issuing this tribal declaration of emergency as a natural, cultural and social disaster that continues to harm and pecks away at the viability of ancient cultures, of the clan of First Nations; this continued inability to make major shifts in water usage and quality places our first foods in serious jeopardy to exercise our time and memorial rights, which harms our ancient cultures.
“This unfolding calamity is the reason why we have issued this tribal declaration of emergency and places it at the highest level of importance as a natural, cultural, and social disaster emergency. I understand why we are here to celebrate the free-flowing Klamath River, a tremendous feat by so many people who had such an important part in advocating for dam removal.”
The Chairman closed by addressing the need for reconciliation between the state and federal governments to address the continued suffering of the tribes of the Upper Klamath Basin watershed, the significant loss of tribal first foods, and the disappearance of the region’s local animals, fish, and medicinal plants and possible extinction of the c’waam and koptu. “We are speaking on behalf of our sacred brothers and sisters who cannot speak,” he said. “The water, the animals, the fish, the trees, the plants, who only follow the natural laws. We hope that our declaration will raise the level of importance and trust responsibility to the state, federal, and local governments to help repair the decades of loss and degradation we want. We are thankful for this significant first step in the Klamath watershed restoration with dam removal, but the real wetlands and watershed restoration work will need to be rapidly increased in order to save our sacred relatives of c’waam and koptu.”
When tribal member Mitchell addressed the audience, he offered his perspective on the historical and ongoing impact of the construction of the four Klamath River dams and water management on indigenous communities in the Klamath River Basin. Mitchell recounted the tribe’s struggle to protect their treaty rights, particularly regarding salmon, which were crucial to their subsistence. Mitchell described how the tribe faced significant challenges, including the loss of salmon in 1910 due to dam construction and the removal of fish-related content from a 2005 hydroelectric license application.
“Despite these setbacks, the tribe persisted in advocating for dam removal and system restoration, he said, leading to a monumental agreement celebrated in the meeting. Mitchell emphasized that while progress has been made, further work is necessary to restore the river system fully. He cited a significant incident in 2002 when many fish were killed due to water degradation.
“Downriver, people know what happened in 2002; that’s the first time they’d ever witnessed what had occurred,” Mitchell stated. “The pain and suffering that I saw in their faces and in their voices when they came up, and we dumped dead fish on the doorsteps of the Bureau of Reclamation to show them.”
“These are the actions. This is what your actions did,” he continued. “But you know, the tribes downriver felt that pain, but my people have been feeling this since 1910. Since 1910, we’ve gone without fish, and then we had c’waam and koptu, again an endangered species. We were losing our fisheries.”
Mitchell then cited a meeting in Redding, Cal. between the federal government and Non-Governmental Organizations seeking a resolution to the issues of the Klamath Basin and a water settlement. The four tribes of Northern and Southern California, including the Klamath Tribes, who took the lead in the negotiations.
“It was the Klamath Tribes because we had that treaty, and it was about Klamath Tribal treaty rights. It’s about Klamath Tribal water rights. But they asked everybody in the room what everybody needed to try to resolve these issues. And everybody spoke up about their communities, what their communities needed, Ag communities, ranching communities, downriver communities, NGOs, and when it came to the Klamath tribes, we were the last ones to speak, and they said, ‘What do the Klamath want? I said, ‘We want three things.’ I was speaking for the tribe at that time, and my Council directed me to deliver this message. ‘We want three things: We want land returned. We want dams out, and we want you to fix the Upper Basin, and we want you to fix that broken system that you’ve created up there. And they said, ‘Jeff, we can’t talk about that. We can’t talk about land. You know, this is about other matters here.’ And I said, ‘You know, I just sit here and listen to everybody talk about their community needs. This is what my community needs, and this is supposed to be a settlement discussion. And I said, ‘If you don’t want to talk about climate needs, we’re going home. We have no business being here.’ And, so, I took our entire delegation back to Chiloquin. We walked out of that room and everybody sitting around that table.
He said three weeks later, the Klamath Tribes got a call to continue the discussion of dam removal and land being returned and discuss restoration. “We spent the next five years, six years, working on those things, and they became the KBRA (Klamath Hydro Settlement Act).” His remarks were greeted by rousing applause from the audience. “People said that couldn’t be done,” he continued. “They said, ‘You would never get all of those parties to agree.’ But we did. But in the end, only one agreement went forward, and that’s the agreement we’re celebrating here today. The other two agreements went by the wayside.”
He said the other two agreements, to fix the Upper Basin and hydrology, the lake, and streams, were to fix a broken system. “Today, I think about what are salmon coming home to? Because when I sat down with those tribal leaders downriver, and we talked, and we made the commitment to each other, we made the commitment between us that it was two things that we wanted to achieve. We wanted to achieve dam removal, and we wanted to restore a broken system. Remember, I’m talking just about the upper system. We’re talking about the Scott, the Shasta, the Trinity, all of the system in between here that’s screwed up. Well, I don’t want to put a damper on the celebration because we’ve achieved something monumental that people said would never happen, but there’s more work to be done.”
