Transcript: CHIEF CALEEN SISK on the Fight for Free and Wild Salmon Rivers /47
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. In today's episode, we have the honor of speaking with Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemem Wintu tribe. Through this interview, we hope to garner your support for the Winnemem Wintu Salmon restoration project, please visit gofundme.com/salmonwillrun to donate.
Chief Sisk is the spiritual leader and tribal chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe who practice their traditional culture and ceremonies in their territory along the McCloud River watershed in Northern California. Since assuming leadership responsibilities in 2000, Caleen has focused on maintaining the cultural and religious traditions of the tribe. She advocates for California's salmon restoration, healthy undammed watersheds, and the Human Rights to Water. She has received international honors as a tireless sacred site protector, and currently leads the tribe's resistance against the US Bureau of Reclamation's proposal to raise Shasta Dam 18 feet and inundate or damage more than 40 sacred sites.
She is also currently leading her tribe's efforts to work with Maori and federal fish biologists to return wild Chinook salmon from New Zealand to the McCloud River. In doing so, she advocates for the inclusion of traditional ecological knowledge in federal, state and local environmental research and planning. Caleen is an internationally known speaker on traditional tribal and spiritual issues, having spoken on diverse topics, such as spiritual medicine ways, the spirit of water, global warming, sacred sites protection and the responsibility of tribal people to honor their tribal lifeway. Colleen is also a leading voice in raising awareness of the poor human rights conditions suffered by federally unrecognized tribes and unrepresented indigenous peoples around the world. She is a regular speaker at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, where she has campaigned for the UN to study the plight of federally unrecognized tribes in the United States. She is also the spiritual and environmental commissioner for ENLACE Continental, an international network of Indigenous women.
For more than 30 years, Colleen was mentored and taught in traditional healing and Winnemem culture by her late great aunt, Florence Jones, who was the tribe's spiritual leader for 68 years. Colleen's traditional teachings and trainings comes from an unbroken line of leadership of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. Strongly rooted in her spirituality and her family, Caleen cares deeply for her winnemum people and for oppressed people around the world. Caleen received her BA from Chico State University California in 1975 and received her teaching credentials from CSU Chico in 1976.
I would like to start off by kind of imagining the networks of wild water in California and how they looked much different 500 years ago. And when we domesticate water, we lose touch with something essential, because rivers are the lifeblood of entire ecologies and cultures. And as Indigenous cultures have been colonized, so have the waters and landscapes they stem from. So I'm wondering if you could start us off by telling us how Wintu life has always centered around the Winnemem or the McCloud River watershed and how this has been stifled by the colonization of water,
Chief Caleen Sisk The rivers in California... The rivers and mainly the Sacramento River, was a very large, meandering river, meaning that it was cleaning and supplying water across the valley floor so that there would be no place on that system that actually was left out. This part of what the development of California did not take into consideration. When people moved here. Maybe they didn't know that rivers meandered, or maybe they didn't know that there was just enough water for everything, the way that the Creator put it down from Mount Shasta, the sacred waters coming off of the mountain to the ocean. That there was always a finite of water that would run and would take that purity and life giving force all the way down to the ocean and into that system.
You know, the Winnemem people, our creation story begins on Mount Shasta, and there's a sacred spring there that we say that was the doorway that we came out of that sacred fire inside. And so did all of our spirit beings who took form, you know, the trees and the fish and the birds and deer and bear, all things that were living took form to take care of the land that the creator had made for us. Everybody had a job to do. But in that sense, you know the Winnemem....the name Winnemem means Middle River People, Middle Water People. And so we always go back to that spring and we sing at that doorway and put down the prayers and ask for more blessings for future generations to come. And so our ties have not been broken from the practice and the traditions of going to that spring. Unlike other folks have kind of veered away from recognizing the differences that are happening to them and around them. Yet the Winnemem, you know, we've been pretty lucky in that our leadership is unbroken from the time of the civilization coming to now where our memory isn't lost, our directions are not lost. Our history, our traditions, and medicines are still in place. Those are all the things that keep guiding us to what to do next in spite of the changes that have occurred in modern civilization.
Ayana Young Similar to our recognition of ecosystems as porous and interconnected, we must examine industrial projects within the context of their connections to the greater ecological system. California and its management of water is a clear example of how dominant culture denies this holistic reality and instead views the environmental impacts of industry and development with a reductionist lens. So with that in mind, I was hoping that you could elucidate Proposition One, the proposed raising of the Shasta Dam and the quote, California Water Fix, previously, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, and the fictitious boundaries between these projects — how they all fit together?
Chief Caleen Sisk From the position that we're at in looking at this water fix that Governor Brown is pushing very hard...And so are the water districts pushing this water fix, even though they would like to separate them out as individual projects. One being the Delta Tunnels that'll set in 150 feet into the Delta Surface, ground, groundwater, 40 foot tunnels, two of them into the ground for 30 miles without any kind of science that can tell us what that's going to do because it's never been done before. So there's no science available, but yet, they're willing to risk doing that project in an estuary that is so delicate and is the largest one on the Pacific Coast. The site's reservoir, which prop one is most likely to fund because they look at that as a wet water project, as an off stream storage reservoir that can only be filled by the waters from the Sacramento River. It has no other inlets from any streams, live streams, maybe some runoff water in the winter, but most of it will be filled by the Sacramento River. That, in itself, is a problem in that the Sacramento River doesn't provide enough water to be putting some in storage along the way.
