Lavina of the Klamath: Elder in an Ancient Culture

On a Saturday evening last November, people streamed into the Requa Inn above the Klamath River for a talk by Amy Bowers Cordalis on her new book, “The Water Remembers,” the story of her “family’s fight to save a river and a way of life.”

Attending this stop on Amy’s book tour were mostly members of Amy’s Yurok family and friends who have struggled more than a half-century to reclaim their indigenous fishing rights and remove dams on the Klamath River.

Arguably, the epic struggle over the dams started with the first Gold Rush placer mine on the Trinity River in 1848, 70 years before the 132-foot-tall Copco 1 in Siskiyou County, the first Klamath dam, was built. Gold mining led to the first human-engineered collapse of the Klamath salmon population, as the river was choked with sediment, sludge and reportedly millions of pounds of mercury. People of the ancient cultures that had lived for centuries on the Klamath saw the river that had always sustained them run brown with decay as they starved.

Thus began an enduring collision between a White Western culture of avarice and extraction with the ancient peoples of the Klamath, and launched 150 years of Native resistance and struggle to save the river, their culture and their lives. Copco 1 and subsequent dams built between 1918 and 1962 put in motion the second great collapse of the salmon fishery.

In the warmth of the Requa Inn, Lavina Bowers, Amy’s 90-year-old grandmother and family matriarch, presides over the book reception, greeted by virtually everyone with authentic affection and respect. It was knowledge gained over generations, kept alive by the elders like Lavina, that ultimately defeated the enormous economic and political forces arrayed against removal of the four dams, which finally came down in 2023 and ’24.

Lavina’s home is in ancient Req-woi, which shares the same footprint as the town of Requa, where generations of her family have lived. Req-woi “may be the only indigenous village site in California continuously inhabited by members of the same tribe for centuries,” according to California History Magazine. People from Req-woi and dozens of other historic native villages and the several tribes on the Klamath and its tributaries are unquestioningly responsible for the knowledge and grit required to remove the four dams.

Lavina is a vessel of family experience. Being matriarch of the family means she carries the continuity of what it means to be a traditional Indian family prospering in the modern world, a bridge from her elders to her lineal descendants. Her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and spouses number 99. “We have one of everything in the family,” Lavina said, “except a doctor. We need a doctor.”

Amy’s book bursts with the tension of being continually cut off from and fighting for the Native fishery, as seen from Amy’s family experience.

In 1978, during the “Salmon Wars,” after many acts of government sponsored violence against the Yuroks, Lavina, 43, and her mom, Geneva, 74, rowed their small wooden fishing boat to face and shame down heavily armed federal marshals in flak jackets. The marshals, in their large metal power boats, rammed Lavina’s boat, cracking it and throwing her violently to the bottom. It is worth getting a copy of “The Water Remembers” just for its description of that day — the stuff of legends when these two women persevere and drive off the marshals, not a shot fired.

“Even in fishing clothes, Lavina was beautiful,” Amy writes of that day. “She had delicate facial features with soft edges, full lips and bright, inquisitive dark eyes.”

On this evening in Requa 47 years after confronting and defeating those marshals to defend her river, Lavina’s eyes are still bright.

Peter Pennekamp lives in Eureka. Look for Part Two of his account of Lavina Bowers of the Klamath in future issues of Senior News.