“We give our respect for the c’waam as we are the survivors ourselves,” Betty Blackwolf, who celebrated her 76th birthday Saturday by giving a prayer at the 21st annual c’waam ceremony along the banks of the Sprague River.
Coming of spring
The annual ceremony celebrates the coming of spring and the return of the c’waam, which swim up the Sprague to spawn. As is traditional, two c’waam netted from the Sprague were returned to the river after being touched and blessed by tribal elders, including Blackwolf. A third was passed among elders before it was killed and cremated in a large fire pit, a gift to the creator.
The promise
During a reading of the c’waam story — in English by Allen Cole and in Klamath by Derek Kimbol — the gathering of nearly 200 was told the creator instructed generations-ago Klamaths to cremate the first c’waam with the promise that “many will return again.”
Tribal chairman Joe Kirk and vice-chair Joe Hobbs spoke briefly of times when the c’waam were plentiful and fishermen lined to banks of the Sprague below the Chiloquin dam, which was built in 1914 and removed in 2008. The removal was done because biologists said it blocked the upstream passage of upward of 95 percent of endangered Lost River and shortnosed suckers from Upper Klamath Lake.
“This place was hopping when the c’waam were running,” Kirk said. “When the c’waams run, it’s spring.”
Tradition
Hobbs stressed the importance of preserving tribal traditions — “We need to keep these things alive because this is who we are.”
But Hobbs also said the dam created pooled waters that provided fishing and recreation, noting, “Even though it was a man-made thing, it became part of our culture.” He said during negotiations to remove the dam, promises were made to develop a swimming pool and recreation areas.
“Now the dam is gone and we don’t have nothing,” Hobbs lamented during the ceremony, saying that unfulfilled promises are “the talk of the white man.”
Celebrating
The Steiger Butte drummers performed to open and close the riverside ceremonies, held under partly sunny skies. Lunch hosted by the tribes’ culture and heritage department at the Kla-Mo-Ya Casino was followed by an afternoon powwow with drumming and dancing at the Chiloquin High School gymnasium.