The third part of that is the raising of Shasta Dam. It's been the keystone of California's Water Fix from the very beginning and it's still the keystone of this new water fix project. Back in the 40s before building that dam, they had the deal with my tribe Winnemem Wintu People and they passed a 1941 Indian Land Acquisition Act Law that primarily took our land, made some grim promises which they've never fulfilled, and now they want to raise the dam 18 and a half feet higher. You know, they've done about $15 billion worth of studies over the years to conclude that this is the best water fix project for California. The basis of this is the water needed in the desert areas of California and the 5 million people who are moving to California and the new communities that will be needed. At the same time, my tribe is going through a second devastation for this state of California in that raising the dam 18 and a half feet will back the water up over 40 of our sacred sites that we still access today, and the promises that were made in 1941 have never been accomplished by the Bureau of Reclamation. Nor do they intend to satisfy the 1941 Act before they raised the dam again.
And we have, you know, tried to talk to Dianne Feinstein, Senator Feinstein, about these issues with no resolve. So this water fix is not the answer to the water needs in California. You know, they're looking at California as if it had been in a drought for all that time. Now, Governor Brown says it's not in drought now because we have a big snowpack, but that snowpack, you know, in our lives, we know snowpack is not the determiner of whether or not we're in drought. We're still in drought because the groundwater systems have been depleted and there's no effort to recharge the groundwater systems and no federal regulations or county laws that are assisting to do this. So there's many, many problems with this idea of raising the lake and even now, you know, dams are a pretty archaic way of trying to save water. So it's not a system that we can support nor do we think it's the most viable way to get water to the people who need it in California. It would make more sense to put that kind of money into the infrastructures of all of these old towns and replace the plumbing that is leaking billions of gallons of water everyday.
Ayana Young It's incredible to hear the extent that this dominant culture will go to to move water from the north to the thirsty south and industrial agriculture, it's quite incredible. And like you were saying, there's no scientific evidence that this is safe for humans, for other species, for entire ecosystems. One thing that you had mentioned was that you had spoken to Ms. Feinstein, and I guess I'm wondering what is or what has been, the extent of the inclusion of indigenous communities within discussions regarding these impending projects and their environmental impact assessments? And do you foresee a way in which the California government can be held more accountable for their tireless disregard for Indigenous Peoples' lands and waters?
Chief Caleen Sisk Yeah, I know it's, it's a very complicated issue that only gets more complicated if you try to talk to the government about, you know, all of their exotic....I call them exotic water laws that protect the rights of people who hold those water laws. But the majority of the California people, the population, have no water rights other than, you know, they passed the Human Right to Water not too long ago, you know, about 3-4 years ago now, a human right to water. Basically everybody else does not have a say so in these kinds of things. I mean, even the Twin Tunnels. As much as people have tried to get that on the ballot so that the population could have a voice in whether or not that project would be done, they have failed to get the Twin Tunnels on the ballot for the California voters. Instead, we are now told that as soon as September that the water districts who would be paying something like $15 or $16 billion to do this project are deciding whether or not they're going to pay that amount to get this project done because the state doesn't have that kind of money and the feds are not going to be putting that into the water fix in California.
So it's kind of these giant corporations, you know, we say water district, but they're mega giant corporations who are charging every community, every town, every city top dollar for delivering water to those places. And in some places like Alpaugh and Seville, the water that they deliver goes through pipes and goes through a system that is not filtering that water so that whatever comes out of their taps is not usable by the people. And so there are major problems throughout California about this water fix project, but in in reality, it looks like mega water districts and water users who do not want to change, like Resnick Farms, who are growing almonds in the desert, which takes 30 gallons per nut to produce, is continuing to do that, continuing to plant trees. And through this, you know, five or seven year drought, they have not lost a profit. They have soared in profits.
And so, you know, while other people have been restricted on water use and California's population was supposed to reduce water use by 25% a couple years ago, the mega farms were exempt from having to use less water at all. And there's no restrictions on the kinds of crops that are grown in places where it shouldn't be grown. In the desert there, they're growing crops now that are filtering through soils that are not built for growing and the selenium is coming up and now the land has become fallow. So now they're being paid to retire their farmland because it's fallow land, and they're keeping their water rights, which is, you know, going to be the new blue gold. They're shifting out of farming and into energy, because those fallow lands like in Westland Water District cases, you know that's before the court, they were let off the hook for paying 400 and some odd thousand dollars and they retired that land and built a solar panel farm on 600 acres. But even in doing that kind of thing, it's like, while solar seems to be one of the answers that people are looking for — anytime you do anything mega, it doesn't turn out to be a good thing.
And I can see, already, that the mega solar farms are causing more unbalance in nature to occur because those mega solar farms are catching the birds on fire. And these, they call them steamers. So you can get a job in the solar farm going around picking up dead birds that caught on fire by flying over the solar panels. And for California, this is a big mistake in that California is a flyway for many, many birds — little, tiny birds — that as soon as they hit those solar panel farms, they ignite. And so we have to be careful about, you know, going overboard with something that seems like it's an answer, and to me, the bigger answer would be to work to get people and communities off the grid. Solar panels on your house or in a community would be different where there's trees and wind and — different than a solar field that's generating heat so hot that it catches them on fire. You know, there are many other solutions to this issue than Governor Brown is looking at or Dianne Feinstein seems to be too rooted in with Resnicks and some of the other mega businesses like Westlands, to be able to talk with us or any of the other Restore the Delta Campaign people who are, you know, just general population, who don't like the idea of the big water fix, and it's going to ruin the real farmers.
