Yurok tribe stick game

You see them salmon beating their heads to get through [the dams] On the way back to the docks, Nova took a detour past the spit of beach that extends to the mouth of the river. Heard anything? He was the one who sent out the alert. Parker said he had caught eight salmon the day before in the estuary and none of them had sea lice on them, which according to him is a bad sign.

Half the fish he caught were already turning dark. Parker, on the other hand, blames the high water temperature on the low flows, as water is diverted from the river to the farmers upstream. But Simondet preferred not to point fingers. Simondet said that this year is no different from other dry years.

And as for whether or not another fish kill is imminent, Simondet pointed out that the flows are much higher now than they were around the same time in The law of this river, it seems, is feast or famine. As for which hand is holding the stick with the black ring around it -- the one that will win the basin farmers their much-needed water and the Yurok fishermen their precious salmon -- there may be no strategy for finding that out.

But for Yurok tribesmen like Keith Parker, there is reason to believe that the river is giving us signs that cannot be ignored. More News ». Switch to the mobile version of this page. North Coast Journal. Pin It. Favorite Saving…. Stick game — Is the Klamath River headed for disaster, again? By Japhet Weeks. Our Klamath Basin Water Crisis Upholding rural Americans' rights to grow food, own property, and caretake our wildlife and natural resources. The water in the Klamath is just right for swimming.

Parker sent out an e-mail alert last week in which he reported that the water temperature a few miles up from the mouth of the river was However, the scene last Sunday in the town of Requa at the Klamath estuary was far from apocalyptic. A Yurok father and his daughter drifted listlessly in a rowboat beside a net in the water, waiting for their catch to come to them.

Where the Klamath and the Pacific Ocean crash stubbornly into one another, a large rock the Yurok call Oregos, which watches over the confluence of fresh and salt water, stood like a sentinel, while across from it two fishermen cast their drift nets out into the brackish surf. But, he said, there was a weekend-long Brush Dance that was still going on, on the south side of the estuary. The Brush Dance had been organized to heal a sick child. In one corner of the camp, members of two tribes -- the Yurok and Hoopa Valley -- played Indian cards, a game which looks like a combination of pick-up sticks and poker.

The challenge is for one player to guess in which hand his opponent is holding a particular stick, one marked with a black ring. The game is played for money, which is spread out in large and small denominations on the ground between the players, each bill weighted down under a small stone.

The players sing songs as they play, and the audience cajoles or encourages from the sides. There is no strategy involved; the game, it turns out, is left entirely to lady luck.

You see them salmon beating their heads to get through [the dams]