Yurok Reservation

Enjoy.

Well, we're joined now by Margo Robbins, who is one of the ex- or she's the executive director of the Cultural Fire Management Council, which exists to facilitate the practice of cultural burning on the Yurok Reservation in Northern California and surrounding ancestral lands.

She does this to lead to healthier ecosystems for all plants and animals, and long-term fire protection for residents, AKA preventing catastrophic fire, and to provide a platform that in turn supports traditional hunting and gathering activities of Yurok Nation.

Thank you, Margo, for being here.

[laughs]

So we have been burning since 2012 on our reservation with zero escapes.

Our reservation is, uh, the Yurok Reservation is in far Northern California along the Klamath River, a mile on each side of the river, and our ancestral territory is much bigger than that.

Little over 100 years ago, our native people were severely punished, in fact, shot, if they were seen trying to take care of the land with fire.

And his final arrest led to a Supreme Court case, Matz versus Arnett, which was decided in 1973.

And the court there held that despite the General Allotment Act of 1892 opening the Yurok Reservation, to allotments and homesteading, the Yurok Reservation, which was defined as a mile on either side of the river from the mouth up about 45 miles, was still Indian country.

And what that meant was it was still the Yurok Indian Reservation.

And so we still had all of our rights to exercise our sovereignty, including fishing, water rights, gathering, hunting, the ability to make laws and be governed by them on that territory.

In 2002, the legacy of colonization produced a horrific outcome.

Over 70,000 adult salmon died on the Klamath River within the Yurok Reservation, the largest salmon kill in US history.

I was working for Tribal Fisheries that summer, and the salmon died for two weeks.

By the end of it, their bodies lined the banks of the river, and the river looked and smelled like a war zone.

... their resilience because we would not be here if they didn't do the fish-ins.

You know, even, I mean, goodness, there was a Supreme Court case.

You know, the family had a Supreme Court case, Mats versus Arnett, that reaffirmed that the Yurok reservation was still Indian country, and we still had our sovereignty there and our-

Yeah