In numerous geographies, colonial states use hydropower as part of their infrastructure supplying the settler economy, while further dispossessing Indigenous peoples from their land. The following text written by Ron Reed and Alaa Suliman Hamid describes how the commonality of this experience from Káruk country to Nubia allows them to learn from each other’s struggles and political victories, and to construct forms of solidarity.
We met at the Indigenous Science event at the University of Oregon, where Ron was a keynote speaker discussing the role of Indigenous science in resisting settler colonialism and the ecological work he has been conducting within his nation. The event coincided with the incredible news that hundreds of salmon were spawning in creeks upstream of the former Iron Gate Dam for the first time in over 100 years—a direct result of decades of activism, advocacy, and leadership from Indigenous communities, including Ron’s lifelong work. After enjoying a beautifully cooked piece of Chinook salmon (caught by Ron and shared with the audience) we engaged in a conversation about the landscape architecture studio Alaa is teaching, which focuses on settler colonialism and ecology, as an extension of the research working on the Nile Basin. We quickly realized we share an unbreakable bond with our rivers and lands, a deep-rooted sense of Indigenous identity, and a shared spirit of resistance.
Though our homelands are thousands of miles apart, the Klamath and the Nile are twin rivers—distinct in ecology yet united in struggle.
Ron, a distinguished Káruk tribal leader, an ecological advisor, and an avid traditional dipnet fisherman, has resisted settler colonialism for his entire life. His tribe is the second largest tribe in the Klamath River’s Basin, with approximately over 4,000 Tribal members, some living in the Basin, which is part of the larger ancestral land of the Ewksiknii, Modoknii, Numu, Oohl, Káruk, and Hoo-pah, known today as Oregon and California under the US settler-colony control. Its enduring legacies encompass the imposition of hydropower projects, embodying a series of dams, broken treaties, and forced assimilation of the Indigenous population. These intersected legacies are, in fact, the primary cause of the Basin’s cultural and ecological crises.
In 1851, the Káruk Tribe engaged in negotiations for eighteen treaties across California, yet none were ratified, and the proposed “Indian reservations” were never established. The legal erasure of Káruk territorial sovereignty was further cemented on May 6, 1905, when President Theodore Roosevelt, invoking the 1891 Forest Reserve Act, designated the Klamath Forest Reserve. This sweeping federal action unilaterally claimed the entirety of the 1.04-million-acre Káruk aboriginal territory as public land. Mainly for a reservation and hunting, fishing, and gathering rights in perpetuity that the US Congress never ratified. Thus, they have the dubious distinction of being one of eighteen tribes in California with an unratified treaty and still living in a shattered existence. It effectively dispossessed the Káruk people of legal recognition over their ancestral lands. This territory encompassed 117 documented villages and critical subsistence areas along the middle Klamath River, central to Káruk cultural and ecological stewardship. The subsequent privatization of these lands through homesteading, mining claims, and land patents facilitated settler violation, further displacing the Káruk people and disrupting their deep-rooted relationships with land, water, and resource governance.
The damming of the Klamath River has had profound and tragic impacts on the Káruk and many Indigenous nations in the Klamath, disrupting ecosystems that have sustained them for millennia. The first dam Copco 1, constructed on the Klamath in 1912, fundamentally altered the river’s ecosystem, particularly the migration patterns of salmon and other fish species. Salmon, in particular, Chinook salmon—the largest of the Pacific salmon, also known as King salmon—have been central to these communities’ identities, food systems, and ceremonies. Indigenous tribes in the region are often called the “Salmon People” due to the species’ profound cultural and spiritual significance. The annual salmon runs are sacred events symbolizing the renewal of life, the health of the land, and the continuity of ancestral traditions.
Before the construction of the dams, as many as one million Chinook salmon would return to the Klamath River each year to spawn. In 2002, over 68,000 adult salmon died on the banks of the Klamath River due to the political decision to provide a critical water supply to agriculture instead of the mandated endangered species, fish. Today, fewer than 5% of that pre-dam salmon population survives, reflecting the severe ecological degradation of the river, its tributaries, wetlands, and marshlands caused by the dams.
