Anna Levesque: My guest today, Amy Bowers Cordalis, is a mother, fisherwoman, attorney, and member and former general counsel of the Yurok Nation, the largest Indigenous nation in California. She is currently the executive director of the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, a nonprofit advancing Indigenous sovereignty through the protection of cultural and natural resources, including the undamming of the Klamath River.

She is the recipient of the UN’s highest environmental honor, Champions of the Earth Laureate, and was named to the second annual TIME100 Climate list in 2024, featuring the 100 most influential leaders driving business toward real climate action. She is the author of The Water Remembers, published in 2025, which is an outstanding book that I have listened to twice, and the second time was just as moving and inspirational as the first time. So I’m so excited to have you here, Amy. Thank you so much for being here.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: [Yurok greeting, spelling to verify], thank you for that introduction and for having me. It’s a real pleasure to be here.

Anna Levesque: I start with the same question and I’m going to put it to you. When I say discomfort zone, what comes up for you, or what does that mean to you?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: It means doing something that you’re not used to, or that you feel afraid to do. My first reaction was, what is the discomfort zone? And I thought, anytime I’m off the Yurok reservation. So it felt like a geographical place rather than an internal space. Maybe that’s part of the definition for me. But then the other part is more of a mental, internal, soulful place where you are pushing your own boundaries and doing something that you were afraid of, or thought you couldn’t do.

Anna Levesque: What is uncomfortable about being off the Yurok reservation?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Let me start with what’s comfortable about the Yurok reservation. I’m from the village of Rek’woy at the mouth of the Klamath River on the north side of the river, and that’s where my family’s been for generations. We’ve never left. The creation story basically places my family there. It’s a place that we have always been, and we have deep ties and relationship with the land, the water, the spirits, the sacred sites, the creatures, including the salmon, but also the salmonberries, the hazelnuts, the redwood tree that grows by the old house. There’s a way of being there, and there’s a way that the world works there that is more centered on things like the tides, or migration, or what is in the river in that particular month and what food we are gathering at that particular time.

Because of that, and also because it’s a place where other Indigenous people of the Klamath, other Yurok families, understand those things and are also living in that way, when we’re there we’re all united in that way of thinking and that way of being. There’s an understanding of how you do business. There are cultural understandings of how we treat each other and how we treat the land and the waters and the species and creatures.

The word privilege comes to mind, to be able to have a place where there is that deep connection and relationship, and also a very different worldview than you see in other parts of the world. So to get to your question of what’s out of your comfort zone when you’re off the Yurok reservation: it’s not in all places, but in many places there’s a very different worldview. There’s a very different set of understandings about how people interact with the environment. Extraction and harm are allowed and tolerated in ways that we would never allow if we had the choice.

Going out of that cultural understanding, out of that place, sometimes does feel uncomfortable. A lot of times it’s a little offensive. Not to laugh at that, but it’s a little offensive, because we would never treat things that way.

I should be upfront too. I don’t live on the Yurok reservation right now. So you figure out how you exist and navigate, and I have other levels of comfort with where I am now, being in places like DC or big cities. Just like the climate, we adapt. Just like other species, we adapt and evolve.

Anna Levesque: There are some of us who don’t live on the Yurok reservation, white people, who are also offended by what’s going on, me being one of them. Thank you for painting that picture of your worldview and the Yurok worldview. I so appreciated that about your book.

When you talk about doing something that you’re scared to do as part of your discomfort zone: reading the book, your family for six generations has been put in a discomfort zone, and has also chosen it. Chosen to stand for, to fight for, their livelihood, their salmon, their fishing rights, over six generations. There’s so much of that in your family’s history and in your history. You talk about it a little in the book, but here in this conversation, what has had your family have that courage over six generations?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: That is a big question. I think it starts with understanding the Yurok worldview about our place in the world and our responsibility as humans. I started my book, The Water Remembers, with the creation story, because it really lays out the Yurok worldview of how the world was formed, how these spirits came down from the universe and occupied things like rocks and the river and even the salmon and the humans, so everything on earth is alive. That’s how we look at it.

What we were told by the creator, and I share this in the book, is that all of this was made for us. And if we lived in balance with the natural world, we would never want for anything. That’s the language that was passed down. We would never want for anything. So we developed Aboriginal law, fishing practices, hunting practices, gathering practices, even religious practices through world renewal ceremonies, that sought to give thanks for the balance and to replenish and restore the balance on an annual basis.

