DESECRATION OF SAWALMEM

We are born from water, water is sacred but this colonial capitalistic society has completely desecrated our sawalmem.

We’ve made our way from Red Bluff down to Chico following the flow of the great Sacramento River and everywhere we look we see the desecration. Trash in the river, illegal and unregulated drains from agriculture that dump their run off into the river, the slide on the rocks that builds up because our salmon aren’t there to clean the rocks, the drastically low levels of water that gets pulled to unsustainably water the walnut tree orchards, increased temperature that creates prime conditions for algae to grow. We encounter dozens of civilians along our path and wonder, do they know how NOT normal this is? Do they know of the theft of the water? Of the loss of our wildlife and salmon? Do they know if things continue this way their children won’t have a future?

We wonder and we do our best to keep singing our songs downstream letting the waters know that we know and are here standing in the best way we can and we think the eagles and hawks know what we are up to because they’ve been accompanying us every day that we’ve been on the water. So we let those good things lift our spirits up and continue listening to the Creator as we follow the salmon downstream.

#waterislife #salmonwillrun #nodamraise #run4salmon