I mean, we have real farmers in California, and that's where I think people are sliding by in saying farmers feed America because the mega farms, their GMO farmers, they produce eight crops, and the real farmers are the ones that are struggling every day to make ends meet. They don't qualify for the discounts or supplements to farmers. They're the ones who are paying higher prices for their water to even water their farms. And so, you know, we have to get this straight in California that — and probably because, you know, California always is the gateway to other states doing something as crazy as, you know, multiple 1000s of acres of solar farming in place of getting communities off the grid. If you get communities off the grid then the same old bankers are not collecting all the money for the same product being shipped everywhere.
Ayana Young It's really incredible to imagine that these farms, these mega farms that have gone fallow, are now being turned into these solar farms that are also using their water rights to make more money by commodifying the water, and I'm guessing, charging other people to use this water on their lands or moving the water to somewhere else and making money off that is that correct?
Chief Caleen Sisk That's right. That's right, because even the Westlands Water District farmers, some of them were farmers before Westlands Water District existed and got absorbed into that big association, but they still pay more for their water than Westlands wants to recognize for these little farmers.
Ayana Young It's just horrifying that this commodification of every resource is so extreme. And I think what you're talking about with these mega even quote, renewable projects, it questions this idea of just plugging in this very resource extensive life into a renewable outlet. But what is that actually doing? It's not actually forcing people to question using resources at all. It's just finding a new way to continue these lifestyles that are dense in how much they're taking. And it also kind of makes me think about this colonial capitalist culture and how it will stop at nothing to control water because water, in its deepest essence, is life. So to control water is to control life itself. What do you believe are the spiritual consequences of the privatization and the corporate control of water? And then how do you see us being able to move this dominant culture towards a paradigm that, once again, views water as sacred?
Chief Caleen Sisk There's a lot of issues that counter play against making good sense, about making good decisions, protection for life, right? Here in California, we are the...what I hear in Paris…. Paris COP21 says the representatives from California are the seventh largest economy in the world. California itself, separate from the United States, is an economic system power in the world. Indigenous Peoples of California, minority groups, ethnic groups, small communities are not the accent of what California is about in its power system. So that's why you have communities like Seville and Alpaugh and so many other places not being taken care of with their water issues. But also even now, you know, the population itself does not really know how bad the water filtration systems are.
I mean, I live up here in Northern California, where we're the first recipients of the water off the mountain and so we drink out of the spring. We drink out of... we know what water tastes like. We drink live water. And when I go to Sacramento or Davis or San Francisco or any other place down south, I can smell the chlorine in the water. I can taste the....it's bad water. You know. I can taste the difference in it and and it's so bad that in some places that, you know, I carry my water with me because I don't want to have to drink that. But I see people living there and their kids are drinking that and they're bathing in that and they don't really know any other way to do anything that that water is told to them to be good water.
But overall, I think waking the people up in California to the fact that the water districts do not have the power to deliver good water and it's the mega water companies that are making these rules. And I believe it's for staying the seventh largest economic power in the world. So we have the governor and many of the legislators and representatives of the people who are more swayed by resident farms, Weston's Water District, Metropolitan Water, Kern Valley Bank, you know, Water Bank. All of these powers have clout because they got...I mean, just like right now, they're waiting for these water districts to decide whether or not they're going to fund Governor Brown's water fix. If the water districts decide not to, then it's not going to be done. If they decide to do it then it probably will be done no matter what the population says.
And in that sense, they're going to destroy one of the largest estuaries, and nobody's going to know this for 20 years down the road after it's destroyed by the complications that it's going to cause in the systems of fish, birds, everything up and down the coast. And in order to wake people up, you know, our tribe has been trying to bring young people up to the river so they can actually see what a real river looks like when it comes off the mountain, how clear and crystal clear...You can see through the bottom. You can feel it’s alive. You know, you can taste it and let them know that this is how these rivers used to run all the way to the delta. Now they don't, because, for some reason, this society, that this modernization has decided that it's okay to dump everything and anything into the waterways and think that that's fine — nothing's going to happen. For some reason they do that.
Whereas the old way was that this water is precious. This water is life. You could take care of this water. You don't, you know, you don't go throwing things in there. You pray to this water. But this day and age, you know, hardly anybody prays to the water. I mean, even in the Catholic Church, you know, they have holy water that they put, you know, I don't know what they do with it, but they use it in church, and that might be the only place that I see water used in a religious way. Even though I don't think they're praying to the water, but they're using it in a religious way. Every other place, water is a commodity. Water is, you know, taken for granted. It's just here, you know. And in whatever condition the people are, are taught that once it's filtered, it's fine, but what we're trying to do is wake the people up to the realities of what water is.
Dr. Emoto from Japan did some scientific experiments about whether or not water reacted to people or voices or sounds and he proved that it does. And so, you know, it takes a scientific study like that. whereas Winnemems have been singing to water as its basis of existence, and we continue to do that. But now, you know, we're in a situation where we need the world to be singing to water. We need people to recognize that precious commodity. And one of the things that we thought when the drought was here, and I believe we're still in drought, was that drought is our teacher too, that that makes people recognize what they're dependent upon. And we're not dependent upon a capitalistic society. Our life is dependent upon water and the more people who can recognize those kinds of issues, the better off we'll be, and the more people who can start doing their part.
And I'm not just talking about saving water, you know, turning the tap off when you're not brushing your teeth and, you know, filling your dishwasher full before you run it. All of those things are helpful, but what I'm talking about is that people can recognize the significance of those drops of water and start changing their ideas about what they do. Because, you know, in our in our area, I see people, new people, moving into our area, and pretty soon they have a lawn and been pretty soon, I see them out there with their little ATVs, with their their sprayers on, and they're putting Roundup everywhere along the fence line, along their mailboxes, and it's next to the gutter that goes into the stream. You know, even at a water meeting, I asked this one lady, I said, "Well, you know, I'm trying to do a campaign against Roundup." She goes, "Oh, I use Roundup, but I only use one gallon." It's like, well, 30,000 people bought one gallon of Roundup. That's 30,000 gallons of Roundup that's going into our water system right here.