We, the humans, see that as our responsibility. We get this great privilege of being the beneficiaries of the natural abundance of the Klamath and having what we need. But with that comes the responsibility to protect and restore and make sure that the way we’re living on earth is in balance, and not harming all other creation on earth.

Because of that core understanding of who we are in the world, when that balance was threatened by the newcomers and by colonization of the Klamath Basin through the development of dams, the reclamation project, logging, mining, overfishing, you name it, our duties and responsibilities as Yurok people to work to protect what gives us life, to protect and restore and speak for it, were triggered. So we had no choice. No choice at all, other than to keep fighting.

There was also a very existential threat to us. Our way of life revolves around salmon fishing and the health of the Klamath River. If the Klamath fish die, if the salmon die, so would we. Because what would our purpose be? There’s actually a Yurok myth that speaks to that. So our fight, and that work over all those generations, it was to survive, but it was also an expression of fulfilling those duties to the creator.

Anna Levesque: Beautiful. Thank you. I definitely had many different emotions through the book. Anger, sadness, frustration, for you, for your family, for the river, for the salmon. I appreciate you sharing all of that and the story, and also the victory, which I want to get to. Because victory is a big part of this. I’m so grateful that the Klamath is undammed.

Staying with the discomfort zone, was it uncomfortable to put that story in writing, to put it out to the world?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: That is a great question. Parts of it, yes, but most of it was such a privilege to write and to put together from an Indigenous perspective. I just felt so driven that this had to happen, that it had to exist.

What I will say is that I was way out of my discomfort zone writing in that way. I’m a lawyer. I’ve written a lot on Yurok legal rights. But I wanted to write the book in a way that drew people in and made them feel like they were going through these events with the family, and also in a way that was enjoyable.

Along with that heartbreak and sadness, I tried to also put humor in there, because that’s present in my family’s way of being. Through the hardest of times, humor helps. It just helps. I think hope is funny. If you look at hope as a thing, it is a funny thing, because it has to be funny. To laugh or to do something silly brings people joy, which then keeps them doing things.

I wanted to write in a very different way than I was used to, and that process was a bit uncomfortable, because I wrote a lot, and I wrote a lot of versions of the book, to finally hone in on my voice and really find my voice.

So yes and no, in the sense that it also was guttural. I had to write this. I was very driven because it had to happen. But it was also uncomfortable because it wasn’t a type of writing that I was used to.

Anna Levesque: I thought it was super well written. I actually listened to the book and I loved your narration. You did bring forth the humor, the joy, as well as the hardships. I also loved being able to hear your great-grandmother Geneva and grandmother Lavina’s voices. And your singing. That was very special and sweet. I really appreciate you adding those pieces to it. It’s very powerful.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Thank you. I’m glad it resonated with you. I really wanted the world to hear my grandmother’s and my great-grandmother’s voices, because they’re so sweet and powerful. In the audiobook, the recording of my grandma was when my great-grandma was, I think, in her late eighties, and so she has this old lady grandma voice. Yet the story, and what she did in the story, is so powerful. I wanted all of that to be real to people, and hearing her voice, I hope, just added another layer of, this is a real human.

Anna Levesque: It was beautiful. And talk about doing things that you’re scared of and having that determination. The story of your grandmother and great-grandmother in the fishing boat, standing up to the federal marshals. That story is unbelievable. I love that story so much.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: It is, right? Should we do a spoiler alert? Should I tell your listeners what that story is?

Anna Levesque: Sure. I listened to it twice and still found it amazing, so I think it’s okay.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Even writing that, I was thinking, how do I give this moment its due power with words? Especially with the English language. There aren’t the right phrases or words in the English language. So I did my best.

Essentially what had happened is that the family had won this Supreme Court case in 1973 that affirmed that the Yurok Reservation was still Indian country. So we had fishing rights, we had hunting rights, gathering rights, we could exercise sovereignty over the reservation. And then the governor of California called up the Secretary of the Interior and said, you’ve got to regulate Indian fishing or we will. So the federal government’s response was to issue a moratorium prohibiting all Yurok fishing on the Yurok reservation on the lower Klamath River.

