Salmon runs reached historic lows on the Klamath River last year.Credit...Alexandra Hootnick for The New York Times

Sick River: Can These California Tribes Beat Heroin and History?

As salmon runs decline and opioid addiction grips the region, the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa tribes see a connection between the river’s struggles and their own.

WEITCHPEC, Calif. — For thousands of years, the Klamath River has been a source of nourishment for the Northern California tribes that live on its banks. Its fish fed dozens of Indian villages along its winding path, and its waters cleansed their spirits, as promised in their creation stories.

But now a crisis of opioid addiction is gripping this remote region. At the same time, the Klamath’s once-abundant salmon runs have declined to historic lows, the culmination of 100 years of development and dam building along the river.

Today, many members of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa tribes living in this densely forested area south of the California-Oregon border see a connection between the river’s struggle and their own.

“It’s no coincidence to me that this opioid problem and the river crisis are happening at the same time; when that resource is gone, it leads to a sense of despair,” said Amy Cordalis, the Yurok tribe’s general counsel.

Conflict along the Klamath has been a part of life going back to the Gold Rush, say those living on the reservation. Battles over land rights and federal funding, high rates of violence, an epidemic of meth in the 2000s and drought have all contributed to the tribes’ difficulties. Some strife has been caused from outsiders; some has come from within.

Now heroin is fraying family bonds like never before, they say, a devastating response to crisis.

“The river is the lifeblood of our community,” Ms. Cordalis added, describing the Klamath’s central role in traditional prayers, dances and rituals. “With the Yurok people, who we are and how we live always comes back to the river.”

Salmon runs reached historic lows last year, destabilizing an already fragile subsistence economy for thousands living along the river. Without salmon in this region, where unemployment can reach 80 percent in some areas, families risk hunger and destitution.

At the same time, a surge of heroin has intensified problems with opioid addiction that first began with painkillers like OxyContin in the early 2000s and began to worsen in 2014, according to tribal members. Among the Yurok, the Karuk and the Hoopa Indians, it is difficult to find anyone who has not been directly touched by heroin.

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From left: Yurok Chief Justice Abby Abinanti; Codie Donahue, who has Yurok and Karuk lineage; and Yurok tribal attorney Amy Cordalis.Credit...Alexandra Hootnick for The New York Times

Nationally, Native Americans are the hardest-hit demographic in an overdose death epidemic that has affected every corner of the country. Between 1999 and 2015, there was a 519 percent increase in the number of overdose deaths among rural Native Americans, according to a 2017 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to an increase of 325 percent in rural areas overall. Abuse of painkillers and heroin have played significantly into those trends.

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Dead Chinook salmon on the banks of the Klamath River during a 2002 fish kill. An estimated 34,000 salmon perished.Credit...Yurok Tribe Fisheries Department

In Yurok country, tribal leaders have pursued an aggressive agenda of cultural revival since the early 1990s in an effort to keep traditions alive. The process has not always been smooth. A decade ago, there was friction when tribal leaders were deciding how to manage $92 million in back payments from the federal government for logging on Yurok land.

Ultimately, 90 percent of the money was disbursed to members in a lump sum. Some questioned the wisdom of that decision by the tribal leadership, suggesting the money would be quickly spent, rather than saved.

Since then, the river’s intensifying troubles have caused spiritual pain, in addition to exacerbating economic anguish.

“In part, there’s a tremendous feeling of guilt, I think. The economics of it matter, yes, but it’s so much more than that for us,” said Yurok Chief Justice Abby Abinanti. “Our worldview is that we’re here in partnership with these other beings, the river and the fish. We have obligations to them.”

“Now it feels like the river is as sick as it has ever been. I think last year was the first time in history that the Yurok people did not fish on the Klamath,” Ms. Cordalis said. “When you start separating those ties, it really affects people.”

The effects of heroin — and meth before it — have seeped into every aspect of life. Outside the Yurok tribe’s bureau, a mural created by the Yurok children shows the river flowing through lush forests and curving past villagers performing traditional prayer-dances. In one panel, a Native American woman wanders the forest collecting wood and acorns, while kayakers splash in the river’s waters.

But unwinding across the painting are darker scenes too: broken bottles, needles, depictions of suicides, and dead fish.

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The mural that greets visitors outside of the Yurok tribal building is the result of an art course for tribal members of different ages, genders and artistic abilities to cope with traumatic events. The project was led by Claudia Bernardi, a Salvadorian artist and educator.Credit...Alexandra Hootnick for The New York Times

Thomas Willson, 55, a former Yurok tribal council member who grew up on Hoopa land along the Trinity River, said that a long history of alcohol and drug abuse in the region deeply affected his own life. Many, he said, turned to selling drugs to support their addictions.

While alcohol and methamphetamine were plagues for him and his generation, now “everyone is leaning off of that and going toward heroin.” He has lost several family members to opioid overdoses, he said, including his sister-in-law and a cousin, and several friends.

