California will help return tribal lands as part of the historic Klamath River restoration – the Los Angeles Times

Excerpt:
More than a century has passed since members of the Shasta Indian Nation saw the last piece of their ancestral home — a landscape along the Klamath River where villages once stood — flooded by a massive hydroelectric project.

Now more than 2,800 acres of land that encompassed the settlement, known as Kikacéki, will be returned to the tribe. The reclamation is part of the largest river restoration effort in U.S. history, the removal of four dams and reservoirs that had cut off the tribe from the spiritual center of their world.

“For so long we have felt a great loss, a loss of our family, our ancestors, for the loss of our villages and ceremony sites,” said Janice Crowe, chair of the Shasta Indian Nation. “Now we can return home, return to culture, return to ceremony, and begin to weave a new story for the next generation of Shasta, who will get to call our ancestral lands home once again.”

Recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the state’s support for the return to mark the five-year anniversary of his apology to Indigenous Californians for the theft, violence, forced assimilation and emotional trauma they were subjected to — and his promise to make amends in part through land reclamation.

This reach along the sacred waterway, with its oak and redwood forests and rocky outcroppings, was where the Shasta had harvested elderberries and currants, hunted for deer and used wild pumpkin root to lure salmon into their nets. It had also been the setting for tribal ceremonies.

Until recently, most of the site lay submerged under the Copco and Iron Gate reservoirs.

With the decommissioning of the dams and draining of the reservoirs, miles of river valley are visible once more, and the return of free-flowing water has fueled hopes of reviving the salmon runs that had sustained the valley’s tribes since time immemorial. The Klamath River Renewal Corp. will transfer the 2,800 acres once work is completed, which could come as soon as the end of the year.

The reappearance of the stolen land resurfaces a haunting chapter in the Shasta people’s history, said Sami Jo Difuntorum, the tribe’s lead cultural preservation officer. She has guided tours of the area for years.

The Gold Rush of the mid- to late 1800s brought miners to the area who killed Indigenous people and sexually attacked tribal women. The violence and land theft were horrific enough, but they led to another atrocity, Difuntorum said — the displacement of people who believe the land to be an extension of themselves.

“Some say it’s woven into our DNA,” Difuntorum said of this profound attachment to the natural world. “It sure feels that way to me when I’m up there…”