This was like making breathing illegal for us. We’re fishing people. We’ve never been relocated. We’ve always fished and survived off these salmon runs. So to say to Yurok people, you can’t fish, is literally like saying, you can’t breathe anymore. We responded to that threat as if it was a threat against our lives. We took to the waters and did what we call fish protests, where you went in and set a gill net, which was prohibited. Then the federal government would come out in these really big jet boats with full riot gear and machine guns and try to take away the net. The feds sent a full team of marshals, we call them the goon squad, to enforce this moratorium, and they occupied the reservation for a whole summer.

Grandma and great-grandma, who were in their fifties and seventies respectively at that time, said they were going to go down and protest, because it wasn’t right. As a matter of respecting and honoring the rights that had been handed down to us from the creator, our role, we had to keep fishing. So they went down there and set their net, and sure enough, the feds come, and there’s a big tug-of-war between my grandma and one of the federal marshals. And there were some funny events that happened there too, weren’t there?

Anna Levesque: Yeah. Like the granny panties.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: They had a trick up their sleeve. The way gill nets work is that you have a rope, and then you have corks tied to the top of the rope, which makes it float on the water, and then there’s the gill net underneath it. Well, they had cut off the gill net and instead had tied big bloomers, granny panties, to the net. They knew that when the feds picked it up, eventually they would see these big granny panties and be really embarrassed.

And that’s what happened. But it also made the feds really, really mad, because everybody on the shore started laughing. I think it hurt their egos, frankly. So everything got a little more violent and aggressive. And my great-grandmother stood up in the back of this little teeny rowboat that they were in and started praying through singing a Yurok song. She just sang over and over and over again, and soon birds of all kinds came from all directions and started swarming over their heads, in between the federal boat and my grandma and great-grandmother’s boat. They were squawking and diving, and it was all kinds of birds. Pelicans, seagulls, hawks, ospreys, little wrens, blackbirds, crows. All kinds of birds just came, and it completely freaked out the federal government and the marshals. So they dropped the net and drove off, and they never came back.

Through the process of writing and researching, I really felt like Yurok way and my grandmother’s belief in prayer had ended the federal occupation, not the Supreme Court case. It’s just a very powerful force. It’s a force, that Yurok way and the power of the prayer and belief in that. It really did save them in that moment.

Anna Levesque: Amazing. In the book you talk about the medicine woman Fanny, and how she said that you must believe, that the most important thing is to believe in your own medicine. I really love that. The story you just told, and your work to undam the Klamath. To take down, was it three or four dams on the Klamath?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Four. It was four dams.

Anna Levesque: Four. And believing in your own medicine. Coming back to the discomfort zone, does it always come to you to believe in your own medicine, or is that something you have doubts about sometimes?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: It’s a daily practice. It’s a daily practice. The way that I have always connected with that and reaffirmed it was through really connecting with my ancestors, and having that daily practice of praying to them, and also always asking the creator for the right words, or the strength, to empower me to do whatever the task was at hand.

One thing we learn about in Yurok is to notice the signs that the creator will send. Birds carry a lot of meaning. Oftentimes if you see a certain kind of bird, it could be interpreted as, okay, lean in here, or pull back, or, you’re going in the right direction. Having those relationships and understandings really empowers your own personal medicine.

The thing too, and I think we see this in the world, is that there are a lot of things to believe in. Of course you could be an atheist, or not believe, and a pessimist. There are all these choices that we make, and whatever energy we decide to believe in, we feed, and then it becomes a bigger presence in our life.

I’ve always felt lucky to be a part of this culture that firmly believes in the creator helping to guide our lives, giving us a purpose, and also giving us little signs of, hey, you’re doing a good job. I know many other cultures have similar practices. They may use different words or have different names, but the origin of the intent is similar.

Anna Levesque: Thank you for sharing that. Sometimes I’d start to censor myself because I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing. It’s something I have to observe in myself. What came to mind for me is that if we go back far enough into our old roots, all of us, at some point, I believe we were all part of some type of culture like that. Some of us are much more separated from that, unfortunately, than others.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: My dad, who’s a Yurok tribal court judge, a cultural practitioner and leader, and a fisherman, says that exact same thing. That we all came from a village at one point, and we all had those ties to place. We all had that communal way of living.

