Why we blew up a dam — and saved a river | Amy Bowers Cordalis

Elise Hu (0:03)

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu.

It was the largest dam removal in American history, and the largest salmon restoration project in the world. For indigenous advocate and attorney Amy Bowers Cordalis, the fight to make it happen began years earlier on a riverbank, watching salmon die in the tens of thousands.

Amy Bowers Cordalis (0:30)

The last three or four generations of my family witnessed the salmon runs declined. They witnessed the river become sicker and sicker, more polluted really because of the impacts of colonization.

Elise Hu (0:43)

Amy is a member of the Yurok tribe, whose home along the Klamath River in Northern California was, for thousands of years, one of the great salmon fisheries on the continent.

That was until a century of extraction and series of dams nearly destroyed it. In her talk, she tells the story about her tribe working alongside an unlikely coalition, took down those dams and the remarkable recovery that has followed.

Amy Bowers Cordalis (1:07)

Three days later, the salmon came home and went past historical spawning grounds not accessed in a hundred years. The salmon remembered. Yeah, they remembered.

Elise Hu (1:23)

And stick around after the talk. Amy and I spoke about the generations who fought before her, the coalition that made the impossible happen, and what it looks like to live in balance with the natural world. We also get into why dam removal turned out to be the better deal for everyone, and how all of us can begin to restore a little balance in our own lives. That's coming up right after a short break.

We'll be right back. And conversation of the day.

Amy Bowers Cordalis (1:56)

In the beginning, there were shapeless spirits roaming the universe. And they went to the Creator and said, We are lonely, please help us. And the Creator said, I will make you a place to be together on one condition. You must take care of it.

The spirits agreed. And the Creator made the earth and sent the spirits down to the earth to become land and water, plants, animals and humans, making everything on earth alive. The Creator told my ancestors, You will never want for anything, so long as you live in a balance with the natural world. Never take more than what you need. Give thanks and protect what gives you life.

That is a version of My Nation, the Yurok tribe's creation story. It's not spiritual parable. It's a set of instructions, simple, practical rules about how humans are meant to live on earth.

I want to tell you a story of loss. Resilience and victory and what it means to remember.

Since time immemorial, My Nation has lived by these instructions. The lower Klamath River and what is now known as Northern California is our home and our lifeblood. Under our stewardship, the Klamath salmon runs grew to be the third largest in all the continental US. We had an abundant fishing way of life. Caring for all that gave us life. Then in the 1800s, everything changed. Newcomers arrived and they viewed our world through the lens of extraction. Gold, timber, water, land, people. The balance was disrupted and suffering ensued in this place. By 1910, over 90% of California's indigenous population had been slaughtered. It was genocide.

By the 2000s, the Klamath River, our ancient relative, had been transformed by dams, habitat loss, water diversions, and warming polluted waters. The dams built without fish passage blocked the salmon from accessing over 400 miles of historical spawning grounds. Our salmon runs fell to 5% of their historical abundance. The hydropower from the dams wasn't green either. The reservoirs behind the dams emitted methane, the equivalent to 64,000 cars a year on the road.

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.

Standing in a Yurok tribal fisheries boat, I recall the Yurok myth. If the Klamath salmon dies, so too will the Yurok people, because our purpose, our way of life depends on those salmon. Was I witnessing the end?

In that moment, I felt my great-grandmother move through me like electricity. I feel it now. And she told me, it's your turn to fight. And my response? I'll go to law school to prevent this kind of ecocide from ever happening again. Now, I did not know a lawyer, and I thought they were all rich and famous. But that's what I did, and I became my nation's general council, the first tribal member and woman to do so. Thank you. Thank you.