Excerpted from the book THE WATER REMEMBERS by Amy Bowers Cordalis. Copyright © 2025 by Amy Bowers Cordalis. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.

The spirits were moving through the universe alone.

The Creator met with the spirits, who said, “We are lonely.”

The Creator said, “I will make a place for you to be together where you will have all you need.”

First, the Creator started with the dirt, mixing in oxygen, air, and water to render the core of the earth. Next, to shape the landscape, the Creator filled the lower elevations with water, forming the Klamath River and the Pacific Ocean. Together, the River and the ocean dug through the soil, eddying in deep pools to soften the newly formed land. The Creator then made plants, animals, and humans, my ancestors.

This is the creation story of my Nation, the Yurok, our aboriginal territory, and my home village of Rek-woi, at the mouth of the Klamath River in what is now known as Northern California. Our aboriginal territory spreads from the rugged Pacific Ocean in Northern California up the mighty lower Klamath River and into the High Country, our sacred spiritual lands in the first coastal range of the Klamath Mountains. This is our world. It is everything.

It has everything that anyone or any creature could ever need to survive, just as the Creator promised. This extraordinary area of the world includes redwoods—the largest trees on the planet—rare freshwater lagoons, wild Pacific Ocean coastline, and the fierce Klamath River, the lifeblood of my nation. The Yurok word for the Klamath River is Heyl-keek ‘We-roy, which means the “River that comes from the mountains,” named such for its geographic origins. These powerful ecosystems support many life-forms. In the River, the third-largest coho and chinook salmon runs in the continental United States, including a spring and fall chinook run and a fall coho run. Historic runs of green and white sturgeon, steelhead, trout, eels, candlefish. Along the coastline, mussels, seaweed, abalone, whales, seals, birds, crabs, and much more sea life. On land, iconic elk herds, deer, bear, cougars, and smaller animals, and acorns and all types of plants. This area is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

While we respect and treasure all, salmon has always been our primary food source. The Yurok word for salmon is nepuy, which trans- lates to “that which is eaten.”

The Creator told my ancestors, the Yurok people, that all of this was made for them. They would never want for anything if they lived in balance with this world as part of nature and by never taking more than they needed to survive. 

You live this way, the Creator said, and you will thrive here forever. You will never want for anything. You’ll know you are doing good because I will reward you with resources to support yourselves. Use these gifts as a guide. 

The Yurok people agreed.

In doing so, we formed our first binding obligation, the first covenant between the Creator and the Yurok people. This was a reciprocal relationship with the Creator, the natural world, and the Yurok people to maintain balance in the world by living symbiotically together.

We each had duties and responsibilities to uphold. The Creator bestowed on the Yurok people the inherent sovereignty to regulate the core components of society within Yurok Country to fulfill our duty to the Creator. It charged us with inherent responsibilities to steward the land, water, and Yurok’s other natural resources to ensure their regeneration each year. In return, we have the great privilege of being the beneficiaries of the natural abundance of the lower Klamath Basin. The Creator would continue to care for us by providing an abundance of first foods—seafood, salmon, game, wild vegetables, nuts, and berries in the natural world. This reciprocal relationship is so sacred to us that our stories teach that if the Klamath salmon and the Klamath River die, so will the Yurok people, because there will be no purpose for the Yurok on earth.

The Nation regulated the use of natural resources through complex aboriginal law, religion, and hunting, gathering, and fishing customs and practices to enforce the first covenant. Aboriginal law restricted when and how a person could fish. It was prohibited to take salmon before the first salmon ceremony, which opened the new year’s fishing season with a large gathering, ritual protocols, and a feast. Once fishing began, restrictions ensured that no one took more than was needed, allowing some fish to be caught upriver, and others to spawn. Fishing holes were owned by families that had the power to exclude, use, and regulate fishing. Rules were enforced through a payment system for violations. This system had worked for generations.

Since time immemorial, my ancestors have lived on the lower Klamath River. We continue to enjoy a subsistence lifestyle of fishing, gathering, and hunting. We are a dance family with responsibilities to host annual world renewal ceremonies, brush dances for sick children, and other ceremonies in our village. We still honor our covenantal duty to protect the River, Yurok Country, and every living thing there. Over time, complex and restorative laws, practices, traditions, and ceremonies that showed thanks for being in this place were perfected to ensure we exercised our sovereignty to advance our obligations to the Creator.

Excerpted from the book THE WATER REMEMBERS by Amy Bowers Cordalis. Copyright © 2025 by Amy Bowers Cordalis. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.

Amy Bowers Cordalis is a mother, fisherwoman, attorney, and member and former General Counsel of the Yurok Nation—the largest Indigenous Nation in California. She is currently the cofounder and executive director of the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, a nonprofit advancing Indigenous sovereignty through the protection of cultural and natural resources, including the undamming of the Klamath River. She is the recipient of the UN’s highest environmental honor, Champions of the World Laureate, and has been named to the second annual TIME100 Climate List (2024), featuring the one hundred most influential leaders driving business to real climate action. She is the author of The Water Remembers (Hachette, 2025).