Fight for Salmon Conservation and Cultural Survival with Brook-Thompson

When the salmon numbers in the Klamath River dwindled, it wasn't just a loss of wildlife, it was a piece of Brook Thompson's heritage slipping away. Our latest episode of Breaking Green features Brook, a Yurok and Karuk Native American, water resource engineer, and PhD student, who unravels the deep ties between her tribe's culture and the river's salmon. Discover how she leverages her academic prowess and indigenous insight to fight against the environmental crises that threaten both her community's traditions and the planet's health.

Join us as we traverse the complex landscape of salmon conservation, where Brook illuminates the delicate balance of water flow management, the harrowing impact of the 2002 salmon kill, and the vital role of habitat restoration. Her story is one of resilience and purpose, driving home the importance of integrating indigenous knowledge with modern science. From the halls of academia to the United Nations climate conferences, Brooke's voice brings a fresh perspective to the urgent dialogue on conservation and the empowerment of indigenous leaders.

As we wrap up the conversation, Brooke doesn't shy away from the pressing issues of our times—microplastics in fish, renewable energy projects on indigenous lands, and the need for authentic representation in environmental policy-making. Her call to action is clear: to heal our planet, we must honor the wisdom of those who have cherished it for millennia. By supporting indigenous voices and practices, we're not just upholding justice; we're investing in a legacy of stewardship that could save us all.

This podcast is produced by Global Justice Ecology Project.

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Transcript

Steve Taylor: 0:00

Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. On Breaking Green, we will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, steve Taylor. Most of the Earth's biodiversity is on lands managed by indigenous peoples, but what role are indigenous voices being allowed to play in major environmental decisions?

Steve Taylor: 0:38

On this episode of Breaking Green, we will talk with Brooke Thompson, a Yurok and Karuk Native American from Northern California. She is a PhD student at the University of California, santa Cruz, and works as a restoration engineer for the Yurok tribe. In 2022, brooke Thompson graduated with a Master's of Science at Stanford University in Environmental Engineering, with a focus on water resource and hydrology. In 2020, brooke Thompson received a Bachelor's of Science from Portland State University's Honors College, with a degree in civil engineering. She is a recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholar Award 2020, unity's 25 Under 25 recipient, a Dennis Washington Scholar, american Indian Graduate Center's 2017 Undergraduate Student of the Year and an American Indian Society of Science and Engineering Sequoia Fellow. Brooke Thompson, welcome to Breaking Green.

Brook Thompson: 1:39

Hi, thank you for having me.

Steve Taylor: 1:42

Well, Brook, there's so much to talk about when it comes to you. You work as a restoration engineer. We'd like to talk to you about your educational journey, your current PhD work, political activism and more point to start is growing up on the Klamath River as a member of the Yurok and Karuk tribe and what it meant to live alongside the salmon.

Brook Thompson: 2:15

Yeah. So for me just to kind of get an idea of where I grew up, the Klamath River is kind of cool, so I'm always wearing like one of my sweatshirts down there, probably a pair of jeans as a kid, but it's real rocky on the shoreline, with a big beach at the mouth of the Klamath River. So the mouth is where the Klamath meets the Pacific Ocean and that's where my tribe, or where I lived on my tribal lands, and so my family has been living in that area for time immemorial, so at a minimum 15,000 plus years, and we're surrounded by mountains and redwood trees. So you know, as a kid growing up in Northern California, to me redwood trees are like the normal size trees. So when I go other places every other tree looks kind of small to me because I'm used to trees towering overhead.

Brook Thompson: 3:17

But with that, most of my time was spent on the river in a boat growing up, especially in the summertime with my dad, and we would live alongside the river and sometimes either camp out for what felt like weeks to catch salmon. So you know how some kids like winter or spring, summer breaks revolved around I don't know what other kids did actually, but I assume like going to camps or whatnot, but my summer was always filled with salmon fishing and that's how they'd even make money to get school clothes and school supplies for the coming year. So it would be getting in a probably don't know like a 10-foot boat, like one of those drift boats that is made out of aluminum with a 25 horsepower engine on the back and oars that I got really good arms when I was younger from paddling around and we would set nets. So we have these drift nets where it's like this plastic netting um, with a bunch of what are they called Diamonds, and what happens is the salmon will swim, try to swim through the net and they won't be able to see it and their gills will get caught in the net. And then when you do that, you see these buoys start to Bob up and down and then you yell fish on and then you get in the net.

