The Klamath River Basin is the most biologically diverse temperate mountain region on the planet. Through it flows one of the four great rivers of the American West. Like the Columbia, Sacramento and Colorado, the Klamath waters a vast region. Yet the river, which flows to the Pacific from Klamath Lake in Oregon through northwestern California, was little known nationally until 2001. That winter’s drought led the Bureau of Reclamation to cut off water to farmers in the Upper Basin in order to protect endangered species of sucker and salmon. A protest erupted, targeting the Endangered Species Act while pitting irrigators against fisherman and the tribes of the Klamath Basin.

This water war is the latest episode in a history of conflict over natural resources along the Klamath. RIVER OF RENEWAL: A NATIVE JOURNEY tells that story. This hour-long television documentary puts the issues of the day into the context of biogeography, culture, and history. The indigenous peoples of the Klamath and its tributaries—the Yurok, Hupa, and Karuk—were among the last in North America to encounter non-Indians. Today, the three tribes’ economic life and ceremonial traditions still revolve around the salmon runs. In contrast, the Klamath Tribes, who live upriver in the Klamath Lake region, lost access to salmon with the construction of Iron Gate Dam in 1962.

At a time when the water war puts political pressure on the Endangered Species Act and when the licensing of Iron Gate Dam, which walls off 75 miles of river from spawning salmon, is due for federal review, the fate of the Klamath River Basin is at stake. Is the Klamath a resource whose wealth—trees, fish, water and energy—should be extracted for present-day use regardless of future consequences? Can civilization continue to use the river without destroying its natural and cultural legacy?

RIVER OF RENEWAL: A NATIVE JOURNEY contributes to that debate by presenting the different viewpoints, offering an in-depth portrait of the indigenous people who have known the life of the river for thousands of years. The science they subsidize has played a key role in alerting the nation that wild species of fish are at risk of extinction. Their water and fishing rights may hold the key to the species’ survival and to the future of one of the last major rivers in the US still capable of restoration to a natural state.