Tribes Bring Fish, Fire, and Traditional Ways to Bay Area SalmonAid Festival

Klamath Riverkeeper Press Release

For Immediate Release

Contacts:

Ron Reed, Karuk Tribe Cultural Biologist: (530) 627-3446 x 3048; or (530) 598-7947
Georgiana Myers, Klamath Riverkeeper Organizer & Yurok Tribal Member: (707) 599-0877
Mike Hudson, Commercial Fisherman and SalmonAid Executive Director: (510) 407-2000

June 18, 2009

Tribes Bring Fish, Fire, and Traditional Ways to Bay Area SalmonAid Festival
Salmon Crisis Unites Fishermen, Tribes, Environmental Groups

Members of Klamath River Tribes are travelling to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend with an unusual gift for the public: fresh Klamath salmon to be roasted by an open fire. Held at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, Friday night’s traditional salmon bake kicks off the SalmonAid festival’s weekend of salmon celebration and information at Oakland’s Jack London Square.

“We do the Salmon Bake to demonstrate to the public that there's still Native Americans in Northern California who depend on salmon as a primary resource,” said Karuk Tribal Cultural Biologist Ron Reed. Reed and other members of the Karuk, Hoopa, and Yurok Tribes will bake the salmon on wooden skewers surrounding an open fire – a tradition that is still handed down from elders to youth on the Klamath River. Although Klamath salmon runs are dwindling, tribal fishermen still harvest salmon for ceremonial and commercial use. By joining forces with commercial fishermen, conservation groups, and others concerned about native salmon stocks, Tribal members are building support for the removal of the lower four Klamath River dams.

Organized by out-of-work commercial fisherman and musician Mike Hudson, SalmonAid celebrates wild Pacific salmon with live music, sustainable seafood, and cultural activities. “Coming to the SalmonAid Festival shows our solidarity with all the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on salmon,” added Reed. Tribal members will also contribute cultural activities throughout the festival, including opening remarks, drumming, fish net hanging demonstrations, and more.

“It takes a movement to un-dam a river, and the Salmon Aid Festival helps us expand that movement beyond the Klamath to all of California and the West Coast,” said Klamath Riverkeeper Community Organizer and Yurok Tribal Member Georgiana Myers. Klamath Riverkeeper is working with Tribes, fishermen and others to remove four aging dams on the Klamath River that block struggling salmon runs from over 300 miles of habitat. A final Klamath dam removal deal is currently being negotiated and is due out this September.

Klamath River stakeholders are looking to the festival to inform Californians about the need to support Klamath dam removal – and to caution against tying the project to the construction of new dams and a peripheral canal in the Sacramento Delta as a proposed general obligation water bond would do. “The Klamath dam removal deal has received support from Oregon with Senate Bill 76, and now we need Governor Schwarzenegger to step up. California must support Klamath dam removal on its own merits,” added Myers.

More information on Klamath salmon and dams: http://www.klamathriver.org
More information on SalmonAid Festival: http://www.salmonaid.org

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S. Craig Tucker, Ph.D.
Klamath Coordinator
Karuk Tribe
916-207-8294

http://www.Karuk.us