Native Americans fight back for water

Tribes blame crisis on racism

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — The Native Americans who have lived here for thousands of years say that a giant serpent once menaced them from the high-desert hills that surround Upper Klamath Lake, a marshy expanse of water north of the Oregon-California border.

It slithered down from remote crags to hunt people until the creator, G’mok’am’c, butchered it with an obsidian blade. He cast the pieces into the lake, where they became c’waam, a variety of suckerfish that can live up to 50 years and has become the ecological and religious heart for the tribes that call this place home. G’mok’am’c told the people that their fate was tied to the fish — if it perishes, so will they.

For decades, an agonizing war over a scarce resource — water — has divided Indigenous people and the descendants of settlers of this region, which like much of the American West, is now plagued by drought.

Family farmers often describe the conflict as one that pits them against federal bureaucrats who protect the suckerfish, imperiled as the lake grows more inhospitable. That portrayal, say members of the tribes, dismisses a tougher truth.

Just under the surface, they say, the real fight is about race, equity and generational trauma to a people whose history includes slaughter, forced removal of children, federal termination of their tribal status and loss of land — but not loss of the shared culture they hold sacred.

“Our water crisis still exists in part due to racism, and racism toward the tribes still exists in part due to our water crisis,” said Joey Gentry, a tribal activist who moved back to the area three years ago after living in Portland.

“I fear that I’ve been vocal, and somebody could be angry and take it out on me,” she said. “I personally fear certain parts of town amongst certain types of people.”

This year, the conflict is more intense than before, with a faction of far-right activists threatening to use force to take control of the irrigation gates that determine how much water stays in the lake, and how much goes to farm fields. The lake, about a hundred miles around, received little snow melt and is shallow enough to walk across in places. Later this summer, as in past years, it is likely to be too hot and toxic for the c’waam and another variety of federally protected suckerfish to spawn and survive.