Wow, interesting to see this on Hacker News of all places. I was recently at my niece's college graduation from U of Oregon and the commencement speaker was Amy

Wow, interesting to see this on Hacker News of all places. I was recently at my niece's college graduation from U of Oregon and the commencement speaker was Amy Cordalis, the general counsel for the Yurok Tribe and woman largely responsible for bringing about this agreement to restore the Klamath River. Her tribe's creation myth involves the Salmon and their entire history and identity is heavily tied into fishing and the health of the river. Her uncle successfully litigated a Supreme Court case in the 70s affirming their tribe's sovereignty and rights to fish that river, which the State of California had tried to deny, arguing their land could not be considered tribal land because it had been opened by the state to homesteading in the 1890s (which violated a treaty from the 1850s declaring it a reservation in the first place). When she was an undergraduate, these dams caused the worst fish kill in US history and served as the inciting event leading to her becoming an attorney. Reclaiming the Klamath River and ensuring the health of the salmon population has been her life's work ever since. Note they've actually had an agreement in place to remove the dams since 2008, but the first agreement depended on Congressional approval and Congress never voted on it. Then they reached a new agreement that only needed FERC approval, which they got, along with the endorsement of the Department of the Interior under the Obama administration, only to have that endorsement rescinded when Trump appointed a new secretary whose mandate was apparently "shit on everything done by Obama, no matter what it was." So this is now finally happening after being dicked around for 15 years, with, of course, even that only happening after the US government giving away your land to other people so they can do things that erase your cultural identity and tribal sovereignty for 120 years.