For the first-time author, Brook M. Thompson, the Klamath River “feels like home.”
Its presence in her life and the Klamath Dam removal inspired her to write a children’s book ‘I Love Salmon and Lampreys: A Native Story of Resilience’ where the younger generation can be part of the conversation.
“For me it was a way I could explain to my younger cousins, what this dam removal was like, how it came to be and just thought this was a really big deal for our tribes and we should be proud of it,” Thompson, Yurok and Karuk Tribes, said.
Thompson distinctly remembers when over 34,000 fish, mostly Chinook salmon, died in the Klamath River in September 2002. It was the largest recorded salmon fish kill in U.S. history.
One of the factors that was suspected to have contributed to the disaster was the low flow from Iron Gate Dam, located in northern California. It was one of the three dams that was removed this year.
“Being told that this was never going to happen and dam removal was impossible, that it was ridiculous to ask for four dams to be removed versus for just asking for one was too much and it actually happening and it being taken down is better to me, that’s better than any fiction I could imagine,” Thompson said.
The 2002 event was also a catalyst that inspired Thompson to go to school for engineering. She currently works part-time as a restoration engineer for the Yurok Tribe, as well as being a small business owner and a P.h D. student at University of California Santa Cruz.
Ideas for the book began 10 years ago and really kicked off in 2022. Thompson said she made sure to make a female Native American be the lead of the book to provide representation that she didn’t have growing up.
Thompson hoped to have an Indigenous artist for the artwork, but being a first-time author with limited funds, she eventually found Ukrainian artist Anastasia Khmelevska on Instagram.
“I was just thinking because I’m writing a book about water and the Klamath River that I really wanted to do watercolor so it kind of matches that theme with the artwork itself,” she said.
One of her favorite pages in the book features her family on a boat fishing. The scene holds a lot of meaning for Thompson because two of the people featured, her uncle Timmy and cousin Stormy Joy, have died.
“Those two people are some of the people I’ve spent most time on the boat with, and they’re gone now,” she said. “The other person is my dad.”
Other personal ties to Thompson in the book include: the Portland, Oregon skyline, a nod to her time at Portland State University, the letter A featured on the girl’s stole from the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the outline of Stanford University, where she also went to school and her cat.
Additionally, in an effort to help children like herself who have dyslexia, the book is in the font OpenDyslexic. The text enlarges the bottom of the letter to help readers with dyslexia.
“It just feels really nice to say despite my disability that I was able to do the thing that’s directly opposed to my disability now,” she said. “There’s something that feels really fulfilling to be able to be like just because I have a writing and reading disability and a learning disability doesn’t mean I’m not able to enjoy those things.”
Ultimately, Thompson hopes that book will serve as a commemoration and a simplified explanation of how the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes fought to remove the dams for more than two decades.
Even for her, it’s difficult to remember all the complicated details and it’s a topic she’s known all her life.
“It can be a situation where we almost take for granted how much we understand about the subject but then kids coming up, where they know it’s a big deal, don’t necessarily get that simplified explanation of what happened,” Thompson said.
The book will be released on March 4, 2025.
This story was originally published by ICT, a partner of Noeledrich.