news story / By Japhet Weeks

Stick game — Is the Klamath River headed for disaster, again?

(July 19, 2007)  The water in the Klamath is just right for swimming. That is, unless you’re a salmon, in which case it may be the perfect temperature for another fish kill.

At least that’s what Keith Parker of the Yurok Tribe is saying. Parker sent out an e-mail alert last week in which he reported that the water temperature a few miles up from the mouth of the river was 76.2 degrees Fahrenheit at midnight on July 9. He wrote in bold letters: “WE ARE HEADED FOR DISASTER AGAIN … IF SOMETHING ISN’T DONE IMMEDIATELY.”

Photo by Yulia Weeks

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However, the scene last Sunday in the town of Requa at the Klamath estuary was far from apocalyptic. Motorboats and rowboats dotted the river’s surface. A Yurok father and his daughter drifted listlessly in a rowboat beside a net in the water, waiting for their catch to come to them. Where the Klamath and the Pacific Ocean crash stubbornly into one another, a large rock the Yurok call Oregos, which watches over the confluence of fresh and salt water, stood like a sentinel, while across from it two fishermen cast their drift nets out into the brackish surf.

Arnie Nova, the lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe, said he hadn’t heard about the temperature going up. But, he said, there was a weekend-long Brush Dance that was still going on, on the south side of the estuary.

The Brush Dance had been organized to heal a sick child. Last year, the Yurok held a Brush Dance to heal the Klamath River. Jim McQuillen, education director for the Yurok tribe, said that even though this weekend’s dance wasn’t specifically for the river, he still “heard a lot of prayers for the water” on Saturday night.

That’s because the river is always on the tribe’s minds, mostly because of the salmon, which Yurok elder Walt Lara describes as “a tie between us and the Creator in the past.”

Nova’s promise of a Brush Dance didn’t exactly come through. Those who hadn’t already packed up and left were cleaning up trash or munching on leftover elk meat. In one corner of the camp, members of two tribes — the Yurok and Hoopa Valley — played Indian cards, a game which looks like a combination of pick-up sticks and poker. The challenge is for one player to guess in which hand his opponent is holding a particular stick, one marked with a black ring. The game is played for money, which is spread out in large and small denominations on the ground between the players, each bill weighted down under a small stone.

The players sing songs as they play, and the audience cajoles or encourages from the sides. Youngsters rub the players’ backs to give them good luck. There is no strategy involved; the game, it turns out, is left entirely to lady luck.

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