One thing that I observed through Klamath dam removal is that we worked really closely for decades with allies. People who were federal scientists of all backgrounds and races and cultures, or who were administrative people, or finance people, or government leaders. But every single one of them was motivated by the idea that the Klamath could heal, that we could have a healthy Klamath and healthy salmon runs.

What I pulled from that is that every single one of us, in our DNA or in our blood, has this ancestral knowledge about what it was like to live on a healthy planet. And whether we know it or not, we are trying to get back to that. I think through the Klamath, we were able to get deep enough to the source, through all that effort and time together, that we discovered it.

Anna Levesque: Love that. And I hope that happens more and more often. That was actually a question I had for you, because it really struck me when you were having to work with FERC and Berkshire Hathaway executives, entities that had chosen to ignore Indigenous lands, rights, and sovereignty in the past. You worked with them to undam the Klamath.

It’s interesting, because today, in a bit of cancel culture, sometimes people say, they did this, they’re bad, don’t talk to them, ostracize them. It must have been uncomfortable and frustrating at times to have to set big emotions aside to work with them, and it created an amazing result.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: I think it’s a model of what we can do when we all work together and use our collective resources to try to improve something.

Before we go too far, though, I did want to go back to the discomfort zone and talk about what I think was the biggest moment of deciding to go out of my comfort zone, and how that led me to where I am now. I write about it in the book. In 2002, there was the largest fish kill in American history. I had a very profound moment where I was in a tribal fisheries boat observing all these dead fish. I really felt like my great-grandmother moved through me and told me, it’s your turn to fight now. And then my next thought was, I’m going to go to law school and try to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again. That’s what I ended up doing.

But that was a profoundly out-of-my-comfort-zone kind of moment, and a time when I really relied on my ancestors to help guide me through it. Going to law school and deciding to become a lawyer: I didn’t know any lawyers. I didn’t know what they did. Kind of naively, I thought they were all rich and famous. I wasn’t a particularly good student. I didn’t have great grades or anything. So it was a real fight to even get into law school.

But then I did fine. I worked really hard in law school. I was reflecting on how going to law school was a very different culture for me. It was a different economic bracket of people that I was exposed to. It was different ideas and ways of looking at things. And it was very scary. I was constantly thinking I was going to fail and not pass whatever test it was. The bar exam was this thing that I thought, I’ll never pass, and I’ll put all this effort and time in and then I won’t be able to become a lawyer because I’ll fail. It’s the parade of horribles that you think.

But I did it. I got through all those different hurdles, and the knowledge that I gained, and the experiences, and the networks that I was able to build, it was the foundation for all of the work that I was able to then do for my community and for the river and the salmon. It really enabled me to play what I hope is a meaningful role in Klamath dam removal.

I was thinking about your podcast and how well you put these stories into light, and I really wanted to share that. That was a moment, but it really paid off. In those moments, you have to believe in yourself, but also tap into those energies that we were talking about. To know that it’s bigger than yourself. There’s something deeper that is propelling you through these things, and to know that that force is with you the whole time.

Anna Levesque: Thanks for sharing that. That is a very powerful part of your story. And thank goodness for your great-grandmother moving through you. And then you have to take action, because you can have those types of insights and then be too scared to take action. It takes courage to do that.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: It does. But I think that we are given a life force, and within that life force we have talents and abilities. You can pick a few different things, but we all have something very unique to offer the world. And the trick of bringing that up and helping it bloom is going into the discomfort zone. It literally is. That’s where you find it. Getting afraid and walking straight through the door of fear and being like, okay, what is here? Who am I? And then I think from that place is where we’re able to find something that’s really consistent with what you were put here to do.

I don’t think you were put here to do one single thing. But I do think there are some sweet spots of areas that you are uniquely put here to do.

Anna Levesque: Agree. It’s funny, because my father was a criminal judge. He’s still alive, but he’s retired. I always thought I would go to law school. But when I discovered kayaking, and a relationship with the river and the people, the community that surrounds rivers and kayaking and rafting, I was like, pivot. I’m not going to do that, I’m going to become a raft guide. And my dad for the longest time was like, when are you going to get a real job?

I had no idea I would be able to actually create a lifelong career and passion out of it. So you just never know, walking through those doors one at a time.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: How brave of you to have done that, and all the success that that led you to.

