June 6, 2023: Duane Dotts, board member of Cast Hope, and his wife are teaching the NTHS Fly Fishing Club. how to make a Zebra Midge and San Juan Worm. Bottom left (adaptive equipment for visually impaired to magnify what Dotts is demonstrating). Photo credit: Leslie Hsu Oh.
Kyra: Flyfishing with Indigenous Youth
Girl Scout Gold Award Class of 2024
I was raised with the understanding that the natural world is composed not of “resources” but of “relatives.” My Navajo Grandma Ursula Knoki-Wilson taught me that everything has a spirit and needs to be respected. My Tlingit Grandma Elaine Abraham had said, “This is a good time for our young people to champion for change. If we don’t take care of our land, then the next generation will not have what we have now. It’s time for each one of us to make that difference.”
In high school, I tried to make that difference as an active member and President of the Envirolution Club. I collected water samples throughout our watershed and mailed them every month to Science on the Fly. During peak summer times, you’ll find me stationed at beaches, trailheads, and visitor centers around Lake Tahoe with a Lake Tahoe Ambassador vest on educating residents and visitors about the importance of leave no trace, recreating responsibly, and modeling good stewardship. For the past five years, I volunteered on Truckee River Day which has restored 2179 acres of degraded meadows and forests and 58 miles of roads and streambanks since 1996. Building upon all these experiences, my Gold Award tackles the global issue of protecting watersheds.
According to the Truckee River Watershed Council, "A watershed is a process. Not just a place. Every raindrop, every snowflake that falls into our watershed is on a journey. And everything in its path plays a role. The watershed process is an intricate balance of four key factors: filtration and storage, erosion control, flood attenuation and habitat. But when outside forces - from human intervention - interfere, this natural process is often impeded."
While most watersheds drain into the ocean, the Truckee River watershed begins with Lake Tahoe, drains into Truckee River, then terminates in Kooyooe Pa'a Panunadu (Pyramid Lake), a world-class destination for the largest species of cutthroat trout and the only habitat in the world for the ancient Cui-iu fish. Both the Derby Dam built in 1905 and the Numana Dam built in 1917 blocked these fish from their spawning grounds and dropped the level of Pyramid Lake by 80 feet. By 1943, the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout became extinct and the Cui-iu fish endangered.
Entirely enclosed within the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe reservation, the lake is the tribe’s greatest asset. Much of their economy depends on boat and fishing licenses, camping fees, lease and tax revenue. However, the percentage of people living below the poverty line is double the rate in the United States and there are only two Paiute off-shore fly fishing guides: Autumn Harry (Numu and Diné) and Marvin Racine (Numu). Based upon the success of the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing and Guide Academy that has been running since 2008 and Medicine Fish, founded recently by Bryant Waupoose (Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin), who keeps the young men of his tribe out-of-trouble with fly fishing on the weekends and summer, I believe that the youth of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe would benefit from receiving free fly fishing rods.
After Harry, Racine, and Waupoose joined my Gold Award Team, I did a needs assessment locally to see if there were existing programs similar to what I had in mind. I partnered with Cast Hope, a nonprofit that provides outdoor experiences to at-risk youth through fly fishing, because they had already given away 35 fly fishing rods to indigenous youth at one of Marvin’s Pyramid Lake monthly fishing clinics in 2022 and then never heard from any of the recipients. Matt Heron, their Regional Director, asked me to improve retention. I asked him to be my Project Advisor.
In Fall of 2022, my brother, Ethan Oh (Boy Scout and freshman), and I founded the first fly fishing club at North Tahoe High School. Our high school is Title 1, meaning it has a high number of low-income students, the ideal target audience for Cast Hope. We wanted our peers who fish in our Truckee River watershed to understand through guest lectures, fishing with local indigenous youth, and environmental stewardship, how their actions impact people who live downstream. I recruited Ms. Jennifer Jurosky as our club advisor. She has been teaching social studies for 25 years and often recognized by Tahoe Truckee Unified School District as Teacher of the Year. It was a joy to see her catch her first fish on a fly at the end of our first season. We hold our speaker series, meetings, fly tying workshops, and store our gear in her classroom. She envisions this club running long after my brother and I graduated.
I'm fly fishing on a ladder chair seated alongside kids who just received a new fly fishing rod from Cast Hope and members of the North Tahoe High School Fly Fishing Club. Some of these kids grew up on the shores of this lake but never fly fished before. Photo credit: Leslie Hsu Oh.
November 19, 2023: Under Matt Heron’s tutelage, Terrance Sarabia (Numu) catches and releases a rainbow trout first on the Truckee River. Then helps his fishing buddy, Ethan Oh, President of the NTHS fly fishing Club catch one too. Photo credit: Leslie Hsu Oh.
In three years, we’ve distributed 105 rods to indigenous youth at Pyramid Lake. On February 19, 2023, 30% Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, 26% Washoe, 8.7% Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and 8.7% Walker River Paiute Tribe received rods and we were able to take three Paiute recipients fishing for the first time on a river and six Washoe kids to Pyramid Lake. We were able to improve retention from 0 to 40%. On March 16, 2024, we gave fly fishing rods to 28% Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, 28% Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, 18% Washoe, 13% did not declare, and 7.7% Walker River Paiute Tribe and one rod recipient from Moose Cree First Nation from Northern Ontario Canada. On that day, the number of attendees increased to nearly 200 and on their own initiative, Reno-Sparks Indian Colony’s Language and Culture program set up a booth at our event and taught three different languages: Washoe, Paiute, Shoshone. Several Elders offered blessings and spoke with tears in their eyes about how they haven’t seen their community gather like this with all these kids in a long time. It was definitely a proud moment to see fly fishing revitalize language and culture, especially when I heard it was happening in Alaska and Wisconsin too. I was also pleased to see that we were able to make fly fishing accessible to a member of our club who is visually impaired. Cast Hope volunteer John Roberts successfully coached this visually impaired student with alternatives to sensing whether a fish was on the line since he couldn't see the bobber. Our whole club witnessed the moment he caught his first fish on a rod.
With the reclamation of land and water and revitalization of language and culture that I’m seeing in Alaska, Wisconsin, and Nevada, I now understand what Grandma Ursula and Elaine meant by how everything is connected.