Colonial policies have targeted fundamental ancient land management practices, such as cultural burning, that Indigenous peoples like the Káruk have been implementing in the basin to maintain open meadows, enhance biodiversity, and reduce the risk of more extensive, uncontrolled wildfires. The suppression of Indigenous science and practices has resulted in an increasingly wildfire-prone landscape and catastrophic wildfires. This disruption of the Káruk Nation’s ecological stewardship practices significantly altered the basin, leading to land degradation and further displacement of the Káruk people. Resource extraction, including gold mining and logging, railroad construction, and dams, have all furthered heavy sedimentation, and introduced toxic metals to the waters, exacerbating ecological damage.
Translocal solidarity: Resisting colonialism from the Klamath to the Nile ///
Our instinct to resist imperialism and colonialism is deeply rooted in our sense of Indigeneity and a lineage of struggle. Though separated by vast distances, these two rivers—and the Indigenous peoples who have long sustained and been sustained by them—are bound by colonial violence, river fragmentation through damming, and ecological and cultural disruption.
The colonial legacy of hydropower in the Nile is not different from that in the Klamath. Europeans entered the diverse basins as they were obviously spheres of economic interest. Once they landed in Sudan, the British saw themselves as “the Guardians of the Nile.” As part of their conquest plan, the British defined a border between Egypt and Sudan, separating the Nubians on both sides of it. They instituted water agreements and policies to selectively pick and choose who receives resources under their administration, favoring Egypt by giving them the upper hand in controlling the Nile and establishing a “sense of national power and superiority” over Sudan.
Similarly to European settlers in the Klamath, the British continued extracting Sudan’s resources to stabilize their economic system and wealth by maintaining their power and control over Sudan and its natural resources. The Anglo-Egyptian Water Agreements would involve excessive damming operations and large-scale irrigation schemes, submerging hundreds of Sudanese Nile Basin towns and villages. These treaties were merely attempts to legitimize and formalize their violence against Indigenous peoples, much like the unratified water treaties with tribes in the Klamath Basin. Their primary goal was to facilitate extraction operations—gold mining and logging in the Klamath, and cotton agricultural schemes in the Nile to support their textile industry in England.
The 1929 Nile agreement meant Egypt would receive 48 billion cubic meters of Nile water annually while Sudan would only get 4 billion cubic meters. As Salam Abdulqadir Abdulrahman explains in a 2018 article, “Egypt would not need the consent of upstream states to undertake water projects in its own territories but could veto projects on any tributaries of the Nile in the upstream countries, including the 43,130 square kilometers Lake Victoria.” This dual rule cemented the Anglo-Egyptian hydro-hegemony in the Nile Basin, effectively controlling the Nile River from its origins to the Mediterranean Sea.
The simultaneous damming of the Nile and the Klamath exemplifies a troubling global pattern of river control, colonial resource extraction, and the displacement of Indigenous and local communities.
The timeline of dam construction on both rivers is strikingly similar. In 1925 the Copco 2 Dam on the Klamath and the Sinnar Dam on the Nile were completed. The Copco dams primarily displaced Indigenous communities such as the Yurok, Káruk, and Hoopa Valley Tribes, who relied on the river for their cultural practices and livelihoods, particularly fishing. Similarly, the construction of the Sinnar Dam one year later displaced 70,000 people, confiscating their land and erasing their means of survival.
Beyond displacement, these dams served colonial economic interests. The Sinnar Dam was imposed to support the Al Jazeera Scheme, one of the world’s largest agricultural projects, dedicated to cotton cultivation to fuel Britain’s textile industry. To further secure Egypt’s water supply for an extended period (and, in turn, bolster cotton production for Britain) a series of dams were constructed under the 1929 Agreement. These projects led to widespread water scarcity, land dispossession, and the confiscation of towns such as Jabal Awlya, Kosti, and Khartoum.
On January 1, 1956, Sudan finally gained independence from British rule. However, the hydropower legacies of Anglo-Egyptian control only intensified post-independence. The Aswan High Dam, originally opposed by Sudan, was part of the 1929 Agreement and would ultimately result in the drowning of the entire Nubian homeland across both Sudan and Egypt. In exchange for a guaranteed electric power supply for Egypt, President Gamal Abdel Nasser secured Sudan’s agreement to proceed with the dam, forcing Sudan to relinquish its water rights. This agreement, signed in 1959, solidified Egypt’s control over Nile waters while ensuring Sudan shouldered the burden of the environmental and social costs.
