Alliance Building To Restore the River
Bring the Salmon Home: The Klamath Basin River Restoration Campaign
Karuk Tribe
Karuk Nation
The Problem: The Klamath River in Northern California is strangled by antiquated electric dams. This results in massive loss of salmon habitat, and loss of indigenous life ways and traditions related to the running of the salmon as well as regionally impacting the commercial fishing industry.
The Solution: Take down the dams to restore the river and “bring the salmon home” to upper river basin.
The Strategy: The four tribes in the Klamath basin (Karuk, Yurok, Hoopa & Klamath tribes) forged a coalition for the river amongst the tribes, commercial fishing interests, and environmentalists. Together they launched a campaign against Pacific Power the corporate owners of the dams. This ultimately took the Tribes to Scotland to target the parent company Scottish Power with actions, massive public outreach and a ceremony outside the shareholders’ meeting. The campaign scared Scottish Power enough that they sold the dam company to a subsidiary of mega-financer Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway company. The tribes and their allies have kept the pressure on leaders of the tribes went to Omaha to request removal of the dams directly from Warren Buffet in a dramatic action at the Berkshire shareholders meeting.
The latest chapter in the campaign is educating Pacific Power’s consumers in their home town of Portland, Oregon – with the message that removing the damns will both help restore salmon and reduce electricity costs. This message has been delivered through grassroots outreach, direct mail, protest and media attention.
smartMeme’s Role:
SmartMeme has been supporting this campaign since 2004 because we support the sovereignty of indigenous nations, and we see the model of an indigenous led alliance for environmental restoration as a valuable model for work throughout the west, and the world. Our role has ranged from alliance building facilitation, to messaging and communications for the direct mail and advertising campaigns.
The Result: Due to the tireless efforts of the campaign the story in the basin has changed and it is no longer about if dams will be removed its merely a question of how many and how exactly it will happen. The campaign is believed by many to be on the verge of victory.