Karuk Tribe

Where we w- are now wouldn't have been possible without tribal, tribal leadership along the way.

And working side by side with the Klamath tribes, the Karuk Tribe, the Yurok Tribe, and other tribal communities, um, to, to learn about these fish.

And, and you know, one thing that I've noticed is I've been working in the Klamath Basin for the last couple decades on fish issues, and had spent so much time with, you know, the tribes, um, you know, the Karuk and Yurok tribes and their biologists, and hadn't worked as much with the Klamath tribes biologists.

And what ...

What had long been violent historical conflicts are starting to transform into respectful partnerships.

The Karuk tribe in the Klamath Basin has been among the most powerful teachers for me and my team.

So this is a tribe that is a salmon tribe, and they have lived in this far northern region of California along with the Yurok people and others since time immemorial.

And they have been practicing good fire for thousands of years.

My niece is Kia Wiki and she graduated high school this summer and just started at Cal Berkeley and wants to get into law.

Yeah, and then I'm really excited also, we haven't shared this yet, but another one of the kayakers, she's a Karuk woman named Ruby.

She is going to join Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, the nonprofit that I run for an internship.

And so we're really happy to continue to support her.

Thank you.

And then I co-founded with Molly Myers, a real tough Karuk activist, the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, and we moved money and power to better serve the river.

And that was important.

The fish kill triggered our duties as indigenous people to share the original instructions and work to renew the balance.

All right.

We protested.

We built coalitions between indigenous nations, the Karuk, the Hoopa, the Klamath tribes, commercial fishermen, NGOs, and states, and farmers.

We litigated.

But even this law hasn't always worked to protect indigenous religious practices.

In one case in 1988, the new law did not halt the construction of a road through the Chimney Rock area of the Six Rivers National Forest in California, which is a sacred place for the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa tribes.

These two approaches can help us better understand indigenous religions in general.

you can approach any indigenous religion and ask, what is their relationship to land? What responsibilities and sacred practices do you see oriented towards the powers alive in that landscape or in a specific person? How have colonial powers disrupted and continue to disrupt their religious practices? It's a set of questions that you can use when studying indigenous religions, but there are some key takeaways to keep in mind.

But, like, the similarities between the use and application of what we're calling good fire, right? And that kinda comes out, too.

It's a nod to the good fire reports, um, from Karuk, um, that came out and are really shaping policy in Northern California, but really having an impact across California and then even nationally as well.

And so I think getting, you know, hearing from n- um, the, the, the, I call them Team Canada, but [chuckles] the chapters that focus on British Columbia and the chapter that focuses on Saskatchewan and then Kelsey Leonard's, um, co-authored chapter of the Northeast and all the work that, that, um, they are doing up there, um, is just really, I think, highlighting the need for this conversation.

Um, and we state in our introduction, too, that the one- I don't know if it's a regret, Jared, what we'd call it, um, but we, we weren't able to get a chapter from, um, Australia, and, and we recognize, like, that's a gap because there's definitely a whole, whole, um, discourse and, and, um, work and praxis, like Jared said, going on there that there has been this, like, transnational indigenous sharing of knowledge about fire and putting it back on the, on the ground to steward and kinda restore all those practices that we're sharing.