In July 2025, at the mouth of the Klamath River in Del Norte County, California, three historic victories converged in a powerful celebration that made international headlines: the Yurok Tribe had just completed California’s largest LandBack transfer, reclaiming 47,000 acres of ancestral homeland; the country’s largest dam removal project on the Klamath River allowed the river to flow unobstructed for the first time in over a century; and forty-three Indigenous youth kayakers had just finished the first source-to-sea descent of the Klamath River since the river was freed.

For tribal activists like Dania Rose Colegrove (Hupa, Yurok & Karuk), who has spent her life fighting for tribal sovereignty and her peoples’ rights to their ancestral lands and waters, the moment carried triumph . . . along with complexity.

“It’s a sad thing that we have to buy our own land back.”

Dania Rose, a lifelong water protector and land defender, has watched this convergence of victories unfold over countless years of relentless advocacy. Now serving as the Culture Project Coordinator for the Hoopa Valley Tribe, she was among those who celebrated as the youth paddlers completed their historic journey in July. She was awarded the California Indian Heritage Preservation Award in 2024 for her outstanding dedication to her community.

But her perspective on the LandBack deal reflects the bittersweet reality many Indigenous activists face: “I’m happy we got the land back, and I’m sad that we had to pay for it. I mean, it was ours to begin with.”

The $56 million land transfer through Western Rivers Conservancy represents the culmination of a 23-year effort, funded through an multi-faceted strategy, including $3.3 million generated through carbon credit sales transferred to the Yurok Tribe for future stewardship. The carbon project covers nearly 15,000 acres and credits the Tribe exclusively for new carbon growth as the forest recovers from industrial logging.

But for activists like Dania Rose, even this victory comes with complicated compromises. The carbon credits are tied to the trees themselves — their ability to sequester carbon over time. Her concerns reflect the harsh reality of wildfire-prone Northern California:

“I’ve been against carbon credits since I learned about them. It’s kind of a sad thing, in a way. But then the way our world is turned upside down, maybe it is a good thing to have the carbon credits. . . . I can’t believe I’m saying that [it’s] gonna save the trees. Their carbon credit deals are for 100 years, and I’m like, ‘You guys, that’s gonna burn up, and you guys could end up paying that back.’”

Her concerns are not unfounded — in a region where wildfires are increasingly prevalent due to climate change and the lack of good fire on the landscape for over 150 years, the trees that generate carbon credits absolutely could burn, potentially making those credits worthless and leaving the Tribe financially liable.

The LandBack movement, contrary to its recent visibility in mainstream media, represents centuries of continuous Indigenous resistance to colonial land theft. Settler colonialism has systematically worked to disconnect Indigenous peoples from their lands, yet this disconnection was never complete. For over 160 years, California tribal communities have maintained their relationship to stolen territories through ceremony, story, and sustained activism —understanding that their connection to place is fundamental to both cultural survival and collective healing.

The returned Yurok land is a monumental piece of their territory that includes the Blue Creek area, which holds deep spiritual significance for local tribes. As Dania Rose explains:

“Blue Creek area is the start of the medicine trail. It is a place that all the Yuroks and Karuks mostly use for their High Medicine Rocks. That’s where they go out and pray and make medicine.”

For her family, the land return is deeply personal: “Part of that place is where my great grandmother, my mom’s grandma, is buried, called Stevens Prairie.” This ancestral connection exemplifies what Indigenous peoples understand about land relationships — they are not merely economic or political, but spiritual and genealogical. The return of Blue Creek isn’t just about conservation; it’s about restoring the fundamental relationships that sustain Indigenous peoples and, by extension, the lands and waters themselves.

Tribally-Led Coalitions and Determination Lead to Dam Removal

The dam removal that made the youth descent possible represents another multi-generational victory — one that required decades of organizing by multiple tribal nations, environmental groups, fishing communities, and countless community members working together across differences to free the river. Four hydroelectric dams that had blocked the river’s natural flow for over a century were removed in 2024, restoring nearly 400 miles of vital habitat for salmon.

Dania Rose remembers the long fight: “The dam removal [movement], we started that in 2003, I think, and the LandBack [project] started about the same time. It all came together last year, which is pretty awesome.”

Her own activism played a crucial role in pushing reluctant executives from Berkshire Hathaway and PacifiCorp (the utility company that owned and operated the dams) toward dam removal. In a legendary 2020 confrontation, Dania Rose and other members of the Klamath Justice Coalition (KJC) blocked the river to prevent the executives from reaching a meeting that excluded Klamath dam removal activists. “We [KJC] had a big long meeting about it and it’s like, what the f*@# are we gonna do? I go, ‘Well, let’s come have a meeting with them. Let’s go and block the river off and not let them go up the river.’”

