The Klamath River, this nearly 300 mile river runs through Oregon
and to the Northern California coast.
And for the last century, dams have decimated this once abundant resource and blocked the
route of salmon and steelhead.
But this isn't a story about the fish.
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
get a little Q&A with the filmmaker.
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.
I love being down here.
I love seeing our family fish.
I love seeing them drift.
But how much longer do we have?
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
when he went fishing.
Now we come out here with three teams.
And we're lucky to catch seven 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
then goes out into the Pacific Ocean.
It's really diverse as far as the physical aspects of it.
And also the biological 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
been extirpated from this river system.
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
at the head of the river.
And they're not used for irrigation.
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
released down the Klamath River
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.
You come out with sores.
It's just become a part of our norm which it shouldn't be.
And it's... it's sad to see...
it's disgusting.
For like the next generations to come.
Or my kids or my kids' kids to be able to swim
and fish and not worry.
Another very serious impact that we believe dams are responsible for is some fish disease
issues that we have in the river.
One fish disease in particular that we're we're really concerned
about is called Ceratonova shasta
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
in the lower river called "ich".
It's a parasite that attacks fish gills.
Dams warm the water unnaturally and so warm water can lead to delays in migration here
on the lower River.
And we can get congregations of fish.
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.
Saddest part of my life.
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.
And that hurts so much.
That's basically what started Climate Justice Coalition and us getting together to start
this campaign to un-dam the Klamath.
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
to live on healthy dam-free river.
Unfortunately, we've had to raise our children in this way to have to fight for what we live
for, for what we believe in.
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.
In Yurok we call it Ney-puey.
So this has been one of the main staples for the Yurok people
for nutritional diet for over thousands of years.
So I'll come through and I'll de-fin and then I'll pass over the master filleter.
Women are very important in our culture, we build our people up.
By 11, I was making my own gear and able to go out and
pretty much feed myself.
feed my family.
My great grandparents, they did a fish war here,
fought the American government just for fishing rights.
And they actually had people with riot gear beating us natives down here just for setting nets.
Every time he set a net.
Guaranteed.
They'd come through and try to pull it.
And so us locals had to fight them off.
I'm glad they did.
Because wouldn't be able to take you guys out and show you how our way of life today.
It's something that affects us every day.
Because I can't just go to the grocery store, buy some salmon.
I grew up with a gas station, like eating at a 711 every day.
I don't think very many people can live like that.
What we know is that the river is no longer providing for us like it should be.
So it can no longer... you know... provide subsistence of salmon for every family.
So we have to find these different ways to provide for our people.
And we want people to stand up.
We want people to fight for their rights.
We want people to be there.
But in reality, if you don't have enough food for your family at home, how are you going
to be able to go out and stand up for your rights halfway across the country or go to
these protests and how are you supposed to dedicate large portions of your time.
If you're worried about not having healthy food access in your home, you can't.
And it's just a part of the system that's been constantly pressing our people to the point of normalization.
If someone told us that we would be growing vegetables this time last year or told me
that this is what I would be doing or we would be doing as like a unit...
I would've told them they were crazy.
The education of it or the resource for the education wasn't there.
And we're just trying to show people that how easy it is to actually grow their own food.
Growing your food like this and growing your garden like this is like unheard of.
And for us as fishermen, to be out here, making these types of move, to find out what people
like, to find out what people need, it's really kind of cutting edge for our community, because
it hasn't really been tried, hasn't really been done before.
We stopped by a house today.
And they said they don't like cabbage.
So they're getting specific on us.
And that's good.
I had someone who stopped by someone's house today and what did they say?
They said that the broccoli is so fresh, that cooked it four days, five days after we gave
it to him.
And it looked like they just pulled it out of the ground.
A lot of people told us we couldn't do it, we weren't gonna be able to get a garden.
We walked away from those people.
And we found the people who believed in us.
And I said, You know what, if we work really hard, and we push forward,
you guys would be feeding people by the end of the year.
And
it's happening.
Okay, love you guys.
These are hard working families,
They take care of their kids and other people in the community.
We're teaching families how to take care of yourself, over hundreds of generations our families have developed
the resiliency that can't be that can't beat. That can't be destroyed.
And no matter what happens, no matter what you take away, we're always going to provide
for people, we're always going to find a way to take care of our children, we're always
going to find a way to move forward.
This river is our umbilical cord, what feeds us and what nurtures us.
This reciprocal relationship that we have with it, I would do anything for this river, just like I would my own children
like I, I would die for it, I would do anything before I would give up on it.
There was a generation before me, who dedicated their whole lives, just to make sure that
these dams are removed.
We must never forget that the salmon are more than just creatures of the water.
They are people just like me and you.
They wouldn't give up on us.