The construction of the Aswan High Dam led to the submergence of Wadi Halfa along with hundreds of border villages and towns. The riverbanks quickly transformed into a reservoir, known in Sudan as Lake Nubia and in Egypt as Lake Nasser. This project engulfed thousands of acres of land and displaced more than 100,000 Nubians in Sudan and Egypt, severing their ties to ancestral landscapes and further erasing their cultural heritage. The dam not only displaced communities, but also physically and culturally fragmented the Nubian people, imposing new borders and physical and cultural separation and scattering them hundreds of miles away from their homeland, the Nubian Desert.
The violent transformation enacted by dams persist today as part of the colonial legacy, with hydropower projects continuing to flood Indigenous lands, displace communities, and devastate the fragile ecosystems of the Nile. One such project is Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a looming crisis with far-reaching consequences.
For Sudanese communities, violence continues under the guise of “development.” Water agreements, imposed hydroelectric projects, and extractive policies prioritize state and corporate interests over Indigenous sovereignty. The same tactics deployed globally, have systematically disconnected Indigenous peoples from their lands and resources, deeming them undeserving of stewardship over their rivers.
The cultural and ecological devastation of dams is evident in the widespread fish kills that have disrupted Indigenous communities and ecosystems. Just as salmon are integral to the Káruk, Yurok, Hoopa, and Klamath tribes, tigerfish are vital to the livelihoods of Indigenous communities in the Nubian Desert along the Nile. Nubian groups such as the Halfawieen, Danagla, and Mahas, once thrived on fisheries in the Nile’s banks, are harshly impacted by the decline in fish populations, a key source of sustenance and cultural identity.
Lessons Learned from the Káruk ///
Káruk Country continues to experience social impacts rooted in the colonial nature of our existence, with health issues (closely tied to poverty) being a significant concern. Ron provided Indigenous leadership in the dam removal process, emphasizing the profound and paramount spirit of the ecosystem within our worldview. Rather than limiting “cultural resources” to a single category, Ron successfully argued that the spirit of the fish and the water (deeply connected to cultural fire) must be understood through “Pikiawish” world renewal principles. A pivotal moment in this effort was in 2005 when the “Denied Access to Traditional Food” report by Kari Norgaard from the University of Oregon was featured on the Washington Post’s front page. This report influenced decision-makers involved in the Clean Water Act and Total Maximum Daily Load pollution regulations, reinforcing the necessity that water leaving the project area must be as clean or cleaner than the water entering it. The four dams devastated water quality, making their removal essential.
Indigenous science and Káruk place-based Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) provided a platform for action, ultimately guiding all four other Federally Recognized Tribes in adopting Káruk Tribal dam removal strategies. Ron and his nation led a powerful and overwhelmingly successful campaign through direct action and ceremonial leadership.
The fight of the Káruk and their neighbors to remove the dams that have strangled the Klamath is not just a local battle; it resonates with the struggles against dams on the Nile.
In both cases, colonial and neocolonial forces have imposed unjust, exploitative devices (dams) that have fueled land dispossession, intergenerational poverty, food scarcity, fish kills, and ecological degradation exacerbated by climate change.
In the face of this crisis, the Káruk Tribe provided critical Indigenous leadership, pushing for dam removal. Removing the Klamath dams represents a crucial moment, offering an opportunity to redress historical injustices and revitalize the river and the communities that depend on it. It sets a precedent for resistance that brings hope to the Indigenous in Sudan.
We join a more extensive interdisciplinary coalition to restore the Káruk land and dismantle systemic injustices in solidarity with the Klamath and the Nile peoples. We continue challenging so-called “renewable energy” and pushing for dam removal and ecological restoration in Sudan.
This is a call to action to reinforce that Indigenous peoples worldwide must unite to resist systemic colonial violence still evident to this day in the Nile and Klamath basins. Our rivers and landscapes carry the weight of colonial violence, but they also hold the potential for healing and reclamation. Removing the Klamath River dams is not just about ecological restoration—it is about sovereignty, justice, and the right to shape our own futures. By reclaiming sovereignty and restoring vital connections between land, water, and culture, we can transform landscapes into spaces of resilience and healing. ■