Brook Thompson: 4:45

And then, when you do that, you see these buoys start to bob up and down and then you yell fish on and then you get in the boat, paddle as fast as you can and then race to the bottom of the net, which can be as deep as about 50 feet, and then you pull in the salmon. But since I'm kind of small I'm only five, two now, so I was obviously I'm like the same size of the salmon as a kid. So you just kind of like hug it with your whole body like you're a wrestler doing like, uh, doing a finishing move, and then you lean back in the boat and then tug it in and fight the salmon and bring it in the boat and pop the gill so all the blood bleeds out and it dies and you spend, spend, I don't know 10, 12 hours doing that every single day from spring to fall. But yeah, that was, that was the majority of my childhood is spending that time on the river with my family.

Steve Taylor: 5:36

It sounds like you spend a lot of time there personally, but in general, what is the cultural significance of salmon to the tribe?

Brook Thompson: 5:50

So it's hard to summarize that completely because it's, in a sense, it's everything. So for us, traditionally, in a study that was done on the group people in 2005, it showed that we ate around 450 pounds of salmon per person per year traditionally and that number in 2005 was down to five pounds per person per year. And keeping in mind in 2005, I was still catching a significant amount of fish each day. It wasn't as much as my grandfather's time. Like my grandfather talked about a time where there's so many salmon, you could walk across the box to the other side of the Klamath, but we were catching enough to get by, and so I'm sure that's part of what I'm doing with my research right now. I'm sure that number is much, much lower because I haven't caught a salmon in two years now personally. And fall salmon fishing was completely shut down this fall this year on the Klamath, where even our salmon festival had no salmon at it.

Brook Thompson: 6:53

But in addition to how much nutrients? Because salmon have this great amount of protein, of fats, of healthy oils and vitamins and nutrients that really helped with our survival and growth. But on top of that, in having it for ceremony and understanding management techniques to keep salmon plentiful for years to come. There's these small cultural things that come with a salmon, like one of my uncles. He talks about his grandma saying that the best salmon you'll ever have is the one that you never eat. And that's because when you catch a salmon and there's someone else in need, like an elder or someone who's disabled and can't fish themselves, you give that fish to that person. And so she was saying that if you catch the fish but you give it to someone who needs it more, you'll get that fuller feeling in your spirit and your soul, even if you're not eating it yourself. And it's like how do you pass down these values of the culture and these traditions and understanding if you don't have that salmon to give away in the first place?

Steve Taylor: 8:09

And then also, I think I've heard you say in other interviews that there's a food desert Without the salmon. When it comes to processed foods, there's really a food desert where you live.

Brook Thompson: 8:23

Yeah. So a food desert being it's hard to get any type of food that we're not hunting or catching ourselves in the area. So to and where I grew up in Klamath, california, along the mouth of the river and I think this is true for most of the reservation you either have to drive at least right now it's about an hour and a half round trip up north to Crescent city to get to the nearest grocery store, or you have to go a four plus hour round trip down South to Eureka Arcata area to get to the nearest grocery store. And right, that's contingent on other things too, that's if you have a working car. And that's also like considering gas, like the gas prices are so wild now, like I don't know if I'd be able to afford that when we were kids. Like to be able to make that trip. So, because those things cost money and time, because, right, that time you're going back and forth, it's also time you're not working, we, you want to make the most out of that trip and you only have so much money. You want to make the most out of that trip and you only have so much money. So to do that, you usually have to buy cheaper foods or foods that have a longer shelf life and cheap foods that have a long shelf life tend not to be the healthiest foods, especially compared to salmon, and my family wouldn't be able to afford the same salmon quality that we caught. So think about like.

Brook Thompson: 9:44

Every day I got to eat salmon, like salmon on sticks, smoked salmon that we call salmon candy, that we eat over the winter.

Brook Thompson: 9:50

This is our natural way to preserve it Salmon patties by scraping off the ribs of the salmon, which I don't I don't even think that's.

Brook Thompson: 9:59

I don't know what producers do with like those other parts of the salmon, but like even salmon stew from like the tail and the head. You can eat the eyeballs and eat the cheeks, I like the skin, et cetera, and you got all this nutrients. So I'm also studying nutrients in salmon as part of my PhD, but it we sold the salmon for about $5 per pound to middlemen when I was a kid, sold the salmon for about $5 per pound to middlemen when I was a kid, and that same salmon I've seen sold in grocery stores for around $35 a pound, and so there's no way we can afford the same salmon we're able to sell and so, like it's not, it's not even a matter of like getting that food, it's. It just feels so insane to me that we can sell something that's so valuable to us so cheaply but then also not be able to get it back in our time of need, if that makes sense.

