I just watched the Washington Post’s account of the 15 young tribal members who kayaked the 310-mile length of the Klamath River this summer. They had trained hard, become excellent paddlers, readying themselves as the river was readying itself for them; the river shed four dams, and welcomed aquatic insects, long-forgotten plants, and salmon back to ancient homelands while the kayakers were training.
The NY Times covered it as well, and a quick google of Klamath kayakers will get you to radio and YouTube accounts without a newspaper subscription. Somehow, that’s the point of it, that this years-long journey by tribal members to restore what had been theirs for millennia was happening under our radars, under our news of the day, and we could notice it or not, pay attention or not. It was/is happening.
The metaphor, it seems to me, is that big. I have been a semi-serious student of the Nez Perce and other Plateau tribes, and to some extent of indigenous America, for the past few decades of my long life. I’ve lived in the Wallowa Country for over 50 years, and seen and felt the gradual return and presence of the Nez Perce people. In July, a dozen drums and well over 100 dancers celebrated at Tamkaliks, at the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland. There were about 100 as well—and mostly Indians—at Sunday services at the beautiful longhouse that is part of that Homeland. Drums, songs, and dance—and pride—rippled out from dance arbor and longhouse for the long July weekend.
But why celebration, you say. The Trump administration is pulling money from Tribal programs nationwide, including $2 billion approved for facilitating revival of salmon runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers. That’s true, I’ll admit, and it is a tragedy. But don’t count the Indians out! Don’t count Nez Perce Fisheries and Umatilla Fisheries out. Don’t count tribal leadership out.
Remember Indian resilience. Remember that Indians have undergone starvation, assimilation, allotment acts, boarding schools, “termination” and “relocation.” They’ve survived Andrew Jackson, who told Supreme Court Justice George Marshall, who had ruled for the Cherokee and against Georgia and forced removal, that he—Marshall—could go ahead and enforce his edict.
He did not, of course, but his legacy endures in Indian law, a kind of Indian victory in the hardest times of the 1830s removal act. Although Jackson herded thousands of Indians from east of the Mississippi west—to what would become Indian Territory, pockets remained and do so to the present day. And the Marshall opinions are cited in courts to this day.
The Indians who moved wholesale—the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Potawatomi and scores more—made their ways in the new country, and were joined there by Modoc and Nez Perce and more as treaty-making gave way to what we call the “Indian Wars,” and war refugees joined the displaced Eastern Tribes.
In the Northwest, we’ve had our eyes of the four lower Snake River dams for decades. A Republican from Idaho had an analysis that said that his state would profit more from breaching of the dams than it will from maintaining them. He talked with Tribal Chair Shannon Wheeler, and in long negotiations in the Biden years, a deal was struck, not to breach the dams directly, but to pour resources into ensuring salmon survival. Breaching was at least on the menu. That’s the idea and the money that Trump pulled from the Tribes.
Let’s not hang our heads. Let’s remember the Klamath, and the young kayakers who made their journey as the Trumpsters were picking Tribal pockets. Maybe more important than their own journey was the appearance of salmon in the waters under their kayaks. After the dams had been breached, but before the kayakers’ descent, fish had already found their ways to spawning grounds in Oregon. And a few salmon from that spawn were able to accompany the young tribal members on their race to the sea.
I believe that someday we will cheer kayakers on fast-moving Snake River waters where there are locks and lakes today, that salmon will be swimming freely again, and that another story of Native resistance and resilience will be told by the big papers in the East, and in longhouse and powwow celebrations right here in Wallowa Country.
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Photo–Underscore Native News
Rich, This is one of the best stories in a long time. I lobbied and wrote magazine articles to free the Klamath River twenty-odd years ago, to no avail. To see tribal kids kayaking a wild Klamath stirs my heart. I kayaked Hell’s Corner gorge way back then, putting in beneath John Boyle dam and cursing the monstrosity.
Still working to do final edits on my novel I talked with you about three years ago, and still trying to find a Nez Perce person willing to give me feedback on two chapters featuring Nez Perce characters.
Hope you are well. Love the posts.
Thanks John. Did not know that you were writing about this all those years ago. Good for you!
Reading and seeing this story of hope, courage (those Kalamath rapids are serious), and perisistence, I am reminded of the final line from a poltical science text book I read back in 1984 . . . Samuel P. Huntington concludes his book “American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony” with the following: “Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope”.