sometimes boy is bug

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

GIRLS THAT'S FUCKING TERRIFYING,, PLEASE FACTORY RESET YOUR PHONES GET NEW ONES IF YOU HAVE TO GET AN INDEPENDENT SIM card WHAT IS HAPPENING

I'M BEGGING YOU

What's the worst that can happen if you do it anyway? Genuinely. The literal worst. Catastrophise about it with me for a sec.

Will your mum yell at you? You're an adult. Yelling at fellow adults is Not Okay Actually. (Yelling at kids is also not okay but let's take this one step at a time.) If your mum is yelling at you, a fellow adult, she's the one being weird and out of line. You asked your friend and they said so too (me. I'm the friend.)

Will she cut off your phone plan? That would be a problem. Can you look into whether you can afford to switch to a new plan she doesn't have access to? Most phone companies will let you port your number over pretty easily.

Will she cut you off financially? Run the numbers again. Can you afford for that to happen? If the answer is no, that's okay, I believe you and I know you're making the best decision for your own well-being that you can in the moment. If there's anything you can do to make it more affordable, I do suggest doing that, though.

Will she be physically violent, inclusive of breaking stuff that belongs to you? That’s assault. That's a crime. It's not okay for her to do that and she almost certainly knows it.

Will she stop talking to you? Honestly I gotta say at this point that's not sounding like a bad outcome. It sucks. It really really sucks and I'm sorry if that's a choice you're having to make, but take it from someone who's been there and done that: when someone who is being abusive to you (stalking is abuse! Yelling at you is abuse! Threatening to cut off your funds if you don't do what they want forever is abuse! Breaking your stuff or physically hurting you is abuse!) decides of their own volition to cut you off, it hurts for a hot minute, and then you suddenly realise that you can breathe, and it feels so. Goddamn. Amazing.

Delete the tracking application. Live where you want to live. Change your name. Join or leave the religion. Get the piercing or the tattoo or the surgery. Live your life, because it's yours and not your parents'.

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]

*5 MINUTES LATER*

Word already had a word count?! That WORKED?