Following our tour in April of the Klamath River and the Iron Gate Dam and Reservoir with members of the Ancestral Guard, the Borneo Project, and the Sarawak-based organization SAVE Rivers, Zak Powers compiled footage and interviews from the tour with scenery and activism in Sarawak to create several inspiring educational videos. Click here or watch below:
In Sarawak, the government is proposing building new dams against the wishes of communities. On the other side of the world in California, large dams are being demolished on the Klamath River after decades of Indigenous campaigning.
What was a seemingly impossible goal not so long ago is now a reality. Native communities are now restoring the watershed, bringing life back to the Klamath — where the river has been altered by hydroelectric dams for over 100 years.
Our friends from Sarawak were here to witness the largest dam removal in history, finding inspiration in the unwavering efforts of the Yurok, Hoopa, and Karuk tribes. Once the dams are gone, salmon will rebound, water health will be restored and once-drowned ecosystems will grow back.
Native communities fought these dams for decades, and won. And now, communities in Sarawak are bracing for a new fight, in a world where there is no appetite for cultural or environmental destruction.
Watch more videos on Instagram at www.instagram.com/borneoproject.