The Meaning and Impact of Indigenous Leadership on Water Quality and Enabling Indigenous Self-Determination

About the Work

This presentation will discuss the meaning and impact of Indigenous leadership on water quality with a focus on salmon and the Klamath Basin, and how and when dominant water governance policy can enable Indigenous self-determination. Using institutional analysis of treatment as a state (TAS) policy frameworks for tribal water quality standards as an example, the presentation will share learnings on the importance of establishing tribal authority over policy goals and standards, the value of co-governance institutions that can engage with multiple jurisdictions, and how tribal authority can be enacted at multiple levels of governance but not all levels support tribal governance authority. Tribes maintain a persistence and commitment to improving water quality in the mid-Klamath, and are making impacts by directly inserting themselves into a broad set of water policy and science networks to address multiple, intersecting water quality problems.

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Meet the People

Ron Reed is a traditional dipnet fisherman, a cultural biologist, and a member of the Karuk Tribe. Drawing on his role as a father, a culture bearer, and grassroots leader, Ron has developed plans for eco-cultural revitalization, led youth cultural education camps, and fostered collaborative research at the nexus of traditional ecological knowledge and western science.

Among his accomplishments, Mr. Reed founded the Karuk Tribe - UC Berkeley Collaborative over ten years ago to support synergistic initiatives for eco-cultural restoration. His efforts have since sparked a wide range of research collaborations between academic and tribal research partners in the mid-Klamath.

He continues to play a critical role in increasing public awareness about the impacts of colonization, the importance of restoring the spiritual and physical health of his people, and tribal leadership for ecological and cultural restoration. Mr. Reed comes from the Charley Davis Clan, a prominent family of traditional spiritual leaders and cultural practitioners, and is the father of six children.

Dr. Sibyl Diver is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist and a lecturer at Stanford in the Earth Systems Program. She does community engaged research on Indigenous water governance, primarily in Pacific Northwest salmon watersheds. She has worked in partnership with Ron Reed and the Karuk Tribe for over ten years.

For the past 20 years she has worked on issues of Indigenous peoples and salmon around the North Pacific – in the Russian Far East, Alaska, Canada and the US. Her PhD is in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from UC Berkeley, where she cross trained in fisheries ecology, environmental social sciences, community-engaged research, and decolonizing methodologies.

Previous to graduate school, she spent eight years doing international conservation work with the non-profit Pacific Environment, and facilitate international exchanges as a Russian translator, which is how she first learned about the deep connections between salmon conservation and Indigenous rights. Dr. Diver currently teaches courses at Stanford in environmental justice and environmental governance, and also co-leads the Stanford Environmental Justice Working Group.

Susan Fricke has worked in water resources for 17 years and has been the Karuk Tribe’s Water Quality Program Manager since 2005. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Kansas State University and a Master’s degree in Fisheries and Natural Resources from Humboldt State University. With Karuk Tribe’s Water Quality Program staff, the tribe conducts monitoring and research on over 130 miles of River for long-term water quality trends, seasonal dynamics, fish disease, and harmful algal blooms (HABs).

Ms. Fricke facilitates the use of Tribal data and Traditional Ecological Knowledge being adopted into tribal, state, and federal policy. She has been involved in the development and implementation of 5 TMDLs, establishing the total maximum daily load of pollutants, in the Klamath Basin and the relicensing project for the Klamath Hydroelectric Dams. In 2005, she started monitoring Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in the Klamath River, and has since worked at the regional and state level to establish a basin-wide HABs monitoring network. She is also a founding member of the Klamath Basin Monitoring Program, which is the Klamath Basin’s technical water quality coordination workgroup, where she has served as Chair for the last 5 years.

After many years with the Karuk Tribe, Ms. Fricke has recently transitioned to a new position at the Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB), which is closer to her family. We will miss you, Susan, and hope to see you soon in Eugene!