Anna Levesque: I’m very grateful. It led me to speaking with you today. It’s amazing.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: I think this is a really important message in an era where many people are very comfortable scrolling or Netflixing. We have all these creature comforts now, and it’s very easy to get really comfortable and be compliant. But if you want to have a more intense, meaningful existence, I think you make those choices that you made, of, yeah, that’s fine for you, but this is what’s for me. And honoring and respecting that own spirit that you have.

Anna Levesque: Agree. And then you got to blow up a dam on your birthday, which is super cool. I was cheering as I was listening to the book at that part. You want to tell us about that?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: I’d love to. Just imagine. I’m a Yurok girl and I’ve grown up fishing at the mouth of the river, and up at different spots on the Yurok reservation. It was kind of clear by the time I was a teenager that the water was polluted and that the salmon runs were changing and that they weren’t coming back in such big numbers as they had. When we would go out as a family to fish, in times when we would have caught many salmon, we hardly caught any salmon. So it was becoming clear that things were changing.

There was always talk about how one of these days we’re going to blow up a dam. We always knew that the dam was the enemy, and that they needed to go. And so here I am, now in my forties, and it’s my birthday, and I get to blow up a dam. It was a dream come true.

Anna Levesque: Childhood dream. Checked off the list.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Bucket list checked. It was such a profound moment, because I didn’t know it was going to happen. I had just planned to go to an explosion, because it was my birthday and I knew many of the people who were working. They said, come down, we’re going to be exploding Copco, you do want to see it. And it was like, of course I want to see it. They said, you can only bring you, for safety reasons. So it was just me. But I was like, this is so worth it.

So I go down to the site and they show me all the things, and it was remarkable. They had a little aluminum shed set up, and on the ground there was this red detonator, a little bit bigger than a normal can size. And then the detonator was connected to, I don’t know, maybe two thousand or so feet of rope that was connected to the actual dynamite that had been placed, tons of packets of dynamite.

So they look at me and they’re like, do you want to blow up a dam? And I was like, yes. Yes. So they gave me the instructions, and we had to fully count down. It was five, four, three, two, one. They told me I had to yell fire in the hole and then stomp as hard as I could. They were like, you cannot be soft about this. You have to stomp that detonator as hard as you can. And I was like, on it. I am on it.

So we get the countdown. I yell fire in the hole. And all I could think as we were counting down was, this is for my ancestors. For everybody who fought, who cried, who was beaten and abused and went through all the things. This is for them. And so with all that aggression and energy, I just stomped on that thing, and then it blew.

The dam. And we’re all kind of like, is it going to land on us? But it was the most satisfying, most rewarding. Even talking about it now, I can’t even believe that happened. It was such an honor, because I got to write about it right after it actually happened. It was such a powerful experience to have gone through it and then come back and capture that feeling and what that was like. That’s a real privilege. And then it turned out to be one of the bigger explosions of the whole thing. It was just a dream come true.

One of the reasons I like talking about this stuff is because I want people to know that your dreams can come true. Whatever your dam is, you can blow it up. This can happen. And yes, it starts by entering the discomfort zone. It’s sort of like what you say. It starts there, and then you just keep going.

Anna Levesque: That’s a great metaphor, actually. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Love it.

When I had your niece Keeya on the podcast, talking about their first descent of the undammed Klamath, she was talking about the importance of joy and being joyful. That was her way to resist, to experience joy. She talked about little things she would do on the river every day in her kayak, moves she would make. I loved that conversation with her. Amazing woman.

At the time of interviewing her, I hadn’t read your book yet. I hadn’t realized. And now, having read the book, I’m like, whoa. Truly, when she said, I experience being joyful because my family has been in this fight for so long. That was very cool. Folks who haven’t listened to that episode should also listen to it. It’s a great episode.

Coming back to the joy and passing it on to the next generation: you mention towards the end of the book that for the first time in six generations, your children do not have to make the choice to fight and resist so hard for fishing rights and dam removal. Which is very moving and awesome. Can you say more about what that means to you?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: It’s what we fight for. It’s freedom. Freedom is the ability to experience joy and to be able to exercise self-determination, that ability to make a choice.

It goes back to what we started the conversation with. Sure, my family could have made a different choice, but they had their duties and responsibilities to our homelands and the species we’re dependent upon, to protect them. So yes, there was a choice, but not really. And that has been our experience for 170 years.

