Reviving Indigenous traditions on the Klamath River with a historic kayak journey with Paddle Tribal Waters
For over a century, dams along the Klamath River destroyed fish and plant life and uprooted the culture and economies of the Karuk, Yurok, and other tribes living nearby. Most of those dams will soon be gone, allowing tribal members to reconnect to their waters in profound ways.
Toward that, an intertribal group of teens has been training with Paddle Tribal Waters to kayak the river from source to sea. They are eyeing June 2025 for the month-long journey, which will begin at the Klamath headwaters on the Wood River in southern Oregon.
“Before the dams, our tribes were river travelers, using hand-built canoes to move up and down the river for commerce and transportation,” says Keeya Wiki, 16, a Yurok tribal member and one of the young kayakers. “In training for the first descent, we are reconnecting with our heritage and our river.”
The expedition will pass through over 250 miles of watershed to the estuary at the Pacific Ocean in Del Norte County. The trip will require both stamina and skill. That’s where Paddle Tribal Waters (PTW) comes in. 
Now in its third summer, Paddle Tribal Waters has over forty alumni – teens from most all of the tribes in the Klamath River Basin. Some have progressed from complete beginners to Class IV kayakers with combat rolls and playboating skills. Two will go to Africa to train on the Zambezi River this fall.
Professional paddlers and instructors like Rush Sturges, Ben Morton, and Kira Tenney are lending their expertise. So are the “junior instructors” culled from the 2022 and 2023 sessions – four of whom are now working on their American Canoe Association Instructor Certification. Both groups helped out again this July when the 2024 cohort gathered at Otter Bar Lodge near the Oregon border.
The newest paddlers got lots of water time, participating in daily sessions on sections of the Lower Klamath. They also worked on safety techniques, including the kayak roll, the self-righting technique that opens doors to more challenging whitewater. The two-week program culminated with a two-night, three-day trip, to get a taste of what the descent will require.
The young people also worked on the leadership in advocacy skills they will need as Indigenous stewards. A clean up along the Trinity River, a Klamath tributary, was part of that.
Danielle “Ducky” Frank, 20, heads the PTW leadership training. She also helped start the annual clean ups five years ago. A Hoopa tribal member, she grew up along the river. Even as a toddler she participated in her family’s activism around the dams and their removal.
“A lot of those who grew up in the Lower Klamath basin have a strong understanding of the need for activism,” Frank says. “We are the only people who know what a place is supposed to be like and we are the best to protect it.”
As anyone who has learned to whitewater kayak knows, good things take time. And a big issue for PTW was creating enough “water time” and continuity for the young paddlers to develop.
In 2024, PTW partnered with World Class Academy to create and deliver an accredited curriculum to let 13 young tribal members live, train and travel over five months. And travel they did, first to Chile where they met young river activists from Bolivia and then to the Northwest for sessions on the McKenzie, Smith, and Klamath rivers.
Another full-time Academy is planned for 2025, with graduation just before the scheduled descent.
The planned descent and its meaning for the Klamath Basin tribes has attracted a lot of support and interest. Two participants were invited to present last spring at the White House Water Summit. The dam removal project is, after all, believed to be the biggest internationally.
Two dams still remain near the headwaters just below Klamath Lake, so all craft will have to be transported around those structures.
There will also be plenty of Class IV and some Class V water. Not everyone will be expected — or able — to paddle everything, including Class VI Ishi Pishi Falls which is off-limits as it is sacred to the Karuk people. And that’s okay, according to Weston Boyles, who heads PTW’s parent organization, Rios to Rivers, a nonprofit connecting young river stewards internationally.
“We plan to continue the program after the dams have been removed,” he says, “because we’ve seen the ways in which access to quality instruction and gear can help communities heal and reconnect with their ancestral waterways.”
If all goes as planned, the Paddle Tribal Waters youth will be ready to lead the way.
To learn more about Paddle Tribal Waters and their upcoming journey, visit riostorivers.org