When the executives’ boats broke down mid-trip, the KJC activists seized the moment. Dania Rose handed the executives a jar of toxic algae-ridden water from behind the Klamath Dams. She recalls, “So, we made them smell that water. . . . I said, ‘You know what? There’s only a dozen people here today. I said, But, if I made another phone call, I could have all my relatives here, and this would be the next Standing Rock if you guys don’t pay attention.’”

The direct action worked. As she learned from a friend later: “They didn’t even get back to where they were going. They said, ‘Well, we gotta get this [dam removal] done.’” Five years later, the four-dam removal project is now complete.

An Historic First Descent

The Native youth who completed the 310-mile, month-long journey from the Klamath headwaters in Oregon to the mouth at the Pacific Ocean represented multiple tribes, and had trained for two years to make this historic descent. The Paddle Tribal Waters program was specifically designed to ensure that Native youth would be the first to experience the free-flowing river.

Dania Rose and many others were able to join the paddlers for the final three miles of their journey: “I got to float down the last three miles of the river with the paddlers this year.”

The sight of these young water protectors reinforced her belief that the future of Indigenous resistance lies in connecting youth to their culture and traditions, teaching them not just skills but relationships to the land that will sustain the movement for generations to come.

Building Long-Term Resistance: From Youth Camps to Board Rooms

Dania Rose’s activism exemplifies how sustained Indigenous resistance operates across generations and through diverse coalitions. Her relationship with CLDC, where she has served as a board member for nearly three years, began with grassroots youth organizing work in the mid-2010s.

“CLDC did youth trainings, youth camps. . . . We were doing trainings, know your rights basic training for kids – nonviolent direct action stuff,” she recalls. CLDC hosted Next Generation Climate Justice Action Camps (NGCJAC) in southern Oregon from 2016 to 2018. These camps represent the kind of long-term movement building that makes historic victories, such as Klamath Dam removal, possible.

Her connection to CLDC also runs through personal relationships built over decades of shared struggle. She’s known CLDC’s founder, Lauren Regan, for nearly two decades since they first worked together “over there in Wintu country,” blocking river access to protect Winnemem Wintu sacred sites from development.

“Lauren decided she needed to be my friend,” Dania Rose laughs. “I told her I was gonna get her number tattooed on my arm, because I wrote her number down on my arm so many times.”

These relationships — between activists, between Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies, between different generations — form the infrastructure that sustains movements through the decades-long fights required for land return, dam removal, and other social and environmental movements. What people call “decolonization” transpires through everyday acts of solidarity and relationship building over generations.

Lessons for the Movement

For Dania Rose, the convergence of LandBack and dam removal victories offers crucial lessons for sustained Indigenous resistance:

“You have to pick and choose your battles – which ones you’re going to actually want to spend time on, put your energy into . . . because there is so much going on, but there’s a lot of stuff that takes so long for a result.”

Her advice to future Indigenous activists is simple: “Don’t give up the flight. You should choose your battles wisely, but don’t give up – never give up the fight. That’s my MO.”

The Fight Doesn’t End Here…

As the Klamath River flows freely for the first time in a century, and as Indigenous youth like those in the Paddle Tribal Waters program carry forward centuries of resistance, the victories of 2024-2025 represent both an ending and a beginning.

The dams are gone. The 47,000 acres around Blue Creek are back under Tribal care, with a future prairie restoration project in the works, and designation as a salmon sanctuary and community forest. Young Indigenous activists have reclaimed their waterway. But as Dania Rose reminds us, the fight for Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice continues.

Now, as the Hoopa Tribe’s Cultural Programs Coordinator, Dania is working with Hoopa youth to teach them ancestral ways of existing with their surroundings.

“Last week we did acorn camp, and I had all those kids cleaning my acorns — which was a really good job we did together. We cracked and cleaned and ground them, and I had some soup ready, so we cooked it all up and put it in jars and canned it. Then we vacuum sealed some. The kids also did all kinds of other things — jewelry making, hair tie making, art projects, went swimming. And this weekend we have a net making class.”

Dania embodies the long view that has sustained Indigenous resistance for generations: “It never ends. You know what I mean? It never ends. Just like, same old shit, different battle.”

Yet in teaching young people traditional skills like acorn processing and net making, in floating alongside the next generation of water protectors, and in holding tribal governments accountable to fight for their water rights, activists like Dania Rose ensure that the river of resistance flows as freely as the Klamath itself.

The gathering at the river’s mouth was more than a celebration — it was a testament to what becomes possible when tribes and their allies refuse to give up; when they build coalitions like those with CLDC, Western Rivers Conservancy, KJC, and many others; and when they center their own intergenerational voices and leadership in the fight for their homelands.

As Dania Rose puts it: “Pretty much, that’s activism.”