We shouldn't give up on them.
We have the chance to make the world right here.
Do the right thing.
Take the dams down.
We're not gonna give up this fight to get these dams out of this river.
Like, if this doesn't work, if this current iteration of dam removal doesn't work, well,
we'll move on to the next.
I imagine a world where we live in harmony with the river.
And I see that as I see that possibility.
Every aspect of my life has been built around this river,
whether it be teaching the next generation,
these are skills of organizing, or whether it be providing food for my family.
Nothing says Northern California like cooking on a redwood skewer on open flame.
Sammy, and these young folks, they're really outspoken and it makes me feel good that
we've taught them how to how to do that.
They're all coming that age and they all know they got to stand up.
You know, it's their time.
You guys are doing the ancestral guard, food sovereignty.
Like that's a slap in the face of all these systems.
I think that's that's the way it has to be.
We have to be willing to put effort into things.
Our survival depends on how we re-indigenize and live like we're meant to live again.
After these dams are removed all that power is going to be put directly into building these healthy
opportunities for our people.
Now Let's talk to the filmmaker, shall we?
My name is Shane Anderson.
I'm a film director and producer.
And I'm in Olympia, Washington.
About a year and a half ago, I started a five year documentary on the Klamath dam removals,
which will be the largest river restoration the world's ever seen.
And kind of in the in the process of development and seeking out the stories, I got to meet
some of the characters that we featured in "Guardians of the River" and Sammy Gensaw.
and I just found him to be extremely inspirational person, and spent a significant amount of
time with him before we actually decided to film the piece to kind of understand their story
and wanted to really make sure we were telling the story that helped their cause, and kind
of be an outlet for them, you know, providing our tools to amplify their voice.
I think just first and foremost is kind of being conscious of extractive storytelling
and not coming into a community, not just the tribe, but any community when you're a
filmmaker, being sensitive to, you know, not exploit their story for your purpose, you
know, so I just really wanted to make sure that everybody involved was comfortable, and
that they were kind of involved during the process, too.
I think just being open minded, being aware that you're in someone else's space, it's
a very powerful medium.
So use that power carefully, and to the best of your abilities to provide content that
your subjects will be happy with.
From my understanding, just a lot of trial and error.
And we were all shocked at how how well the garden did, and just how beautiful the
vegetables were.
And I know they have plans now to expand it was such a success this year, and they were
able to grow so much food and deliver it and hand deliver it to their community.
And people loved it.
I talked to Sammy, and they were gonna do another garden up river and kind of spent
the fall building garden boxes in Crescent City, kind of tribal community housing.
So there's kind of urban gardens they're doing too.
So the garden program is really expanding.
And it's just really incredible.
You know, and it's not just, they're not just doing it to constantly supply food, but they're
doing it to teach the community how to grow their own food essentially, as well.
Well, the Yurok tribe has an incredible science team.
it's really unique and the Karuk tribe.
So they've been really at the forefront of water quality testing, bringing that to the
mainstream.
So that's kind of some of those content I'm going to be shooting this year, I'm going
to be going out with the scientists and doing the water quality and looking for the fish
disease stuff with these tribal biology groups.
Basically, everything was like when we were filming, I should, you know, the narrative
was kind of changing and evolving.
And I had to be a little fluid with it.
Because over the summer, the the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, acronym called FERC,
basically kind of threw a curveball in the whole dam removal process, so people thought
that after this 20 year effort that it wasn't going to happen.
And it was really kind of a somber atmosphere when we were filming.
And I actually hadn't addressed some of that in my initial rough cut a little bit more.
But then in October, there was a big kind of press release in PacificCorp, the dam
owners, basically said, we're going to move forward with this, we're going to take the
dams out.
And that was a really important turning point.
So I had to kind of change a couple of the scenes in the film.
Because things were changing as we were editing.
But but for the better.
I'm glad I had to do that.
So yeah, we're on track for dam removal in 2023, for complete removal of these four large
dams, and it's going to open up 400 miles of river and improve the water quality.
And I'm going to be documenting the whole time.
So this is going to be a long, longest journey of my film career to make this feature film.
So we're documenting the whole dam removal process for the next two years leading up
to it and the during it and then a little bit after it.
And just gonna kind of follow the whole journey kind of tell the backstory, the backstory
of how it came to be and how this you know what seemed like an impossible feat 20 years
ago became reality.
And it's just a story of tenacity and just determination to, you know, to bring the river
back to its former health and to support these communities for generations to come.
Thanks so much for watching Seeker Indie's screening of "Guardians of the River"
It's stories like these that can inspire more discoveries, more adventures,
and new ideas that may one day help save our planet.
Keep coming back to see what else we have in store and the amazing stories we continue
to highlight.
Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time on Seeker.