Mr. Willson, who is Christian, sees a direct connection between his faith and the Yurok spiritual values. “We have to take care of our hills and our river. That’s what God put us on this earth for, to be land managers,” he said.

Environmental degradation of the area’s delicate ecology has coincided with the heroin surge, exacerbating the problems for the region.

Four out-of-date dams upstream, built in the early- to mid-20th century, have sparked residual ecological strain downstream. Now the solution that tribal members hoped for — their removal — awaits approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Before the dams went up, the river was the third-largest producer of salmon in the United States. Last year, the Yurok tribe had to cancel commercial and subsistence fishing altogether because of the lack of fish. During some parts of the year, the waters become so toxic that people are advised not to swim or make contact with the river.

The tribes, environmentalists and others hope the dams can be removed to address the ecological and cultural crises at once.

“The reservoirs behind the dams have been breeding grounds for very toxic blue-green algae, and that has really sickened people,” said Stephen Most, a regional historian.

The dams came up for relicensing in 2006 and, because of new environmental standards, would need to be retrofitted with fish ladders to allow salmon and other fish to pass through. But that would not be in the financial interest of PacifiCorp, which operates the dams, according to a spokesman for the company, and so it has agreed to discontinue operation.

In October 2016, then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell urged the removal of the four lower-river dams operated by PacifiCorp, which are used to produce electricity. Citing dozens of scientific studies, she said the removal would reopen hundreds of miles of spawning area for salmon and quickly restore the water’s quality.

“While these dams brought prosperity to many, their construction came at a steep cost to tribes and fishing communities,” Ms. Jewell wrote in the official recommendation.

In a statement, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said it did not have a timeline for deciding on the dam removal project.

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Raymond Nelson, a Yurok tribal member,  pulls in a traditional gillnet from the Klamath River.Credit...Alexandra Hootnick for The New York Times

As they wait anxiously for the dam removal to be approved, tribal leaders are also looking for inclusive ways to bring drug treatment to the region, where abuse is often stigmatized. One solution proposed by Ms. Abinanti and others are Yurok “wellness villages,” planned living sites along the river where the tribe can help reintegrate people who have struggled with addiction. Those programs would be fundamentally centered on the tribe’s traditional practices. They are in the process of looking for funding.

Peggy O’Neill, the planning director for the Yurok tribe, said the sizable homeless population in the town of Eureka, Calif., includes many Native Americans who have been turned away from their families. In Humboldt County, a government homeless count in 2015 found that nearly one in five transient people were Native American, a disproportionate number.

“You didn’t used to see homeless Indians. Someone would take you. That’s not happening anymore because people can’t deal with it,” Ms. O’Neill said. “It’s really, really hard to deal with a family member that is addicted to drugs.”

Now, she said, throughout the reservation, many grandparents are raising their grandchildren. In remote towns upstream, she said, many rural homeless are sleeping in cars or outside.

“You feel like it’s a war zone,” she said. “People are trying to kick doors in, break into your car, they’re just desperate. And how many times can you steal from someone who doesn’t have anything?”

Ms. Cordalis, the general counsel to the Yurok tribe, has been using the law to protect the Yurok way of life for its roughly 6,000 members. In March, the Yurok joined other communities nationally and filed a lawsuit against several opioid companies with the Northern California Federal District Court. The suit claims that opioid addiction has increased crime, led to economic losses and increased hospital and administrative costs.

In May, the tribal council passed an emergency declaration and vowed to create a plan to address the sharp rise in opioid abuse on the reservation.

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The Yurok tribal building in northern California.Credit...Alexandra Hootnick for The New York Times

While the tribe figures out how to fund the wellness villages, there are few other treatment options. There is also some skepticism among tribe members about medication-assisted treatment options, like methadone and buprenorphine, which are the gold standard in treating opioid-abuse disorder, according to Dr. Katie Cassle, a family medicine physician with the United Indian Health Service.

“There’s still some conflicting feeling about Suboxone as a treatment, because it’s not an abstinence-based treatment per se,” said Dr. Cassle. Nonetheless, she started a buprenorphine program last year and now has eight patients.

For many, the idea of culturally relevant addiction treatment brings hope. Codie Donahue, 38, lost his children and wound up homeless after he and his girlfriend became addicted to methamphetamine and heroin. Mr. Donahue, who has Yurok and Karuk lineage, recently checked into a drug rehab program in Eureka, a few hours from his hometown, Orleans, Calif.

He recalled the holy ceremony he once performed as a high priest for the Karuk Indians. In the ritual, he and others would pray in hopes that the river would wash away the sins of his tribe.

“Each morning, you go up to the altar in the mountains, and at the end of the ceremony, we go down to the river and it washes all the bad down to the deepest parts of the ocean,” Mr. Donahue said. “And it’s a new day, a new time. You’re forgiven, and then you do better.”

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Fishermen head toward the mouth of the Klamath River.Credit...Alexandra Hootnick for The New York Times
A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Along an Ailing California River, Tribes Try to Beat Heroin and History. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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