Steve Taylor: 10:53

It does, and I think what's really important here is that the salmon not only have cultural significance, but the lack of it, it has real economic and health consequences.

Brook Thompson: 11:06

Yeah, I mean exactly Because there's all these unaccounted effects where having this poor food because living in a food desert and not being able to get this nutritious food that we just got naturally it was all around us initially Then you have higher blood pressure rates, you have obesity, you have heart disease, you have all these cardiovascular diseases that then have a cost associated with it as well, and real life or death, I mean I think that's the thing for me at the end of the day is like this isn't just a struggle for salmon or wanting to fish for salmon. This is a struggle for the life of death of our culture and the life to death of our people, because not having that nutritious food has real impact on our life and quality of life.

Steve Taylor: 12:00

So what has caused that? What has caused the decline of the salmon?

Brook Thompson: 12:11

I wish again. There's not going to be a straight answer to any of these things, but well, a bit of. It's like a death from a thousand paper cuts, in the sense that there's a lot going on here, but some of it has been through the damming of the Klamath River which, after 20 years of struggle and and after you know myself witnessing the largest salmon kill in West Coast history in 2002 on the Klamath, where over 60,000 salmon died, we're now having four of the six dams removed on the Klamath River, which is huge. So those dams did not have fish ladders on it, so it it was cutting off hundreds of miles of salmon habitat, and a lot of that salmon habitat were the spring salmon's habitat. So we're having that removed and that will be a big deal for having new habitat opened up for the salmon and also having more flows of soil, because having people think about like the water flowing back and forth in the water cycle, but there's also a cycle with the sediment, so like soils, because soils carry nutrients in it that can be beneficial to fish and other creatures and plants downstream, so that soil cycle and flow of nutrients will be more restored as well.

Brook Thompson: 13:29

But there's also water flows. So having enough water, enough cool water when the salmon need it, because a salmon, you know, they're not just going up there blindly, they make decisions on when they go up river to spawn or when they go out. And we can control part of that, because now it's not natural. Now, right, we're controlling when the flows happen and there's a lot of people fighting over the flows of water. So I think that's where it gets the most complex, because, again, it's where the water is coming from, to see what temperature it is and how much we're getting at what time of the year, and we're competing against other people.

Brook Thompson: 14:09

We're right, in the summer, when it's really hot, we want those flows for the salmon to cool down, but then that's also probably when, like, for example, our egg, needs the most water, and so there's those complex relationships. And then when you have a salmon in these hot water conditions for too long, there is a possibility for spread of disease such as ick. And then there's also C shasta, which is another parasite that can spread between the salmon. So, like, salmon will gather in these big pods and when they're waiting it can spread from one to another really quickly. Degraded salmon habitat too, so like in streams were, and this is where I think a lot more funding should go to. I'm I'm biased because my job is partially restoration engineering, where I do this, um, but you know, putting money towards making sure the salmon habitats and the streams and connecting rivers is good for the young and the gravel can grow. The gravel and the young salmon can grow up there and a lot of nuanced causes for the decline in salmon population.

Steve Taylor: 15:32

But would it be fair to say that dams overall are a bad thing for the salmon population? I'd say, if I was making a sweeping generalization yes, so you mentioned 2002, a huge historic salmon kill, and I have a feeling that that was influential in your life. Can you tell us a bit about that, what it was like to see that and what it was?