That's what we don't understand as a population, that everything we do— You know, we have organic farms. We want organic foods, so we have the organic farm days and all that kind of stuff, but we still don't want an organic community, and that's the basis. Let's stop using the antibacterial soaps that are going right out into....Why do you need it? If you're going to wash your hands, then you don't need that. But there are many, many things that people can do once they recognize the significance of water because water is not being discovered every day. It's not like, Oh yeah, we got a new glacier of water coming out that's going to fill all these lakes up. You know, there is a finite of water, and there is a finite that we share of a fresh water sea underneath us that encircles the world. And so people have to think bigger, you know, and I don't know if they can without either science or a change in religious ways of thinking or, you know, seeing water or maybe just struggling enough to recognize the difference.
[Musical break]
Ayana Young Yes, thank you so much for taking us through these very complex systems in California to help us understand where the water is moving, who owns it, why it is controlled the way it is. It's intense to learn about. And thank you so much for also bringing up when people say, "Well, you know, I'm just one person," but it's not just about one person. If, like you said, if one person uses one gallon of Roundup, but it's not just that one gallon. It's 30,000, 60,000, it's millions of gallons of Roundup or antibacterial soap or some kind of toxins that or even flushing our toilets. I mean, there's so many ways in which water has just kind of been desanctified.
So I'd like to now turn the conversation over to salmon. You had mentioned fish a few times and I've learned that the centrality of salmon within cultural narratives and traditions and cosmologies is widespread throughout Cascadia or the Pacific Northwest of Turtle Island. They are a testament to the interconnectedness of all life. They dissolve the boundaries between marine freshwater and forest systems and they nourish entire webs of organisms. Yet despite their irreplaceable ecological and cultural significance, they've suffered from many angles, whether it's industrial logging or dam construction, overfishing, warmer waters even due to climate change, etc. And their decline has been experienced throughout their historic range. I know you understand this tale intimately, and I was hoping that you could take us through the story of the Chinook Salmon of the Winnemem and tell us how it's unique compared to other stories of other populations and genetic lineages of Pacific Salmon.
Chief Caleen Sisk What we believe here in California is the estuary that we're talking about is probably the lowest one on the chain on the ocean where salmon use. Even historically, these salmon have....You know, when they were first coming into their life here on Earth started, and they started going north on the Pacific Coast. But the salmon, you know, in our in our lifeway we believe that when we came out of the mountain, you know, Creator came and said that he had prepared a world out there that needed to be tended and that there were many, many things that needed to be done and that he had hoped that all the spirit forms would take their place and take care of things so that it would be in balance. It will always be in balance. And so as everything went out, some of them declared to be the black oak and white oak and blue oak, You know, all of the oaks went out and all of the birds went out and the hummingbird and eagle and buzzard, they all had jobs to do. Even the little fly and the mosquito and the beetles, they all went out. All the bugs and spiders went out. And then all of the little nocturnal ones said, "We're going to take care of the night," and they all went out, the possum and the skunk and all of it. They all went out. And then the ones that were in the water, the otters and the seals and the sea lions, they all went out too. And finally, towards the end of it, after all of the helper beings, everybody went out, there was this one little spirit being still left, walking around the fire and walking around the fire inside that sacred Buliyum Puyuuk where that fire was. And finally, he says, "I'm going to be human," and he went out the door of the spring, and went running down the river. And the Creator thought to himself, you know, That one's going to need a lot of help. And so he called back the Fire Spirit and the Mountain Spirit and the Waters and asked them to take care of this little one, to give them advice, to be there, to help them think clearly and straight. And then the salmon came back and said, "Oh, that spirit being that human is going to need a voice and so we're going to give up our voice so that they can be able to communicate." And so since that time, Winnemems believe that we have this blessing from Salmon and that because of that, we should always speak up for Salmon. We should always take care of the Salmon.
You know, the Salmon are a magical fish to us. They're a spirit being that is always giving. In every stage of its life it's giving. You know, as eggs, they're fish bait as fry. You know their fish food. As adults, they're food. They're always giving for everything, and they only do things in a sacred manner. They only swim up the river to spawn one time. And when they spawn, they move the rocks around. They turn the rocks over. They clean the river the whole way. All of the debris goes down river and when they do that, the temperatures of the water changes and then they lay their eggs. And wherever they lay their eggs, those eggs, when they hatch, they'll come back to that same place. But when they hatch, when the eggs finally hatch, all of the adult salmon have already died and they're feeding the bears and the wolves and the trees and the grasses and the insects. They're still giving, but when the little eggs hatch and they become young fry, they swim with all the fish and trout and their turtles and salamanders, everything that's in the water. Then all of a sudden, they decide...Maybe they're, you know, maybe they're five or six, maybe eight inches long and they decide that it's time to go south. No, who tells them that? Because the trout are not going to go, and the sucker fish, they're not going. Nobody's going, but they start drifting south. They start going downstream, downstream. They keep going downstream and they come into another river, and they still keep going downstream and they come into another river, but they still keep going. When they finally get to, almost to the delta, they realize that it's saltwater and that they are not saltwater fish. They're freshwater fish at the time, but instead of saying, "You know what? We made a mistake. We better just shimmy on back up to our spawning grounds and stay there,” you know, “where the trout are, where we know everything is," but they don't. They stay in that estuary until they change into saltwater fish. And when they change into saltwater fish, they swim out into the ocean, and they're out there for four to seven years.
