Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition Issue 3622 Oct. 13-27, 2017 | Page 18
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Oct. 13 - 27, 2017
MAP FEATURE
Anglers fishing for salmon on the public dock in Walnut Grove.
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VOL.36 • ISS. 22
Photo by DAN BACHER, Fish Sniffer Staff.
Winnemem Wintu Tribe Run For Salmon
Boats From Pittsburg to Sacramento
ames Netzel of Tight Lines Guide
Service and Robert Reimers
of Rustic Rob’s Guide Service
recently donated their services to
take leaders of the Winnemem Wintu
Tribe and their allies in their boats
from Sacramento to Colusa on the
Run4Salmon.
Netzel drove the Pittsburg to
Sacramento stretch of the river in
his boat on September 12, while
Reimers boated the section from
Sacramento to Colusa section on
September 15. Last year was the first
year of the Run4Salmon, when re-
tired captain James Cox drove tribal
leaders on the Pittsburg to Sacramen-
to stretch and retired captain Rene
Villanueva covered the Discovery
Park to Colusa stretch.
The Run4Salmon is a “partici-
patory, prayerful journey” that took
place this year from September 9
to 22 to ‘raise awareness and build
public support
to help protect and restore declining
salmon populations, California river
systems and indigenous lifeways.”
The run was preceded by a press
conference featuring Ohlone leader
Corrina Gould of the Confederated
Villages of Lisjan and Chief Caleen
Sisk of the Winnemem Wintu at the
West Berkeley Shellmound site in
Berkeley on Friday, September 8. The
two highly respected women leaders
announced their mutual alliance to
protect California’s indigenous sacred
sites and the state’s endangered salm-
on runs from development.
Different sections of the run fea-
tured running, walking, boating and
bicycling and ended with a paddle in
dugout canoes up Shasta Lake and
the McCloud River arm, as well as a
horseback ride to a village site where
the tribe conducted a ceremony.
The run for salmon traces the
route of winter
run Chinook
salmon from
the estuary at
Vallejo all
of the way
to the Mc-
Cloud River
where it
enters
The Delta Cross Channel Gates suck water – and salmon and other fish – from the Sacramento
River to the Mokelumne and San Joaquin rivers – and then down to the state and federal
pumping facilities in the South Delta.
Photo by DAN BACHER, Fish Sniffer Staff.
Lake Shasta. The tribe is trying
to reintroduce the original run of
McCloud winter run Chinooks.
now thriving on the Rakaira River
in New Zealand, where they were
introduced over a hundred of year’s
ago, back to their ancestral home on
the McCloud. The tribe has set up a
Go Fund Me site to raise money to
conduct DNA Testing of the Rakaira
River salmon
Native California peoples re-
lied on salmon for their sustenance,
culture, religion and livelihoods for
thousands of years. Today the salm-
on, including the winter run, a are
threatened with of extinction due to
extreme water diversions, dams, pol-
lution, climate change and Governor
Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and Captain James
Netzel of Tight Lines Guide Service on the
journey between Pittsburg and Sacramento.
Photo by DAN BACHER, Fish Sniffer Staff.
Jerry Brown’s proposed Delta Tun-
nels, a project that environmentalists
and tribal leaders say would nearly
guarantee the destruction of Califor-
nia’s salmon runs. The fight to save
the salmon and preserve sacred sites
brought these two leaders together.
“The salmon that came up our
rivers and took care of my ancestors
are the same salmon that spawn in
Chief Sisk’s river and took care of her
ancestors,’ said Gould.
“Our tribe has an ancient proph-
ecy,” said Chief Sisk. ‘When there
are no more salmon, there will be no
more Winnemem Wintu people.”-
For this reason, we believe that we
must do everything we can to bring
back our salmon. This is our Dakota
Access Pipeline: we have to wake the
people up before we are standing in
front of bulldozers, and we will.”
“We can’t restore the salmon with-
out the help of hundreds of thousands