The Water Remembers: A conversation with Amy Bowers Cordalis
In 2024, the largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed on the Klamath River—a moment decades in the making, led by Indigenous communities fighting to restore their lands, waters, and way of life. This event marks an environmental victory for the tribal nations along the river that was generations in the making.
Join Grist Senior Staff Writer Anita Hofschneider and Yurok attorney, activist, and author Amy Bowers Cordalis for a conversation that illustrates what the success of the Klamath dam removal campaign can teach us about how to achieve Indigenous environmental justice. The conversation will explore the significance of the Klamath dam removal for Indigenous peoples and the climate, building upon Grist's in-depth series, How the Klamath Dams Came Down and Bowers Cordalis’s forthcoming memoir, The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life
Purchase a copy of The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life from Native-owned Birchbark Books here.
The event is supported by Meyer Memorial Trust and Sierra Club.
Featured Voices
Amy Bowers Cordalis is a mother, fisherwoman, attorney, and a member and former General Counsel of the Yurok Tribe—the largest tribe in California. Formerly a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, she is the currently the Co-Founder and Director of the Ridges to Riffles Conservation Indigenous Group, a nonprofit representing Native American tribes in natural and cultural resource matters where she works on advancing tribal sovereignty, water rights, fisheries, and the undamming of the Klamath River. She is also the recipient of the UN's highest environmental honor, Champion of the World Laureate and has been named to the second annual TIME100 Climate list (2024), and the 2024 Grist 50 Fixers list. .
Anita Hofschneider is a senior staff writer at Grist based in Honolulu. She is Chamorro from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and spent a decade reporting on local news in Hawaiʻi before joining Gristʻs Indigenous affairs desk. Her work has won dozens of awards, and she was most recently named a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.