Anymore, the way that fish have been treated, most people would argue that they're only out there for three or four years, but traditionally, they could be out there for eight years. Nowadays, it's changing. But they're out there in the ocean. Then they're still giving. They're still feeding the orcas. They're still feeding everything in their path. They're always giving all the time. And in that time span, they're swimming with all the other fish, you know, not just from the Cloud River after swimming 300 miles to the ocean, they are swimming with all the other salmon up and down the Pacific Coast. Then at a certain point in time seems like there comes a message to them that says they have to go back to their spawning ground. So those salmon find the exact same estuary. It can't be the Trinity. Can't be the Klamath estuary. It can't be, you know, Columbia estuary. It has to be the Sacramento estuary for McCloud River Salmon. And they come into that estuary as adults. Sometimes, a long time ago, they would be like 100 pound adults, but nowadays they're, you know, it's set to be big if they're 45 pounds, but of course, that's like half the size of what they used to be.
But in that change, they come back in and they have to change back into freshwater fish. So the estuary is very important, and the Delta Smelt is their longtime partners. You know, those Delta Smelt have been in the estuary for over 6000 years, but almost extinct now. But they're their buddies. They're the ones who help the salmon transition to be able to go upstream again. Even the jaws of the salmon can change during that time that they're getting ready to come upstream, and when they're ready, they start swimming upstream. And as they go, it doesn't matter how hard it is or how long it seems, the American River comes in and they can't say, you know, let's just go right up here on the American River and we're going to spawn there. They can't do that because that's not their river. So they keep going, and they bypass, you know, the Feather River, and they bypass Butte Creek, and they bypass all of these other tributaries that are running into the Sacramento River until they get all the way up to the McCloud River. And then again, they find the spawning ground that they had and there's many little tributaries coming off of the McCloud that some of them are from Taranto Creek. Some of them are from Hawkins Creek. Some of them go all the way up to Big Springs, and they spawn there, and then again, once they spawn, they all die and it starts all over again.
But that's why the Winnemem believe that they are creators talking to them, they're still connected because they only do things one time, and each generation has to have that connection. When the fish stop doing what they were told by Creator, that connection will have been broken and there won't be any hope for our water systems. So right now, our fish that were taken from our river swim in New Zealand because of fish hatchery. We are working very hard to bring them back because we believe they will help bring balance back to the river systems here in California. But not only that, they will change many things in the ocean as they come back into the system because in New Zealand, our fish are still wild, wild winter run Chinook are over there from our river. And when we bring them back, the water systems will wake up, and so will the people. The people will wake up because our hope is is that, you know, we have this chance to do this and the people must wake up to the water systems and start participating and start being satisfied with the kind of life structure that is given to them and, you know, kind of relax from this capitalistic view of having more and more and more and having more disposable things to getting more happy. And I think when the fish come back and the waters are good, then people can be happy again. They don't have to have all of this outside stimulation that creates all the junk in the world.
Ayana Young It's a pretty incredible story of finding your salmon in New Zealand. Would you tell us a little bit more about how did the salmon end up there? How did you find out and what is the process you're in right now to bring them back, especially as the Winnemem Wintu are considered an unrecognized tribe in California. How is that affecting this whole process as well?
Chief Caleen Sisk We have always had this story, a story that tells us that when Livingston Stone came to our river, you know, he was a Fish Biologist from the East Coast, he didn't really know anything about Pacific salmon and didn't know that they died after spawning. He thought they were like the Atlantic salmon that don't. The tribal people, the Winnemem Wintu People, were very disappointed in this approach that was being taken. Because well.....You have to put it in the frame too, is that, since gold was discovered, the first policy of California was to exterminate all the Indians. So there was a war against, well, not quite a war, but like a holocaust happening against all California Indians up and down the state. They were after the gold, but there was no gold found on the McCloud but when Livingston Stone and Spencer Baird from the US Fisheries came to do this project, they had chose the McCloud River, because of the number of fish that was in that river, brought that program there to where they were going to build this hatchery.
The Winnemem Wintu People at that time did a war dance against that event happening. And they also knew that they could be shot on site for doing that, but they did anyway. But Livingston Stone was smart enough to know that he probably needed those Indians to help him with this fish hatchery, and so he made some deals with them. But before those deals were made, the medicine people got together to pray about what was happening to those fish, to our salmon, what was going to happen to them. They did a ceremony and we were told that some of those fish are going to go through the ice waterfall in Mount Shasta, and there they will wait for you. We didn't really know what that meant because at the time that Livingston Stone was there, there were 1000s of fish, hundreds of 1000s of fish in the river.
And so they built the hatchery and about the end of the 1880s-1890s there was a fish crash in the world. And so they sent these salmon eggs from the Baird Hatchery around the world, even to Mississippi, but they didn't survive. They didn't survive anywhere except in New Zealand. New Zealand did not have any salmon. This is the first salmon they had, and it took. So they established themselves in New Zealand by one — there were eggs that were shipped around the world and to New Zealand, several times to New Zealand for them to get started. Since that time, we didn't really know about how successful it was or not, until in 19....I mean, not 19....but 2000, we heard that they were going to raise Shasta Lake, again, Shasta Dam. And so in 2004 we waged a war dance against the United States for trying to build this dam higher and flood more of our sacred sites. And during that dance, these old time salmon songs came in, and we sang them and we danced them. And then following that dance, one of the purposes of the war dance on the dam was to tell the world what's happening here to the Indigenous Peoples. And during that time, we wanted to make sure that, you know, we had a voice. Right after that, we heard from New Zealand and they said that they had our salmon and, that, did we want them back?