Brook Thompson: 16:02

Yeah, I mean for me me personally it's probably the most influential part of my life because it's the reason I'm where I am now. But in September 2002 it was a day after one of my tribe's world renewal ceremonies. So my tribe a lot of times when we have ceremonies and pray, we're not just praying for ourselves but praying for balance in the world. And I remember the morning after this you're told that there's something going on and that we need to check out the river because all of these salmon are dying. And so I'm with my mom and my dad and I'm seven years old at this point, so, right, I'm only hip high and we go out and look at the river and there's just thousands and thousands of salmon lining the shoreline, dead, rotting, and it's just. It feels like looking at like a battlefield or something where you see all these bodies of not only like again, salmon for sport. But these connections I had to my ancestors since there's all these ancestors I've never met but managed to salmon so I could live a healthy life cycle and have a healthy childhood and my connection to them was partially through these salmon, where I was then being almost fed by my ancestors in an indirect way and those salmon ancestors knew my ancestors right. We're all from the same place and that was just gone in one night and gone because of policy decisions and decisions around taking water out in a drought year from people who've never met me, people who've never fished on the Klamath, people who don't know our culture or our life cycle or any, and people who, frankly, disregarded what scientists were saying at the time and yet they uprooted my way of life just through a few days of bad policy. And understanding that feeling and that anxiety that comes after that, because it's not only that one year. Once you see something like that, you're afraid it's going to happen every single year. And you see even kids who never experienced that and weren't alive then still get anxiety about fish kills. So you see that like anxiety passed on to future generations where we've never had anything like that happen in our history.

Brook Thompson: 18:43

And I asked my mom what kind of about some of my reactions and stuff at this time and apparently what I told her is to get out her camera and take pictures because I need the rest of the world to see what's going on, which is kind of interesting because I never thought that's something I said at the time, but I also was um occasionally in like Portland, oregon, in the city, and understood that like a lot of people don't understand and I mean this is one of the great things about like the podcast is hopefully you can just even get a sliver of sense of what it's like for me seeing these connections to my ancestors die in front of me and knowing that's way more than you know sports, fishing or whatnot.

Brook Thompson: 19:30

This is about life and death of my culture, my people. But yeah, so that led me to studying engineering, which led me to go into water resource engineering, which is like a subsection of civil, and studying politics, being an intern in the Senate committee on Indian affairs in DC and going into this PhD, and just like every single thing I've had to do since then has been focused on making sure that doesn't happen again. And now it's more so focused on how not only how do we make sure this doesn't happen for my tribe again, but how can other tribes and other places in the world because I've recently been going to the United Nations climate conferences, cop understand these impacts and stop them from starting in the first place?

Steve Taylor: 20:23

Well, thank you for sharing that. I've heard you say in other interviews that salmon in a way can be seen for you and your tribe as the future. There's an identity there. You could even think of it as being associated with teachers or hope. So there's a lot more going on there than what you referred to as sport. Fishing and such a giant salmon kill I'm sure was very difficult to see as a child and that led you on an educational adventure. Let's say You've been very accomplished. You have a degree from Stanford in civil engineering, a master's, a master's degree from Stanford in civil engineering, and you're studying now environmental engineering in a PhD program at University of California, santa Cruz. Is that correct?

Brook Thompson: 21:16

My master's at Stanford is in environmental engineering, with a focus on water resources and hydrology, and then my PhD is in environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, with focusing on salmon nutrition between spring and fall salmon in the Klamath River, also looking at genotyping their DNA to see the differences between how salmon are deciding to come up, as well as making a guidebook on how non-tribal entities can work with tribes for restoration projects to be more successful, and then, finally, on how to better integrate indigenous knowledge into California water policy through interviews with water policy making agencies and tribes from different water regions in California.

Steve Taylor: 21:59

Wow, that's amazing. How do you see your academic track as something that will help you address these cultural issues or these issues regarding the salmon.

Brook Thompson: 22:20

There's so many things I didn't know about academia before going in. It's almost just as much of a struggle being in academia and trying to be heard as there's like not that many indigenous women in academia Like I can tell you right now. And just to be legitimized in those fields has been rough, and people understanding that like I'm not just giving a free pass to college because I'm Native American, like there's a lot of people that don't understand, like Native Americans just don't get like to go to any college for free in the US, and so I've faced a lot of discrimination around that. But the main thing is being legitimized.

Brook Thompson: 23:01

I mean, not only am I learning more, that's giving context to my own culture and understanding of how the salmon and river work, but honestly I feel like a lot of what I say are things that people in my tribe say every day. They just don't get listened to as much because they don't have these fancy letters behind their name or didn't go to prestigious schools like Stanford, and so it's kind of been a strategic move on my part to be like, hey, I'm going to go through all this academia and see how this Western science lines up with my worldview and my understanding of the culture and being this kind of coming together of two worlds and, at the end of the day, just, you know, trying to be the best interpreter I can for my people and what our understanding is of the world and what's happening to us, versus all these people who use these really big words. I've been studying law and engineering and we love big words and acronyms, and trying to translate those two is, I think, where I'm finding my specialty.

