Kevin Donovan

There are also some good books focused on the Klamath watershed and its inhabitants, including Stephen Most’s River of Renewal and Kari Marie Norgaard’s Salmon & Acorns Feed Our People rutgersuniversitypress.org/salmon-and-aco… osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/river-of-…

See also the documentary work of Swiftwater Films: @swiftwaterfilms5529" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@swiftwaterfil…

The Klamath saga has been subject of excellent journalism, including from @highcountrynews, @OPB , @ahofschneider of @grist, and @MongabayOrg. I'll include some links below.

As the Trump regime works to eliminate such programs, the Klamath has important political lessons, some of which I tease out in the essay for @BostonReview bostonreview.net/articles/what-…

When I visited, I was surprised at how much heavy machinery goes into restoring ‘nature’—bulldozers, excavators, dump trucks, and quite a bit of dynamite were needed. But so did a lot of scientific and indigenous knowledge, carefully selected seeds, and legal manoeuvring.

A 2020 agreement — between states, power companies, tribes, and others — paved the way for an incredible project of deconstructing four dams. This has been a highly contentious project but also a remarkable project of engineering and re-wilding.

I wrote about the political ecology of dams, using valuable new books by @RobGMacfarlane, James C. Scott, and @Yuvan_aves to discuss a remarkable transformation on the Klamath River where four large dams have been removed to restore the watershed. 🧵 bostonreview.net/articles/what-…

Salmon are a keystone species, essential to ecological flourishing, but they’re also at the core of indigenous identity—diets, ceremonial life, and leisure. When dams inhibit nutrient flows, raise water temperature, and block upstream salmon habitats, it is about sovereignty.

Native Americans (from @yuroktribe and others) have fought for decades to restore the Klamath River which runs from Oregon through California to the Pacific. Central to this are salmon which used to be bountiful and are now threatened with extinction.

Dams, in other words, are sacrifice zones. In the American west, they were central to colonisation; in postcolonial states, they were what Nehru called “temples of modernity.” Countries from China to Ethiopia to Brazil have, in recent years, seen them as ‘clean’ energy.

In the 20th C, humans built a large dam a day. Some are controversial; some are charismatic mega-infrastructure. Many are relatively small. But a dam is always a partisan act. What dams offer in electricity, irrigation, flood control comes with displacement & ecological costs.

terrific looking collection: Anthropology and Tax: Ethnographies of Fiscal Relations