And so from that point on, it's been this process of getting our salmon back from New Zealand. We went there. We danced for the salmon. We have a documentary called Dancing Salmon Home that tells a lot of the history and our connection to the salmon and our new family and friends of Maori people, the Ngāi Tahu people, and the ones who are still willing to help us bring our salmon home.
We have a good stance. We've done all of the preparatory work, and we actually brought the Maori people and the Fish and Game person from New Zealand to meet with Noah and the Hoopa Tribal Council because they're the closest federally recognized Indian fishery, and thought we had a deal back in nine, 2009 and 10. Since then, the Bureau of Reclamation has taken this charge on one: building the dam higher while the other part is supposed to be restoring the salmon. And so there's a little bit of conflict there, but they say there's none. So we are still working to convince the Bureau of Reclamation that we need our salmon from New Zealand, the real wild winter run Chinook from New Zealand to come back to our river. They, on the other hand, seem like you know....
This stems from a lawsuit on the by op of the salmon above rim dams is the only way to restore the salmon. They want to use the hatchery fish. The hatchery fish is what fills the system of the Sacramento River at this time there are very, very, very few wild salmon, if any. I would say there would be wild salmon coming from the Trinity Water River that is released down the Sacramento River. That would be probably a Trinity salmon coming up the Sacramento looking for the Trinity River. I believe that the bottlenecking of the hatchery projects and programs over the years have pretty much destroyed the salmon systems and now they're worried about, you know, straying and all this and truck and haul. And everything they do seems to really harm the salmon even more.
And so what we're proposing is that the salmon biologists make way for traditional ecological knowledge of salmon, and let us lead them while they can document the changes because what if, in their studies, the salmon need more than what they think? Because they look at salmon, they need cold water. They need food. They need spawning beds, but what if they need a drum beat on the river. What if they need a fire on the river? What if they need the dancers singing on the river because that's how it was in the old day? Is that those fires would be set on the river because we believe that the salmon travel at night. They follow the stars, not just the smell of the water, but they have sound systems that science has not discovered yet or they don't even know to ask the question.
And so there's so many things that will change. And in the bigger picture, I think the younger generations that are coming up, you know, when we do the salmon from the Delta all the way to the McCloud River in the upper waters. It's a 500 mile swim for salmon. Most of us can't really picture 500 river miles to get to the spawning grounds. We are going to wake up the people. I think that that prayer when people start recognizing the salmon, thinking about them and learning more and more and more about them, they're not going to be able to not think that they're this spiritual fish, that they're the miracle fish, that they're the ones who know about this water system, and they're the ones that we need because they've been missing to the high mountain, the highest mountain where our water runs from and we need to get them back. And so the run for salmon, we're going in our second year run for salmon, and we're going to do four runs because that's how many runs that there used to be of salmon. Four times a year they'd come up the river, and in putting that down from the Delta, from the Ohlone land on Sogorea Te where the salmon swim into the bay. They swim into the delta right there - that we put down those dances and those songs right there at the Delta, and then all the way up to where they should return.
And so in this struggle, I hope that the Bureau of Reclamation also comes along and starts thinking about maybe there are other ways of doing these kinds of things. Maybe the fish biologists only know about hatchery fish salmon. Maybe they don't really know about wild salmon. But we still have the stories of wild salmon. We still have the songs of wild salmon. We are still the Salmon culture. You know, even though they've taken our salmon away by building Shasta Dam and they've taken our land away by building Shasta Dam. And we believe that whatever happens to the salmon happens to us. The salmon all lost their home on the McCloudRiver, and so did we. We all lost our homes on this on the McCloud River. We don't own anything on the McCloud River. When the Salmon come home to the McCloud River, maybe we can come home too. But for right now, you know, our only hope is to do the right thing for the Salmon, even if we don't benefit anything, that we will fulfill our obligations for voice and that the Salmon will be home and everything changes. Everything changes. Wherever they go, they're like a life source, a life support system for everything in that area.
Ayana Young Thank you so much, Chief Sisk, for going through that deeply moving story with us and explaining how the salmon are a life force in this region, especially. And I just want to again lead the audience to gofundme.com/salmonwillrun because this project needs support, and I think that it's really beyond important to get out of this reductionist scientific mindset, that this science has kind of become the new religion, that you know, if it's not scientifically proven then it doesn't matter, like what you were saying. You know fish biologists, they know one portion, but they're not using these practices and experiences of traditional ecological knowledge. And I just really resonated with what you were saying that what if also the Salmon needs our prayers, our song, our dance, our drumming, that there's a reciprocal relationship, and it's not just so cut and dry in this very scientific mindset.
I have one more question for you. This is about Mount Shasta, the location of Mount Shasta, and I think it's important to bring up further ways in which colonization persists in the modern day, not only directly through oppressive relations with government and industry, but also through more insidious manners, such as the commodification of spirituality. And Mount Shasta is known internationally as a place of tremendous spiritual power with, you know, this strong, energetic pull, you know, drawing 1000s of visitors each year. Shasta has an abundance of New Age retreats with tours of sacred sites and guided vision quests and meditations, etc, and they're often absent of any recognition that the original caretakers of this sacred land are still present, you know, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. So it seems that often central to this culturally appropriative spirituality is an emphasis on personal gratification, rather than a living relationship or reciprocity with the land. The way I see it, if you uphold the land as sacred, then you also have a duty to protect and care for it. So I'd love to hear your thoughts regarding the consequences of cultural appropriative spirituality, especially in this
mecca, this Mount Shasta area.