Steve Taylor: 24:08

But yeah, it's just two worlds that don't align very much when you're outside of academia, academic or policymaking spaces uh and been able to uh share um your cultural perspective when it comes to policies regarding rivers.

Brook Thompson: 24:32

Yeah, I mean, I sure hope so. I was an intern for Save California Salmon and they do a really good job at getting people to hearing, so one of the ones that stick out for me is with um Game is at CDFW, california Department of Fish and Wildlife California Department of Fish and Wildlife again acronyms where there is a meeting from a crew petition to classify the spring salmon as separate from the fall salmon in the Klamath River, and this is one thing that kind of kicked off my PhD. Fall salmon in the Klamath River and this is one thing that kind of kicked off my PhD. And in that there was initially not that many people going to the hearings to make comments. But one of the things I do know that's outside of academia is in the language in the Yurok and in Karuk there's two separate words for spring and fall salmon, and so I was trying to get people from the tribes to go to the hearing and comment on this as backing up the genetic information that the petition was based on. Because for me that's kind of the sweet spot is you have this hard data that tells you insight in the world and then you have this cultural data from thousands of years of insight and observation that could back this up, to be more legitimate when you have missing parts in the hard data. And so we went to that and gave our testimony and I think there was like 20 plus people who came, so that was a really good turnout and thankfully it passed, and so that was really exciting.

Brook Thompson: 26:07

But on the flip side of that, there was a comment made that, because it wasn't specifically laid out in what was allowed in decision making, that indigenous knowledge cannot necessarily be taken into consideration just by how that policy, how their decision making procedure, works out, and so for. For me, I was like, okay, this is something that could be beneficial to everyone to have extra data and extra understanding and context when making these decisions. And if this is just you know, there wasn't any indigenous peoples when writing these policies, probably at the start. So I will want to see where in California policy decisions with around water, there's these holes that could be have decisions better be made with indigenous input, where that is where it's missing and where it can be in the future, and so hence, like my PhD, but other than that I I feel like I'm just like a smaller part in the bigger picture. Right, it's all about community and not one person protesting or making decisions or pushing. It's about everyone together supporting each other in our collective voice. That really makes differences.

Steve Taylor: 27:18

You brought your expertise to COP27 in Egypt. Tell us what you did there.

Brook Thompson: 27:24

I went with a delegation, with my tribe, where we one. It was a lot of meeting other people from different parts of the world but had similar issues, like I talked on panels and gave my perspectives on dams and hydropower with other countries from Africa and South America and Europe who were also having the rivers dammed and hydropower, with other countries from Africa and South America and Europe who are also having the rivers dammed and seeing environmental impacts from them. But for me, one of the biggest things that stood out is the countries that aren't currently facing the impact from dams but are going to see the impacts from dams Because dams and hydroelectric is considered renewable energy and all these countries have this renewable energy goal they're trying to reach and one way to do that is through hydroelectric and I feel like hydroelectric is really being pushed right now as renewable energy and maybe because of the urgency of climate change, et cetera, some of the decisions around the engineering for it is not taking enough consideration to Indigenous peoples. For me and you'll see this time and time again where a project can be built in a different place that will have impacts on a larger population or not even necessarily a larger population, but a non-Indigenous population, let's say, and yet the project keeps getting built in an indigenous area and hurts that local tribe, and maybe doesn't even consider anything like fish ladders, like these small things that can be improved with a little more design, time and money, but just get skipped over for the sake of getting the project done under budget on time, et cetera.

Brook Thompson: 29:06

And to me that's ridiculous, because we really, we all need indigenous leadership in the time of climate change, since indigenous peoples are the ones who learned how to live sustainably since time immemorial and we're really not the ones that put ourselves in the situation worldwide.

Brook Thompson: 29:23

And yet I think we have a lot of tools that can help us get us out of the current situation, put ourselves in this situation worldwide, and yet I think we have a lot of tools that can help us get us out of the current situation we're in.

Brook Thompson: 29:28

But if we're continuing to hurt indigenous populations with these renewable energy projects, then how are we going to help be climate leaders when we're trying to survive on a daily basis from the effects of larger corporations who are doing this? And it's going to be larger corporations who get money to put these in who then continue to profit, and we're just going to keep perpetuating the thing that's been going wrong the last few hundred years, instead of changing our tactics and doing what has been proven to work versus continuing our old games. You know it's so, that's. That's a lot of. What going to the nine nations was for me is understanding not only the impact dams have had previously and water, but also where the future is going and concerns of how we can make that better versus some fall points that I'm seeing us move towards to as a global community.

