Eating Pulled Pork at California Salmon Festival
A salmon festival taking place in Klamath, California is a little different this year. For the second time in the history of the Yurok Tribe's annual festival the namesake fish is not being served because the salmon population in the region is depleted. Tribal leaders are now fighting back one dam at a time.
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00:00 A salmon festival taking place in Klamath, California is a little different this year.
00:05 For the second time in the history of the Yurok Tribes annual festival,
00:09 the namesake is not being served because the salmon population in the region is depleted.
00:14 As Nick Watt reports, tribal leaders are now fighting back one dam at a time.
00:19 Welcome to the Yurok Tribes 59th annual salmon festival.
00:25 There's a parade, craft stalls, a stick game tournament and plenty, plenty of food.
00:31 But...
00:32 It feels like having a party but your favourite person isn't there.
00:36 Because this year they are not serving salmon at the salmon festival.
00:42 The word "Nepui", our word for salmon, the literal translation is "what we eat".
00:49 That pretty much says it all.
00:52 That gets to the heart of it.
00:53 But out on the river there just aren't enough salmon.
00:57 The tribe says the fish have suffered since the gold rush there.
01:00 River near ruined by mining, rising water temperatures and huge hydro-powered dams.
01:07 There's only about half the salmon returning that we need to sustain the current population.
01:11 And that's why salmon fishing was shut down completely this fall.
01:14 That's why there's no salmon to eat.
01:16 But the mood at the festival is, well, festive, celebratory.
01:20 Why? Because the Yurok and others are doing something about that lack of salmon.
01:25 They've campaigned hard to have dams removed.
01:28 One just was after federal regulators approved a plan last year.
01:38 Three more will follow next year.
01:41 And then there's this.
01:42 What looks like environmental destruction but is actually the opposite.
01:48 This bit that we're on now, this will eventually be the floodplain.
01:52 Yeah, this will be the floodplain here.
01:54 That's me and Frankie Mars, the tribal leader from the salmon festival.
01:59 They are undoing damage done by miners and more.
02:03 Recreating bug habitats, food for the fish.
02:10 When I look out and I see our tribal members running these excavators,
02:16 they're fighting for their right to exist.
02:19 Because our stories tell us that without the salmon in the river,
02:24 there's no need for us to be here.
02:27 You don't seem to be bitter and pissed off about what's happened to your land.
02:30 You seem more energized about what you can do to change that.
02:33 We have every reason to be pissed off and angry.
02:38 Is that going to bring our salmon back?
02:40 No, but fighting against the dams might,
02:44 recreating the conditions that once allowed this river to pick its own path might.
02:50 And they say humans must play a part in nurturing this environment.
02:55 This is the problem right here. You are the problem.
02:58 You have an idea that there is a wilderness that existed before you showed up,
03:03 before people showed up.
03:05 And the truth is, is it never existed.
03:08 The wilderness never existed on this continent.
03:11 It was always managed by the native people who lived in concert with that nature.
03:17 Absolutely.
03:18 See, now I get it.
03:19 Absolutely.
03:21 That's what we're trying to do here.
03:23 You might see salmon coming back up here if you hang out for another couple of weeks, actually.
03:27 Oh, that quick, you think?
03:29 That quick.
03:30 Back at that celebration of salmon, we met Oscar, a Yurok fisherman.
03:35 So this is where you should be cooking the fish?
03:38 Yeah.
03:39 But this here, nothing.
03:42 Nothing.
03:43 The pit is empty, well, save for some symbolic chunks of that first dam that came down.
03:51 We're hopeful that when the dams come down, that this pit will be full again.
03:56 Along with the river.
03:59 River.