Paddling Home: Indigenous Youth Lead Klamath River First Descent Expedition

“I was thinking at first, ‘Why are the wind and the tide not helping us?’ And then I thought about the dams.”

In the summer of 2025, around 30 indigenous youth, accompanied by adult guides and volunteer support teams, completed a historic 30-day source-to-sea descent of the newly undammed Klamath River. The journey ended with a community celebration on July 12 at the Ada Waukell Charles Community Center in Klamath, California.

Guided by the leaders of the Ríos to Rivers’ Paddle Tribal Waters Program, a group of indigenous youth navigated over 250 miles of river, reclaiming stretches long blocked by dams. Behind them, volunteer support crews carried food and equipment. 

Jeremiah and Rachel Lewman, co-owners of SOTAR, joined the descent in a support role during its final three days and were there when the paddlers reached the culmination of their long journey.

The last hours of the descent were marked by strong winds and waves that felt, to Rachel, symbolic of the tribes’ struggle to un-dam the river and regain access to tribal lands.

“We took off and it felt like it was—I don’t know what the right word is,” Rachel said, reflecting on that intense final push. “During the struggle to finish, I was thinking at first, ‘Why are the wind and the tide not helping us?’ And then I thought about the dams.”

For decades, indigenous leaders and activists have fought for the removal of dams on the Klamath River. Dams prevent crucial fish species, such as salmon and steelhead, from accessing the basin’s upper river and the spawning habitat it provides. The structures also encourage toxic algal blooms and disease in these valuable ecosystems, which in turns not only harms the river and surrounding environments, but also threatens tribal subsistence and the West Coast fishing industry. The dams’ removal required persistence, patience, and intense coordination between many key players.

“The tribes have been talking about the struggles they’ve been fighting to get this removed for years and years,” Rachel explained. “They probably felt at times like they were being blown upstream or the current was against them. We just had to feel a little bit of that for two hours. They’ve been fighting for years—decades—to get these dams removed. Fighting to make the water clean and prove what was lost. We just had to taste it.”

The descent was both a milestone and a message: the river is flowing freely again, but the work of river reclamation and preservation continues. For those who paddled and those who supported them, it was a powerful reminder of what can be reclaimed through persistence, solidarity, and hope.