Newsom backs tribal land return amid dam removal project
More than a century has passed since members of the Shasta Indian Nation saw the last piece of their ancestral home — a landscape along the Klamath River where villages once stood — flooded by a massive hydroelectric project. Now more than 2,800 acres of land that encompassed the settlement, known as Kikacéki, will be returned to the tribe. The reclamation is part of the largest river restoration effort in U.S. history, the removal of four dams and reservoirs that had cut off the tribe from the spiritual center of their world. … With the decommissioning of the dams and draining of the reservoirs, miles of river valley are visible once more, and the return of free-flowing water has fueled hopes of reviving the salmon runs that had sustained the valley’s tribes since time immemorial.
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