And so now, here comes Keeya, and she gets to take the first descent. I got to join them at the first part and then at the last part, and so I witnessed the actual experience of freedom that they had. It was so profound. For me, it was like, this is what we’ve been fighting for. This is what everybody’s been fighting for. Literally, this experience is the answer to our ancestors’ prayers. This is what they prayed for, for these kids.

What was cool is that it was Indigenous peoples from all the different Indigenous nations on the Klamath. And every single one of their ancestors, I think I can safely say, prayed that their descendants would be able to enjoy the Klamath River. And sure, it’s not completely healthy. We still have a lot of work to do. But nonetheless, those kids were kayaking down the free-flowing Klamath. They just had fun with it. They were learning about the river, experiencing the river, the joys and the highs. They talk about how slow it was sometimes and how miserable that was. But they were just out there having fun.

It was so rewarding for me. I think it was so rewarding for them. It was a big turning point in my family’s history. I really wanted to write about that and elevate it to the world, for many reasons. One, that history of California and an Indigenous family really hasn’t been told, so I wanted that to be available to people. But then also, I wanted there to be a story about Indigenous peoples where the Indians win. We had this big victory. And it was after all these hard and sad and awful things. But we were able to have this monumental victory through the largest salmon restoration project in history. That’s what Klamath dam removal is.

So I was really happy to be able to write the book and share not just dam removal, but also the first descent and what that meant for the family. In some ways, I think it’s a really important story to the history of American democracy. We were marginalized, our rights were questioned, but we kept leaning into things like the Constitution and the laws, and eventually that did win the day. We got to this place where we were able to get the dams out, we were able to start exercising our rights again. Not that we ever stopped, but we get to fish. We’re fishing now.

It’s a story where there are so many ups and downs through the generations, and yet it’s still beautiful and powerful and important.

Anna Levesque: And a big victory, for sure. I hope they make a movie about it. I don’t know if you want them to, but I think it would be a great movie.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Yes, let’s do it. I think it would be too. Let’s get right on that. Who do we know? Let’s make some calls.

Anna Levesque: You’re setting the intention.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Then we’ll believe in the good medicine.

Anna Levesque: Amy, do you have a question for me before we get to rapid fire?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Tell me about your discomfort levels, or zone. I just love this idea about discomfort zones, and the success you’ve had. I’d also love to learn more about your relationship with rivers and how it all relates.

Anna Levesque: Running rivers in my kayak has taught me so much about my discomfort zone, about what’s possible for me, about getting out of old habit patterns of being scared or not thinking I can do it.

I’ve always loved water. I can still remember going rafting my first time. I took a job in the kitchen of a rafting company as a summer job. I can remember the power of it, the beauty. It made me nervous. Being scared, but really wanting to do this thing. I thought, why do I want to do this thing so much?

It’s taught me a lot about decision making, discernment, being present. Every time I put on the river, I say a prayer and connect with the river. There have been times when I’ve been surfing or running a rapid, a lot of times on my own, or I might be with a group but a little bit removed, where I’ve really seen and felt things of the river. Also birds, like you were saying. I’ve seen so much.

It would be easy to just go on easy stretches of water, but that’s not really what I’m drawn to. I’m drawn to the discomfort zone, and that is fascinating. I found that not only has it provided me with incredible experiences all over the world with incredible people, but sharing that with people, being a contribution to others. Kayaking rivers are a venue to face fear. A venue to show myself and other people what we’re capable of. Not by conquering the river, but by understanding it.

I remember when I first started kayaking, someone who had been around for a while told me that learning to read a river is a really unique and cool skill. You can look at the water and see a path, and see things differently. That always stuck with me. Reading water, being in relationship with the river. When I teach people kayaking, that’s part of how I teach them. We need to be in relationship with the river. What does that look like?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: That’s really beautiful. If we allow the river to be a teacher the way you described, it will teach you. The river is one of my strongest partners. Always has been, from when I was little.

I kind of think that’s all around us in a lot of ways. Whether you’re close to a river or not, you can always connect with water, even through tap water. Maybe that’s all you have.

I remember I jumped in the Klamath for the first time after the dams had been out and the sediment had passed, so it was safe to get in there. I just submerged myself in it, and it was like it told me, I’m different now. I’m fiercer, and I’m cleaner, and I’m faster, and I’m more alive. And that’s how the water is now.

