Once abundant along the coast and in California’s rivers, salmon have played an essential role in the daily lives and traditions of the state’s Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Today, Native California tribes are striving to bolster that salmon population, as both a labor of love and a mission of sustainability.
California’s Salmon People: An Endangered Way of Life
California is the southernmost extent of the salmon’s range in the Western Hemisphere. Four species—Chinook (also known as king), coho, and, to a lesser extent pink and chum salmon—historically thrived in California waters, providing dependable sources of highly nutritious food for both coastal bands and tribes in parts of the Central Valley. These fish were so integral to the lives of Indigenous people that in a 2017 letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, Karuk Tribe chairman Russell “Buster” Attebery declared, “The Karuk and other Klamath Basin Tribes are salmon people—our cultural identity is interwoven with the salmon life cycle.”
That relationship is increasingly threatened by California’s declining salmon runs. As Attebery pointed out, with more than 1.2 million fish, the Klamath River once produced the third-largest population of salmon on the West Coast. But in 2017, the river’s seemingly inexhaustible salmon stocks had plunged to just 11,000 fish. While California tribes can continue to fish for salmon, record low salmon runs on both the Sacramento and Klamath rivers led to closures in 2023 for both ocean and in-river recreational fishing.
To protect their traditions and preserve an essential food source, California tribes are playing a major role in efforts to restore the state’s salmon runs. Here’s a look at the ancient connections between the state’s Indigenous people and salmon, as well as recovery programs led by California tribes.
Sticking Up for the Salmon
It’s difficult to overstate the deep spiritual and cultural ties that California’s tribes have maintained for thousands of years with salmon. In an interview for an exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Yurok Tribe’s Georgiana Gensaw said, “When humans were created, it was salmon who stepped up to feed us in the beginning of time. We’ve been taught since they stepped up for us first, that it’s our inherent responsibility to stick up for them.”
Within their ancestral homelands from Mt. Shasta and through the McCloud River watershed north of Redding, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe has protected and nurtured populations of Chinook salmon (known to the tribe as Nur) for countless generations. At waterfalls and other impassable barriers, tribespeople would collect salmon, then transport the fish in baskets before releasing them upstream. Tribal members even lit bonfires along stream banks to help guide salmon upriver.
In an article for the Center for Humans and Nature, Caleen Sisk, Winnemem Wintu chief and spiritual leader said, “Salmon are a magical fish to us. They’re a spirit being that is always giving. In every stage of life, giving. As eggs, they’re fish bait. As fry [recently hatched or juveniles], they’re fish food. They only do things in a sacred manner.”
At one time, the Siskiyou County–based Karuk Tribe netted salmon at 120 sites along the Klamath and Salmon rivers. Now they only fish at Ishi Pishi Falls near the confluence of the rivers at the sacred ceremonial location of Katamin, an area the Karuk consider the center of the world. Tribal members still use traditional 12-foot-long dip nets to fish for 40-pound fall-run Chinook salmon (known as Áama in the Karuk language).
“Ishi Pishi is more than a fishery, it’s a place where elders teach the youth how to feed their families, how to work hard, and to be thankful for the gifts the creator has bestowed upon us,” said Leaf Hillman, a ceremonial leader and natural resources and environmental policy director for the Karuk Tribe.
One measure of the salmon’s decline is that before Europeans arrived in California, the Karuk ate a daily average of more than a pound of salmon per person. Now they consume less than five pounds of salmon per year.
What Happened to California’s Salmon?
According to a 2017 study prepared by California Trout and the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, California was historically home to 32 salmonid species (which include salmon, steelhead, and trout), 22 of which are endemic to the state. The bull trout went extinct in California waters in 1975, and the study concluded that under current conditions, 23 more salmonid species could disappear within the next century.
The fish once ranged through an estimated 45,000 miles of California waterways, from the current Mexican border to Oregon. But a number of environmental factors have reduced that habitat by two-thirds.
The California Gold Rush was a major event in the decline of California’s salmon. Before the Gold Rush, as many as 2 million salmon annually ranged through Central Valley rivers. California’s Indigenous people had long maintained sustainable salmon runs by avoiding overfishing and ensuring that enough fish made it upstream to spawn. But the massive influx of miners and settlers led to overfishing that disrupted the natural balance, while mining activity destroyed stream beds and gravel bars that the salmon relied on as spawning grounds.
Careless logging increased erosion that degraded water quality, turning clear blue streams into cloudy, silt-filled waters ill-suited for salmon. During the 20th century, dam construction on many California rivers prevented salmon from reaching an upstream spawning habitat; it’s estimated that the fish lost access to 95 percent of their ancestral, high-elevation spawning grounds.
Climate change has also taken a major toll on salmon populations. Extended droughts have lowered stream levels in many years and the combination of shallower water and higher temperatures made many waterways too hot for salmonid species and resulted in toxic algae blooms. The increase in wildfires has also adversely affected salmon populations because landslides often destroy spawning habitat and smother eggs.
Tribal Initiatives
From Lake Tahoe, where the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California was part of the cooperative effort to reintroduce 100,000 native Lahontan cutthroat trout, to areas along the North Coast, California tribes are taking action to restore salmon and steelhead populations to preserve their traditional way of life.
The Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa Valley tribes played key roles in the two-decade effort that led to scheduled removal of four dams on the Klamath River by the end of 2024. The dam removal is believed to be the largest project of its kind ever attempted in the United States and maybe even in the world. By removing the dams, salmon and steelhead will regain access to more than 400 miles of spawning areas, beginning a healing process for the river, fish, and the tribes whose lifeways have been disrupted for more than a century. In 2023, for example, the Yurok Tribe was forced to ban both commercial and traditional subsistence fishing to help the salmon recover. And during August’s annual Klamath Salmon Festival, no salmon was actually served.
As Susan Masten, the past chairperson and vice chairperson of the Yurok Tribe, said, “The Klamath River is our heartline and we use the fish in our ceremonies. So it’s important to us spiritually…The health of the river determines the health of the people. And our river has been very sick, not due to anything we’ve done. Because we’ve been excellent stewards of the Klamath River since time immemorial.”
The Winnemem Wintu Tribe is working with federal and state agencies to return winter-run Chinook salmon to spawning areas north of Redding for the first time since the construction of Shasta Dam in the 1940s. In 2022, to the sound of prayers, songs, and drumming, 35,000 salmon eggs were brought to incubator tanks along the McCloud to reestablish the fish in this watershed above the dam. After the fish hatched, more than 1,500 fry were trapped and transported below the dam. The long-term hope is to create a fishway that would allow the salmon to bypass the dam.
Oddly enough, the recovery effort might eventually involve salmon from New Zealand. Starting in the late 19th century, salmon eggs and fry from a hatchery on the McCloud were sent to New Zealand and 13 other countries. The fish have thrived on the Rakaia River and, in 2010, Winnemem representatives traveled to New Zealand’s South Island to see these Chinook and to conduct ceremonies with members of the Ngi Tahu Maori tribe.
The Winnemem Wintu hope to eventually reintroduce Chinook from the Rakaia into the McCloud. The tribe feels a spiritual bond with these fish and consider the New Zealand Chinook to be true McCloud salmon—the closest genetic match to the original population.
The restoration of the salmon runs is essential to tribal identify, said tribal chief Sisk. “We are still the salmon culture, even though they’ve taken our salmon and our land away by building Shasta Dam. We believe that whatever happens to the salmon happens to us. The salmon lost their home on the McCloud River and so did we. When the salmon come home to the McCloud River, then maybe we can come home too.”