Steve Taylor: 30:23

Well, and I've interviewed other people who have been a party to UN conferences and the COP process and I think there's a consistent criticism that indigenous voices aren't heard, that there's. Actually, some of the solutions being proposed have a disproportionate amount of impact on indigenous communities, negative ones, and it's sort of like you know, these indigenous communities are least responsible for climate change, yet they're having to absorb a lot of the onus of trying to correct it. Yeah, exactly, I mean kind of what I was saying.

Brook Thompson: 31:03

Indigenous peoples protect around 80% of the onus of trying to correct it. Yeah, exactly I mean kind of what I was saying. Indigenous peoples protect around 80% of the earth's biodiversity and yeah, at the university that's like all anyone in my program in environmental studies is trying to do is protect environmental diversity or in conservation. And I'm just like why maybe I'll get in trouble for saying this so like, at some level, like you know high up, why do people who don't have connection to the land and those places but have the ability to go to school and university and know how have to be the ones researching these areas, versus giving these local communities who've been doing it forever and have this big relationship where it's not going to be like a five-year PhD but it's going to be their entire lives, and give them the resources to continue protecting what they have been already? And again, it's just so hard because I know so many people who would be so good in these positions and have these great conversations. But even simple things like not having a passport, it's not like that's something that's described to us how to get or why that's important, like in the tribe, and it's so simple barriers that make it really difficult to have these larger conversations.

Brook Thompson: 32:20

But for me, like I've traveled to, I think, 14 plus countries now and so much of what I've seen, what I've gone through personally, I've seen in other countries with the indigenous communities, with the repercussions of colonization, and I I just want to be a part of the solution and I want indigenous people to be a part of the solution, since we know how, and it's just this history of colonization and being othered and not having power and influence through money and companies, because native businesses have like almost like.

Brook Thompson: 32:54

I think it's like well, it's something ridiculous. It's a very small percentage of all corporate businesses and I've seen tribes, like in North Dakota area, try to start up like windmill company or what's it called, wind turbine companies, et cetera, since they have land that's beneficial for it, and all of these structural barriers are coming across that other companies wouldn't necessarily have. And I just wish we were listened to more. I feel like we're kind of treated like kids at some level in the international stage, when I feel like we should be more so treated like elders and the ones who've been doing things the right way, in a sense.

Steve Taylor: 33:34

Let me ask you this how about micro plastics and fish? What are we eating when we eat fish nowadays?

Brook Thompson: 33:41

Oh, man, that's. I have a lot of perspectives on it. I'll give a disclaimer that that's technically out of my wheelhouse. So take everything I say with a grain of. That's technically out of my wheelhouse. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Steve Taylor: 33:52

But or a grain of plastic.

Brook Thompson: 33:54

Yeah, a grain of plastic. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is doing a lot of work on that. So if you're in California, I recommend stopping there because they have a lot of great information. And that was something I was considering doing actually for part of my research, but I think I'm going to postpone on it because plastic is so recent that we're really starting just starting to understand the effects on human health, and so for me I don't want to get too deep into it until I really understand the repercussions of it, because it's one thing to know how much we're eating and how much stays in our body, but it's another thing to know the long-term effects, and we just don't have that information completely yet.

Brook Thompson: 34:35

But there there is evidence that there is plastic microplastics that stay in salmon meat and in different parts of the salmon. So there's evidence that microplastics and fish also accumulate in different parts of animals. So, for example, some fish, it can accumulate more in the eyes tissue, for example. And if you're a community that eats fish eyes like in my tribe, where we do occasionally, I sometimes I get scared to eat the fish eyes. My grandpa always said too, but like scary looking. Um, you know, are certain communities like indigenous peoples who are eating more of these fish can ingesting more of these plastics. And there's this really good book I recommend that's called pollution is colonialism and that book specifically goes about microplastics and indigenous communities and maybe that's the one you can find to interview in the future.

Brook Thompson: 35:32

But talking about how we've pretty much given okay on pollution to a certain amount, right, we have these levels we created where it's like you can pollute up to this amount and without long-term effects. And then companies have kind of taken that as like, okay, pollute to this amount, don't care about anything else before that. But with plastics there's not really like a safe level to pollute to. It should be zero, there shouldn't have plastics in the environment at all. And yet we have this mindset of there's a certain amount, that's okay. And it's interesting how our conceptual understanding of plastics or what's okay with pollution affects our legislation and how we pretty much maintain these lifestyles. But it's that we're eating it. You probably don't know you're eating it and we don't know how it's going to affect us long term yet. So we're all part of a fun science experiment that we'll see what happens.

