Reviving the River: Amy Bowers Cordalis on Healing the Klamath—and Ourselves

Amidst decades of environmental decline, the collective efforts of Indigenous communities lead to the historic removal of dams, ushering in a vibrant revival of natural ecosystems along the Klamath River.

If you care about rivers, justice, or the future of climate resilience, the story of the Klamath River is one you need to know.

On a recent episode of Rising Tide, the Ocean Podcast, hosts David Helvarg and Natasha Benjamin sat down with someone at the heart of one of the most significant river restoration efforts in modern history: Amy Bowers Cordalis, former general counsel for the Yurok Tribe and author of the newly released The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life.

What emerged from the conversation wasn’t just a policy story—or even just an environmental one. It was a living, breathing reminder that the fate of a river is the fate of a people.

Where Water and Memory Meet

For Cordalis, the Klamath River isn’t a backdrop. It’s ancestry. It’s identity. It’s home.

She grew up in a house perched above the Klamath estuary—land her family has lived on since time immemorial. The river was her teacher long before the law was. It taught her what abundance looks like, what balance feels like, and what it means to live in kinship with a place.

So when the river began to decline—when dams choked off salmon runs, when decades of mismanagement took their toll, when tribal food systems collapsed in real time—it wasn’t an abstract “environmental issue.” It was personal. It was existential.

Law as Ceremony, Advocacy as Restoration

Cordalis didn’t originally imagine becoming a lawyer. But ancestral stories, teachings, and the lived reality of ecological loss nudged her toward the legal world. At the University of Colorado and through her work at the Native American Rights Fund, she shaped a path that paired cultural responsibility with legal expertise.

Her goal crystallized: use the law to heal a river—and protect the sovereignty, health, and future of her people.

That meant confronting the source of the river’s crisis: the Klamath dams, built without fish passage, erected across a thriving salmon highway, and operated in ways that undermined both ecological and cultural survival.

The Turning Point: A River on the Brink

One moment changed everything. In 2002, a catastrophic fish kill wiped out tens of thousands of salmon. The images of lifeless fish lining the riverbanks went viral before “viral” was even a thing. For the Yurok Tribe, it wasn’t just a disaster. It was a breaking point.

The tribe mobilized. Environmental groups mobilized. A coalition formed that would eventually become one of the most powerful examples of Indigenous-led environmental justice in the U.S.

Through meticulous legal strategy during the PacifiCorp FERC relicensing process—and a willingness to pair litigation with collaboration—the Yurok Tribe and its partners forced a reckoning. They presented not only the ecological imperative but the economic one: dam removal simply made more sense.

And in a historic win decades in the making, the decision was made: the Klamath River dams would come down.

A River Remembers How to Heal

What happened next borders on miraculous—and yet it’s exactly what ecologists predicted.

Once the dams were removed, salmon returned to stretches of river they hadn’t reached in a hundred years. Habitat revived. Water temperatures shifted. Channels reshaped themselves. The river exhaled.

Cordalis now works through her nonprofit, the Ridges to Riffles Conservation Group, ensuring the restoration is guided by Indigenous knowledge and long-term ecological planning. Because healing isn’t a one-time event—it’s stewardship.

Why the Klamath Story Matters Now

The Klamath River is now one of the largest river restoration projects in world history, and it’s offering a roadmap for something much bigger.

Cordalis’s book and her ongoing work make one thing clear: Indigenous leadership isn’t optional in climate resilience—it’s essential.

Not as a checkbox. Not as a consultation. But as a way of re-rooting ecological work in relationship, reciprocity, and responsibility.

Her story is a reminder that restoration is possible, that systems can change, and that healing a place can heal a people—and vice versa.

If you want to dive deeper, The Water Remembers is out now, and it’s stunning. It’s not just a memoir or an environmental history—it’s a blueprint for how we meet this moment.

Because the river remembers.

And now, thanks to leaders like Amy Bowers Cordalis, we’re learning how to remember too.