Amy Bowers Cordalis, a Yurok Tribe member, attorney, and executive director of Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, explains how a legal and grassroots fight led to the removal of four PacifiCorp-owned hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, completed in 2024 as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. She traces the case Mattz v. Arnett (1973), which reaffirmed the Yurok Reservation as Indian country after her great-uncle Raymond Mattz’s arrests for fishing on the river, as a legal foundation for the tribe’s water and fishing rights. Within three days of the final dam’s removal, Chinook salmon passed the former Iron Gate Dam site for the first time in nearly a century, with roughly 7,700 fish returning that fall. Cordalis, a 2024 UN Champions of the Earth laureate, argues the project is a model for indigenous-led sovereignty, rather than colonial conservation frameworks, as a path to restoring ecosystems elsewhere.

A case study for a broader shift in conservation, away from a colonial model that treats humans as separate from nature and toward one where indigenous sovereignty and stewardship lead the work

Amy Bowers Cordalis is a Yurok Tribe member, attorney, and executive director of Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group. As General Counsel for the Yurok Tribe, she helped lead the fight to remove four dams from the Klamath River, a project that became the largest dam removal and largest salmon restoration effort in U.S. history. Her memoir, The Water Remembers, traces that fight back through generations of her family, beginning with what she calls the first covenant: the Yurok creation story’s mandate that humans live in balance with the land, water, and salmon of the Klamath Basin in exchange for its abundance.

Cordalis walks through how four hydroelectric dams, built without fish ladders across the early to mid-20th century, cut salmon off from their historic spawning grounds and degraded water quality throughout the basin, reducing the Klamath’s once-massive salmon runs to a fraction of their historical size. She connects that ecological collapse to a longer legal history: her great-uncle Raymond Mattz’s repeated arrests for fishing on Yurok land, and the resulting 1973 Supreme Court case Mattz v. Arnett, which reaffirmed the Yurok Reservation as Indian country and became a foundation for the tribe’s water and fishing rights. Those rights, paired with sustained grassroots pressure on the dams’ corporate owner and an economic analysis showing removal was cheaper than adding fish ladders, led to a settlement agreement and the 2024 completion of dam removal. Within days, salmon reached spawning grounds they hadn’t accessed in nearly a century, and the following year, a group of Indigenous teenagers completed the first source-to-sea descent of the free-flowing Klamath in over a century, including Cordalis’s own niece.

Cordalis argues that the Klamath’s recovery is a case study for a broader shift in conservation, away from a colonial model that treats humans as separate from nature and toward one where indigenous sovereignty and stewardship lead the work. She’s candid that the project succeeded in part because conservation groups stepped back to let tribes lead, and because a former adversary, the dams’ utility owner, became a negotiating partner. Her larger point: what happened on the Klamath isn’t a one-time story, and other communities can follow a similar path if they’re willing to rethink who leads conservation work, and why.

In this episode:

• The first covenant The Yurok creation story’s foundational agreement: humans receive the abundance of the Klamath Basin in exchange for living in balance with its land, water, and salmon.
• Why the dams had to come down Four hydroelectric dams built without fish ladders blocked salmon from historic spawning grounds and contributed to toxic algae blooms and a fish disease that killed juvenile salmon.
• The legal foundation for removal Her great-uncle’s arrests for fishing on the Klamath led to Mattz v. Arnett (1973), a Supreme Court case that reaffirmed Yurok sovereignty and became a basis for the tribe’s water and fishing rights.
• Turning an adversary into an ally How grassroots pressure on the dams’ utility owner, combined with a favorable economic analysis, led to a negotiated settlement rather than a prolonged court fight.
• Salmon return Within three days of the final dam’s removal, salmon reached spawning grounds they hadn’t accessed in nearly a century.
• A model beyond the Klamath Why Cordalis argues indigenous-led sovereignty, not colonial conservation, is the path to restoring ecosystems elsewhere.

Links & Resources

Media & Books:

• The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life — Amy Bowers Cordalis’s memoir on her family’s multigenerational fight to protect the Klamath River and remove its dams. 

Organizations & Initiatives:

• Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group — Indigenous-led conservation nonprofit co-founded by Cordalis, supporting tribal-led restoration and sovereignty work. 

Places & Landscapes:

• Klamath River — The river at the center of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, historically the third-largest salmon-producing river in the continental U.S. 
• Blue Creek — A cold-water tributary of the lower Klamath designated by Yurok tribal law as a salmon sanctuary. 

Government & Policy:

• Mattz v. Arnett (1973) — Supreme Court case reaffirming the Yurok Reservation as Indian country, cited as a legal foundation for the tribe’s water and fishing rights. 
• Klamath River Renewal Corporation — The nonprofit entity formed under the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement to oversee removal of the four dams. 

People Mentioned:

• Raymond Mattz — Amy Bowers Cordalis’s great-uncle, whose arrests for fishing on the Klamath led to the 1973 Supreme Court case Mattz v. Arnett.

Amy Bowers Cordalis is a mother, fisherwoman, attorney, and member and former General Counsel of the Yurok Nation—the largest Indigenous Nation in California. She is currently the Executive Director of the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, a nonprofit advancing Indigenous sovereignty through the protection of cultural and natural resources, including the undamming of the Klamath River.

She is the recipient of the UN’s highest environmental honor, Champions of the World Laureate, and has been named to the second annual TIME100 Climate List (2024), featuring the one hundred most influential leaders driving business to real climate action. She is the author of The Water Remembers (Hachette, 2025).

Connect with Amy on her website and on Instagram.

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