Steve Taylor: 36:37

How do you think the indigenous perspective could influence policymaking, or should influence policymaking?

Brook Thompson: 36:44

Yeah. So for I mean for me again can't talk for all indigenous peoples and not even my tribe, I can only speak for myself. But I think if there's more indigenous perspectives and policy, that we'd be a lot better off long term. Again one because of, like a longer term mindset for example, seven generations, and if we had to consider what all our policy decisions had impacts on seven generations ahead of us, I think some of our decisions would be different currently, in addition to having valuing larger perspectives, so valuing perspectives of not only elders but kids and people who are two-spirit, so people who are part of the LGBTQ plus community and have different abilities, so like disabled community members in the legislation process as well. So if we heard from all their opinions and weighted them equally, and not just that we're giving a seat where they'll be heard and then we may or may not consider it, that would also influence how policy is made and be more equitable, because it would be more representative of the general population and take into account these populations that are often harmed the most and considered the least when policy is being made, especially with our current demographic, which is right.

Brook Thompson: 38:00

Everyone knows it's like mainly old dudes in legislation, but especially at the federal level. So, yeah, just like even those simple things and you know, taking into consideration the plants and animals, and even like rocks in my culture, having personhood or spirituality and the right to be here as well, and those perspectives don't only protect those beings, they also protect ourselves because, right, when the salmon do well, for example, we do well, and when we do poorly, also the salmon do poorly, it both ways and we act like that's not how it is because of technological advances that help us displace these costs that still have costs on other groups and people in long term. But my short answer is it would be better. There needs to be more indigenous representation and indigenous perspective in legislation.

Steve Taylor: 38:54

If there's a young indigenous person out there considering the path you have taken in academia, would you recommend it? What would you say?

Brook Thompson: 39:13

oh man, like I'd say, I recommend it. But I would say, make sure you have a good community because, again, it's, it's not going to be one person who makes the difference in the future. It's going to be all of us supporting each other. Right? I can't take on every single water policy, like specific law, etc. In california and be like, okay, I have all the answers.

Brook Thompson: 39:26

I did the research, here's what we got to do. No, it's, I'm gonna probably have a good understanding of a few things, but I'm going to need a lot more people to have that understanding of everything that I can't look at, cause I'm only one person, and what's going to happen is I am going to want to need to like support those people and I'm going to need their support as well, and that can be as simple as like making each other dinner or just having time to relax and talk about our culture, do beadwork together. So I'd recommend it. It's definitely a lot harder than I thought it would be, but as long as you have people who can stand up for you, people who can have your back and support you when you need it the most, then it's worth it, and I hope to be one of those people at the moment.

Brook Thompson: 40:13

So, but I I really hope there'll be much more in the future. And so again, do it. These institutions and places are lucky to have you. You're not like it's not just that you're lucky to be there. They're lucky to have you there and know that. You know people like me will hopefully be a little bit further along trying to help you out when you get to my place.

Steve Taylor: 40:35

For those who want to know more about your career or how they can help in the cause. Where can they find out more?

Brook Thompson: 40:42

Yeah. So to find out more and to keep hearing updates, please follow me at Brooke M Thompson on Tik TOK or Brooke, underscore M. Underscore Thompson that's B R O O K. Underscore M as in Morgan. Underscore T H O M P S O N on Instagram. Or, if you want to help out me personally, you can buy a salmon or lamb prey stuffed animal that I've designed and make myself, and so on Thompson ThompsonTeachingscom, where you can learn more about conservation of salmon and lamb prey. 5% of my net profits of the salmon stuffed animal goes to Save California Salmon Lamb Prey Conservancy anywhere that helps out with conserving these animals. And also, you know you can just spread the information through those ways. But whether you follow me or not, hopefully we'll cross paths sometimes in the future and I'll in the future, have a better understanding of everything that's going on with water policy in California and we'll be making those strides together to make it better tomorrow.

Steve Taylor: 41:45

Brooke Thompson. Thank you for joining us at Breaking Green.

Brook Thompson: 41:48

Yeah, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Steve Taylor: 41:51

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