Native Voice One Podcast

The Winnemem Wintu board a plane bound for Christchurch, New Zealand. With the help of the Maori people, they hold a ceremony on the Rikkaia River and sing to the salmon there. Once back in the United States, Chief Caleen Sisk meets with every government agency she can to push the idea of bringing the New Zealand salmon back home. Read More

“Yeah, I felt so deeply for the people. I thought to myself, if there’s one thing I do on this earth, I’d love to be able to be in a position that would help to see, in shape or form, that that happens. That they get their fish back.”

– Dirk Barr, fish culturist, New Zealand

Chief Caleen Sisk holding the Winnemem Wintu salmon baton in New Zealand. Photo: Richard Cosgrove

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

When plans for the Shasta Dam Enlargement Project accelerate, the Winnemem Wintu decide to hold a war dance, their first in more than 100 years. Members of the community dream into existence songs, dances and regalia. News of the ceremony, and the tribe that declared war against the U.S. government on top of Shasta Dam, goes around the world. That leads to an unexpected message from Down Under. Read More

“The message came through of the salmon going through the ice waterfall. It was going to go away from the river. At the time, they’re like, what? How are the salmon going to go away?”

– Michael Preston, Winnemem Wintu

McCloud, CA — A Winnemem Wintu dancer during an annual ceremony held near the foot of Mt. Shasta. August 11, 2019. Tom Levy/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

At a sacred spring high up on Mt. Shasta, the Winnemem Wintu recount the beginnings of the world when salmon gave up their voices so that humans could speak. They now feel a special obligation to defend salmon in return for this gift. A biologist details Chinook salmon’s catastrophic decline since the arrival of Euro-American settlers to California and the Northwest. Read More

“I just I can't emphasize enough though how precarious the situation for winter-run Chinook is.”

– Jonathan Ambrose, biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service

Lower McCloud River Falls, CA — Every year the Winnemem Wintu and supporters jump into three pools on the McCloud River as part of a ritual to remember the salmon who used to swim there. August 10, 2019. Tom Levy/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

The Run4Salmon bikes through rural areas in the upper Sacramento Valley where Euro American settlers changed the land to better suit an agrarian economy. The Winnemem Wintu and supporters remember the indigenous people who were forcibly removed and killed. An apology in Redding for the genocide may be well intentioned, but Chief Caleen Sisk insists action must accompany words. Read More

“Colonization is the act of being a bad guest in someone else’s house. It is the act of destroying something you don’t understand because you don’t think it’s worth understanding.”

—Lyla June Johnston

Glenn County, CA. May 28, 2022. Nuts such as walnuts, almonds and pistachios are water-intensive and major export crops in California. Judy Silber/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

As the Run4Salmon continues to travel upstream, the Winnemem Wintu and supporters witness more obstacles faced by migrating salmon. Once a vast marshland, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta was an important haven for juvenile salmon, but now is a gauntlet of human engineering. Chief Caleen Sisk stands up for salmon and water health at a bureaucratic meeting of Sacramento Valley water districts. Read More

“The Delta’s probably one of the most altered places you can imagine on the planet. Of that 500,000 acres of inland freshwater tidal marsh, 98 percent of it is gone.”

— Leticia Grenier, scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute

Sherman Island County Park, CA — Wind turbines along the hardscaped edges of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. May 15, 2021. Tom Levy/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

The Winnemem Wintu and supporters start a two-week Run4Salmon prayer to call salmon back to the waters above Shasta Dam. The Run follows the salmon’s migration path from the ocean to the mountains. It starts in the Bay Area where the Winnemem Wintu and supporters encounter environmental devastation first set in motion 200 years ago. Read More

“It feels like I’m doing my purpose in life. This is my job as a dancer and as a Winnemem Wintu man and human being to speak up for salmon and water and land and indigenous ways, indigenous lifeways and the spirituality of it all— speak on behalf of all of that, the best we can, anyway.”

— Michael Preston, Winnemem Wintu

Berkeley, CA — Chief Caleen Sisk (Winnemem Wintu), Wounded Knee DeOcampo (Miwok), Corrina Gould (Confederated Villages of Lisjan) and Pua Case (Native Hawaiian) lead a protest in the Bay Area. Run4Salmon organizers Desirae Harp (Mishewal OnastaTis Nation), Niria Alicia, and Hawane Rios (Native Hawaiian) walk behind them. September 8, 2017. Tom Levy/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

An elder remembers indigenous life back before Shasta Dam was built. The legality of the proposal to raise Shasta Dam is considered. Meanwhile, Chief Caleen Sisk considers a new strategy to fight back: turning an adversary — the Westlands Water District — into an ally. Read More

“For us, taking care of each other, taking care of the village, making sure that people have what they need is important. But to sit on millions of dollars, it would be silly. I couldn’t even imagine me living at the village sitting on a million dollars and not doing anything, but just more destruction.”

—Caleen Sisk, Spiritual and Hereditary Leader of the Winnemem Wintu

McCloud Bridge, Shasta County, CA — Looking upstream towards property acquired by the Fresno-based Westlands Water District. September 30, 2018. Tom Levy/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

We go to Shasta Dam and learn about the history behind its construction in the 1930s and 1940s. We hear from Chief Caleen Sisk about how the federal proposal to raise the dam another 18 and a half feet opens old wounds for the Winnemem Wintu and further threatens their tenuous survival. Read More

 “There’s nowhere else in the world that we can go to learn how to be Winnemems. Only there. We can’t go to Navajo. We can’t go to Alaska. We can’t go to Cherokee to learn how to be Winnemems.”

— Caleen Sisk, Hereditary and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu people

Shasta Reservoir, CA — Chief Caleen Sisk on the shoreline near where she says a Winnemem Wintu village site was flooded out by Shasta Dam. October 30, 2018. Tom Levy/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

We accompany the Winnemem Wintu to sacred sites near the McCloud River. The federal government’s Shasta Dam and Reservoir Expansion Proposal threatens these sites and the Winnemem Wintu way of life. Read More

“If we lose our sacred places then our belief is pretty much we lose being Winnemem. I mean, we’ll still have blood lines, but blood lines don’t really make tribes.”

— Caleen Sisk, Hereditary and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu people

Shasta County, CA — The Winnemem Wintu gather strength and wisdom to defend their culture and way of life at sacred sites high up in the mountains above the McCloud River. June 17, 2018. Judy Silber/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.

In a peaceful protest, the Winnemem Wintu call out the U.S. government for its refusal to acknowledge the destruction caused by Shasta Dam. The protest at the Shasta Dam Visitor Center reveals the Winnemem Wintu’s ongoing reality. They are ignored and later a security guard threatens to forcibly remove them. Read More

Shasta Lake, CA — The Winnemem Wintu and allies protest the lack of information about the harm caused by Shasta Dam. September 25, 2019. Tom Levy/The Spiritual Edge

A Prayer for Salmon is an 11 part audio documentary series from KALW’s The Spiritual Edge that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people and their clash with Northern California’s Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. It also left the Winnemem Wintu displaced and without say over their land. The series details their fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem Wintu’s aspirations to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam.