A floating blockade stretches across the Klamath River waiting to stop boats carrying Yurok and Karuk tribal officials and Berkshire Hathaway executives upriver on Aug. 28, 2020. It was a Friday in late August when four jet boats made their way up the Klamath River under a cloudless blue sky. The boats carried three tribal chairs. From the Karuk Tribe, there was Russell Buster Attebery, who d found pride as a boy catching salmon from the river and bringing them home to his family, and later come to believe some tribal youth s troubles from suicides to substance use could be traced back to their never having had that opportunity, growing up alongside a river now choked with algae and diminishing fish populations. There was Joseph James from the Yurok Tribe, who d come to see the river s declining health as a slow strangulation of his people river people who have lived along its banks and relied on its salmon as the bedrock of their diet since time im
Fight of the River People: The Generational Push That Brought Berkshire Hathaway to the Table and put Dam Removal Back on Track
A floating blockade stretches across the Klamath River waiting to stop boats carrying Yurok and Karuk tribal officials and Berkshire Hathaway executives upriver on Aug. 28, 2020. Photo: Mahlija Florendo
###
It
was a Friday in late August when four jet boats made their way up the
Klamath River under a cloudless blue sky. The boats carried three
tribal chairs. From the Karuk Tribe, there was Russell “Buster”
Attebery, who’d found pride as a boy catching salmon from the river