The book title, The Water Remembers, is really an honor to all of those moments on the river where it’s taught me different things or shown me different things. But I really do believe that water carries memory. If we allow ourselves to connect with that, in the way that it sounds like you’ve done through your kayaking, it is such a strong partner and a source of strength for us.

Anna Levesque: Beautiful. It is. And that’s why, as you write in the book, personhood rights for rivers is right on.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Personhood rights, yeah. For your listeners, personhood rights is essentially where you declare the same legal rights for a river, or another kind of ecosystem, as humans have. What’s interesting is that under the US Constitution, corporations have what we call standing, so they have elevated rights, but most of nature doesn’t have that. So under Yurok law, we gave the Klamath River personhood rights, to increase its legal protection and basically give it standing. That’s consistent with our worldview that the river is alive and has a spirit and should be protected.

Anna Levesque: I know we’re getting up to time. Do you have time for rapid fire?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Let’s do rapid fire. I’m ready.

Anna Levesque: What is your favorite river metaphor?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: River metaphor? I don’t even know if I know.

Anna Levesque: Or metaphor for life.

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Roll like the river. We can go deeper if you want, or you could give me more guidance.

Anna Levesque: No, it’s good. We’ve been deeper. I love that. Roll like the river.

What’s a morning ritual that sets you up for success?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: I love to go out to my front yard barefoot and just stand on the grass and say a little morning prayer.

Anna Levesque: Amazing. What’s a non-negotiable self-care practice?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Water. That’s what came to mind. Water.

Anna Levesque: Water everywhere. What motivates you these days?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: My kiddos. I have three boys and they are fascinating, and I’m just excited to see what they do every day.

Anna Levesque: What do people get wrong about you?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: The thing that came to mind is that there was a time when I was general counsel for Yurok where a lot of people were afraid of me. Opposing counsel. They had no reason to be afraid. Yes, I was going to be fierce and stand up for the tribe, but I also like to work with people and find solutions. I’m very solution-based.

Anna Levesque: Both, and. Love that.

Throughout the course of your life, have you felt like the underdog, or the favored to win?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Underdog. A hundred percent. They never thought we were going to take those dams out.

Anna Levesque: Underdog that got to blow up a dam. That’s pretty sweet.

Okay, this is more of a paddling one, but I ask it of everyone. Hard moves in easy water, or [second option unclear in the recording]?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Hard moves in easy water.

Anna Levesque: What’s a word that describes your comfort zone?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Fish. Salmon.

Anna Levesque: Awesome. Freedom through discipline, or I do what I want?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Whoa, I love this. Okay. Freedom through discipline.

Anna Levesque: In one word, what do you hope your legacy will be?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: Love.

Anna Levesque: It’s on my wall back there. Love. I love it.

Amy, is there anything else you’d like to tell our listeners? Anything about Ridges to Riffles?

Amy Bowers Cordalis: I would love to talk about what’s happening on the river now. We continue to do a lot of water work. Fish need water, rivers need water, but so do people. So we are really active in trying to figure out, post-dam removal, what kind of river flows do we need in order to better support all aquatic life? And how do we get to that while also supporting a very large agricultural project at the top of the river?

We’re pretty active in those kinds of things. We do a lot of Endangered Species Act litigation, and making sure that Coho salmon, which are sadly listed under the Endangered Species Act, have what they need to at least prevent future harm to them.

There are still two dams at the very top of the river that do allow fish passage, but we’ve got to figure that out. And then we’re doing a bunch of restoration around the former dams, but also throughout the entire basin, really working with the different tribes and stakeholders to restore ecosystems, to get water where it needs to be, when it needs to be, to support fish in the river. And the lake. There’s a big lake at the top of the basin too.

Dam removal was key to having a future. And in many ways, it was just the beginning for what is to come. So we’re at Ridges to Riffles really active in doing that. We are a nonprofit and we take donations and grants to support our work. So, letting folks know that there’s still more work, and we’re still hard at it.

I’m really grateful to be here with you, and thank you for the wonderful conversation.

Anna Levesque: Thank you, Amy. I really appreciate you being here. And thank you for your book. Thank you for everything you and your family and all of your allies and other tribal members have done for the Klamath. Thank you for your work.