Episode 43

In this episode of Full Expression, host Dan Imhoff sits down with Amy Bowers Cordalis—Yurok attorney, activist, and author of The Water Remembers—for a conversation about storytelling, sovereignty, and the long fight to restore a river.

Amy traces her journey from growing up between Ashland and the Klamath River to becoming a leading legal voice in one of the largest dam removal and salmon restoration efforts in history. At the center of the conversation is an intergenerational story: a family, a tribe, and a river bound together through culture, survival, and resistance.

They explore Amy’s creative process, how she translated oral storytelling traditions into a “circular” narrative form, and the challenge of writing a book that carries both personal memory and collective history.

The conversation also dives into the deeper stakes behind the story: the history of dispossession, the criminalization of Indigenous lifeways, and the decades-long legal and grassroots battle that ultimately led to the removal of four dams on the Klamath River. It’s not just a story of environmental restoration, but of cultural survival and hard-won victory.

GUEST WEBSITE: www.amybowerscordalis.com