Powerful Coonrod Ceremony, Progress on McCloud Salmon Return
Sunrise Ceremony at the Meadow with Mt. Shasta in view.
This year’s Coonrod Ceremony, held at our sacred meadow near Mt. Shasta, was one of the most powerful and largest ceremonies in years, said Winnemem Wintu Spiritual Leader and Traditional Chief Caleen Sisk-Franco.
The Winnemem performed our salmon dance (Nur Chonas) for the second time since returning last year from New Zealand where our McCloud salmon are currently thriving. Contingents from the Aztec, Hupa and Pomo Tribes also danced and sang at our ceremony to help us restore the balance between fire and water and pray for the return of our salmon.
“It was a wonderful ceremony. There was so much goodness and happiness, and that made it very powerful,” Caleen said. “We enjoyed all of our friends who attended, new and old, and we enjoyed every minute with their good hearts and good prayers.”
It was also a ceremony with many special guests. Members of our Maori family – John and Gloria Wilkie and Pauline Reid of the Waitaha Māmoe Fisher People – traveled across the Pacific to be with us for ceremony and support our efforts to bring the McCloud salmon home from the Rakaia River in New Zealand. Along with them came Dirk Barr, New Zealand Fish and Game’s manager of the salmon hatcheries, who said the people of New Zealand want to return the salmon to the Winnemem, the salmon’s original people.
Aztec Dancers joined us in dancing to restore fire and water and fight climate change.
Indigenous leader and writer Winona LaDuke also attended and charmed us by telling the tale of how she helped return her Tribe’s sturgeon to the lakes back home in the Midwest, a success story we hope to replicate with our quest to return our salmon to the McCloud River (Winnemem Waywakit). Representatives from the Hawaiian embassy also traveled to our ceremony, and pledged to support our salmon project.
On Friday, the Winnemem and many of our supporters took the place of our missing sacred fish during the spiritual salmon trek at the McCloud Falls. At the lower falls, we jumped off 15 to 20-foot cliffs into a churning pool. At the Middle Falls, an impressive sight at 50-feet tall and 100-feet wide, our salmon people swam under the waterfall, just like salmon who are about to start leaping up the falls. Then at the Upper falls, everyone had to brave the cold, glacial water and grab a rock from the bottom
Because of the Shasta Dam, the salmon haven’t been able to spawn in the McCloud River since World War II. So it’s our job as salmon people to swim the river for them.
Successful Salmon Meetings with NOAA
During Coonrod, the Winnemem, the Maori and other supporters held an initial meeting with Brian Ellrott and Gary Sprague from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the federal agency in charge of restoring wild salmon to California’s Central Valley.
The Winnemem, our Maori allies, and Winona LaDuke meet about McCloud salmon with Brian Ellrott and Gary Sprague from NOAA
NOAA, they said, is interested in working with the Winnemem and looking at our plan to use natural creeks to move salmon around the Shasta Dam.
Ellrott said NOAA believes that for wild salmon to survive climate change, they will need to have passage around big dams like Shasta, so they can return to the chilly waters of mountain rivers like the McCloud and Upper Sacramento.
NOAA is investigating using trap-and-haul methods to get salmon around the dam, but he said the Winnemem’s plan could provide a more cost-effective method. But both he and Sprague said they would need to learn more about the Winnemem’s plan.
“Right now, there is not a lot of support for wild salmon restoration,” Ellrott said. “We’re going to need all the allies we can get.”
According to the Winnemem’s plan, the salmon would travel around the dam using Little Cow Creek and Dry Creek. A channel, about a quarter mile in length, would have to be constructed to connect Dry Creek to the reservoir, Sisk-Franco said. From there, the salmon would have to swim through Shasta Lake, the dam’s reservoir, to get to the McCloud River waters.
The tribe and NOAA scientists went on discuss hypothetical ways to guide the spawning salmon and salmon smolts through the reservoir. They also discussed potential obstacles such as a PG&E hydroelectric project that currently diverts water from the McCloud, making the flows too low and the water too warm for spawning salmon.
The NOAA officials and Winnemem expressed a mutual desire to work together on these issues.
“We want to work with you as brothers,” Winnemem Tribal Member Mark Miyoshi told Ellrott and Sprague. “We want to work together to save life, to be with life, to bring salmon back. That’s what we want.”
A week later, the Winnemem and our New Zealand supporters traveled to Sacramento and met with more NOAA staff, including the Endangered Species Act Specialist, a staff attorney and the Sacramento River basin manager.
The NOAA officials again expressed a great desire to collaborate, but also said they needed more information about the origins of the salmon in the Rakaia River, which we will work on providing. We are confident NOAA will eventually be satisfied with our evidence that the Rakaia salmon are descended from McCloud River salmon.
They also explained some of the regulatory framework they have to work through, especially the Endangered Species Act, and how we will need to work together to make sure the Winnemem’s salmon restoration plan also produces the goals that they’re mandated to accomplish.
While there are some issues to work through, we are greatly encouraged by these initial meetings, and NOAA and the Winnemem have begun working on a Memorandum of Agreement to outline the nature of our partnership.
NOAA officials have already made plans to visit our village and take a tour of the creeks in late September.
The time has come for our salmon return, and we believe we made some important steps this past week.
For more information about the plan to return the salmon, view our McCloud Salmon Return fact sheet.