Chief Caleen Sisk Yeah, you know, as we go back in time, and people can say, "Oh, yeah, that's a long time. I've been doing that for a long time," but in the 60s was this change nationwide of citizenship and all of these things like rights, right — the civil rights. Everybody has a right to this and that and everything. But towards the end of the 60s and into the 70s, was this sacred place seeking. The hippies were formed, and the big searches for whatever they were missing inside from their own churches began. And in the 70s, we had entered a lawsuit to defend Mount Shasta against a ski lodge that was proposed to happen very, very close and maybe even on top of our sacred spring. And during that lawsuit, we were challenged to prove that that was our sacred spring because one of the things that worked against us was is that there were no village sites there. There were not any arrowheads there. There was nothing there. And we said there's nothing there because it's such a sacred place that you don't leave anything there and so then we had to result back to it being a sacred place.
And once we did that, we did win the suit against the Forest Service. Clare Cummings was our attorney at the time and we actually stopped them from building that ski lodge and building those things right on top of our spring. But the other thing that happened is that we exposed our spring to being sacred and once that happened in the 70s, it continued to roll over. People were seeking out the sacred places of the world, and then, you know, Mount Shasta has taken a position in that light, and people started showing up.
Well, in the 80s, the government decided that we were no longer a federally recognized Indian tribe, and so we are struggling too. You know, we have to say that we were once 14,000 people along the McCloud River, and maybe even more. As our Salmon were in the hundreds of 1000s along the McCloud River, but are no more. So at that point in time, at the turn of the century, there were only 395 Winnemem Wintu People left. You know, my grandparents being those people that came out of the holocaust and outran the bullets or outsmarted those feasts, that they call them peace making feasts. And we survived, but we were very low in number and we're still very low in number, and the government doesn't recognize this as being Indian People or Tribal People, but that doesn't stop us. They have never been on our side ever, so we don't expect them to be doing good things for us now, but we are always opposed in protecting and doing the right things for our sacred places, for our waters, our water systems that have to be done.
And so Mount Shasta, we call Buliyum Puyuuk. You know, they changed all the names of everything, so people get confused, like we're going to Mt. Shasta, not Buliyum Puyuuk — but it's the same thing. So we're still here. We take care of that mountain. We have the songs. We have that. And I say that because we had languages already here that for 1000s of years, was the vibration system throughout that part of the trees and the land, the rocks, that was the harmony that kept the hummingbirds and the bats and and all the living things there in place too.
But now, because it's the public recreation area now, and they try to say that they're managing it, but we say, "You know, you guys have messed it up severely because there are not as many bats. There's not as many birds. There are no deer that hardly ever come to the meadow anymore, no rabbits.” You know, “You let so many people onto that place that it can't live. It's dying," and they don't see that every summer on Mount Shasta, they allow at least 30,000 people to visit, maybe even more. And those people like to bring things with them, like crystals or rose petals or coconuts or tiki dolls and put it in that sacred spring. It's like this is an artesian spring that is so sensitive it bubbles up from the ground. It's not a source that runs off of the mountain, it comes up from the ground. And everything that you put in there is....like you shouldn't even get in it. You can't get in it, it's so fragile. But these people don't know any better, I guess, and that you can't tell them. They don't believe you. And it's their right. It's their spring too. It's their religion, too, and so it's like...But they don't know how to take care of it. They only want it for themselves. They only want this for them. That's it. Not any other generations coming up because for us, our children can't even go to this place until they're at least 15-16 years old when they're old enough, and their spirit beings are well enough to be there and do the right thing when they're there.
But these people, you know, they have no guidelines. They have no restrictions. They only are takers of the water, of whatever it is, and they think that they're blessing this place, you know, by leaving these crystals or or leaving whatever it is that tie things in the trees. And it's like you cannot bless the blesser. You can't leave things and bless them. It doesn't work that way. You know wherever that comes from, you need to take that back to wherever that comes from because this is such a pristine, sacred place. This is not where you stack rocks. This is not where you make medicine wheels. This is not where you tie all colors of the tobacco ties in the trees. You don't leave anything here, but that's so hard for them to get without getting upset.
But it's a struggle that we have all the time with the Forest Service to say....You know, right now, I am overjoyed that there's so much snow on the mountain that there's going to be very few people getting in on the meadow earlier than years in the past. This is a blessing, but I feel like they should not even open the meadow when it's like this because the ground is so pristine and so sensitive and so soft that let the elements take care of itself. Let it have its time on its own. Let the bees and the birds and bats and the hummingbirds come in freely without the people right there. You know, but that's so hard to get across to anybody. It's like they have a right, but they have no responsibility to take care of this in the good way, you know. And every person says, "I've only been there once," but there's 30,000 people every year that's been there once. You know, in a short number of days — we're talking like 60 days — that 30,000 people have tramped over that land and have smashed it down.
But I don't think everybody has that. You know, there's a plight of the recreator, and then a jest of people who think it's religious, but spend no time to understand What does that mean? I mean, it would be like us going into the Catholic Church and saying, "Yeah, and I have a sense of this is a religious place maybe I need to build a fire right here on the floor and I want to smoke it up with my herbs and then I want to mark on these walls," you know, "in my sacred way. That would be all right, wouldn't it?" You know, that's what we're up against in these places that are so sacred.
