The arts took a big hit during the COVID pandemic, a setback that is taking time to recover from. California leaders looked for ways to help spur greater activity, and devised the California Creative Corps, a vehicle for putting money into the arts all over the state.
Upstate California Creative Corps doles out the funding for our part of California, and a chunk is going to Paddle Tribal Waters Storytelling Collaborative. The plan for Paddle Tribal Waters calls for young indigenous people to paddle kayaks down the Klamath River--from source to sea--once the big dams are removed, probably in 2024.
The participants are not just kayakers, they are storytellers, too; that's the arts angle. We get the big view of the project from Rush Sturges, the founder of the project, Paul Robert Wolf Wilson, a Klamath Tribe member and Chief Storyteller, and Danielle Frank, a Hupa Valley Tribe member, Paddle participant, and artist.