And I say that because we believe that this mountain, Buliyum Puyuuk, is connected to 20 sacred mountains in the world, you know, including Mauna Kea, which is the tallest mountain in the world. And so we went. Mauna Kea, you know, I believe it's connected to [Belukha Mountain] in Russia, in the Altai. And we went there to the Altai and saw what that was, and we went to Mount Iraqi. And I believe that these are all associations of the sacredness that holds our world together. And I haven't been to the other ones, but I hope I get to go, you know, in my lifetime to see this big container that holds our ocean of fresh water in these mountains that are all connected.
I don't know how people can be taught. You know, it's a struggle every day, every way you can think of stopping the bus loads. You know, we were fighting against Crystal Geyser right now, that's on Mount Shasta that wants to take an unlimited amount of water off the mountain. And we're saying that's a cultural resource. You can't do that, because if we allow Crystal Geyser to take 100,000 acre feet of water or 100 acre feet of water, that means everything downstream is going to do without 100 acre feet of water that's needed, because that's how it's been set up. There's not extra water on Mount Shasta that the state of California doesn't need. There's not extra water to do that, to draft it off, contaminate half of it, bottle up the other half, and ship it out of California. This is not the wisest way to deal with a sacred place or the water systems, but we do believe that the water is a sacred being and can come and go as it pleases. It's one of the most powerful beings there is, and it chooses where to be. They do things on Mount Shasta. Then, you know, maybe it won't come up no more, maybe it won't be there no more. Then what are they going to do?
Ayana Young Well, thank you so much, Chief, for this incredible conversation. And I would just like to ask if there's anything you'd like to end on as we're closing this conversation, and if there's anything else you'd like to say or end on?
Chief Caleen Sisk Yeah, only that the unrecognized issues that exist for tribes in the United States need to further educate people about these things because it's a discriminatory process meant to keep tribes like mine from being able to protect our sacred places. People need to remember that we're from here. We have nowhere else in the world to go to be able to learn how to be Winnemems. We have to have our river. We have to have our salmon, and it really is not too much to ask to be allowed to do these things and keep these things, and it's a good thing.
You know, these things are valuable in that there is knowledge in what we do and how we do it. You know, when we dance on the river, there are certain things that happen to the river and to the mountains that hear that drumbeat going up and down that river. And the recognition status would be comparable to being a slavery status where you are invisible. You have no rights. You can't protect anything. You know the American Indian Religious Freedoms Act does not help us protect our sacred ceremonies, and neither does the First Amendment. We cannot use either of those. So every time that we do a dance on the river and ceremony, we are breaking the law. We don't have the right to do that because we're not considered a tribe. You know, just like we don't have the right to bring our fish back and sit on the committee to bring our fish back because we're not a tribe. We don't have a right to protect our children from being adopted out because we're not a tribe. None of the laws that protect Indian Tribes, language, art, you name it, we cannot use them.
And so I think that if people recognize the wrongdoing here on the part of the government in the 80s, maybe things will change. You know, that's why I work at the UN for the unrecognized and unrepresented peoples because really we are the unrepresented people in the United States. No one here in California represents the Traditional People or the Tribal People or the Indigenous Peoples here in this government, nobody represents our issues and our problems in the US government. There's no place that we have a seat in Congress that represents the issues that we're dealing with. You know, we have to deal directly with prosperity offices like the Department of the Interior. It's an unfair situation that we find ourselves in, and that the court of law is not with us. There's no justice department that we can file with and so, you know, that's why we have a lawsuit trying to protect our sacred sites. But you know, we're fighting for standing to say we're the right people on the McCloud River to have the right to protect our sacred places, you know?
And that's just wrong. Those are those things are doing….What has happened to my tribe seems like we need relief. We need to be allowed to be the tribe that we were all this time. We need to be allowed to go back to our river, have our salmon again, and sing our songs. You know, our songs need to continue. So I think that's the, probably, the bottom line, and I say that for my future generations. You know, I have a young Chief that's coming up, and I would like to leave her in a situation that's better than what I had to pick up and better than what my grams. Even though, you know, we have way more than many tribes in California have as far as our traditions, our culture, our medicines, our songs, our dances. And in that light, you know, I'm thankful that my tribal leaders ahead of me, you know, preserved for us
Ayana Young Thank you again, so much. And I just want to lead the audience to your GoFundMe page to do the salmon restoration, which is gofundme.com/salmonwillrun. And also, if you'd like to learn more information, go to Run4salmon.org to learn more about this powerful journey led by Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. So again, thank you so much for all of your time and your wisdom and explaining to us these complex dilemmas facing California, Mount Shasta, the Salmon, and the Winnenmem Wintu People and our support is with you, Chief, thank you.
Chief Caleen Sisk Thank you very much. Bye, bye.
Ayana Young Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Please visit gofundme.com/salmonwillrun to support Chief Caleen and her efforts for the Salmon and the Water and ultimately, for all living creatures. I believe we must start supporting each other in this movement and make a practice of tangibly engaging in these fights to preserve the remaining biodiversity on Earth.
The music you heard today was a mixture of Maori and Winnemem songs from the Dancing Salmon Home documentary. The interlude song was "Mountain Song" by Nicole Reynolds. Our theme music is "Silence Returns" by Bo and "Like a River" by Kate Wolf. A huge thanks to our new producer and editor, Reach Out and to March Young for their production brilliance. Also a bow of gratitude to our research director, Madison Magalski.
I'd also love to thank Niria Alicia, a tireless warrioress on the Run for Salmon campaign who coordinated this interview.
We have a newsletter coming out soon, so go to forthewild.world to sign up. We'll be sharing the exciting developments with the native species nursery, the Tongass film, and the festival appearances I'll be making next so stay tuned.