The Spiritual Edge

We apologize — the previously uploaded Chapter 11 has an audio glitch. It's now been corrected. To make sure everyone can access the corrected audio, we are uploading it again, here.  Spurred by drought, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service accelerates a plan to restore winter-run Chinook salmon to the McCloud River. Chief Caleen Sisk weighs whether to collaborate with federal officials. Salmon spotted on Dry Creek for the first time in 30 years are celebrated as an answer to the Winnemem Wintu’s Run4Salmon prayer.

Spurred by drought, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service accelerates a plan to restore winter-run Chinook salmon to the McCloud River. Chief Caleen Sisk weighs whether to collaborate with federal officials. Salmon spotted on Dry Creek for the first time in 30 years are celebrated as an answer to the Winnemem Wintu’s Run4Salmon prayer.

The Winnemem Wintu board a plane bound for Christchurch, New Zealand. With the help of the Maori people, they hold a ceremony on the Rikkaia River and sing to the salmon there. Once back in the United States, Chief Caleen Sisk meets with every government agency she can to push the idea of bringing the New Zealand salmon back home.

When plans for the Shasta Dam Enlargement Project accelerate, the Winnemem Wintu decide to hold a war dance, their first in more than 100 years. Members of the community dream into existence songs, dances and regalia. News of the ceremony, and the tribe that declared war against the U.S. government on top of Shasta Dam, goes around the world. That leads to an unexpected message from Down Under.  

At a sacred spring high up on Mt. Shasta, the Winnemem Wintu recount the beginnings of the world when salmon gave up their voices so that humans could speak. They now feel a special obligation to defend salmon in return for this gift. A biologist details Chinook salmon’s catastrophic decline since the arrival of Euro-American settlers to California and the Northwest.  

In Part III, we follow the Winnemem Wintu's fight to return salmon to their river, the McCloud. That fight is predicated on strong spiritual and cultural ties to the fish. In the old days, they lit fires alongside the river to help them find their way. But with salmon no longer swimming in the McCloud River, the Winnemem Wintu feel a moral and spiritual obligation to bring them back. The journey is full of ups and downs and includes war dances. border crossings. trucks carrying fish. and ultimately, to everyone’s surprise, salmon eggs hatching in the McCloud River for the first time in about 80 years.

The Run4Salmon bikes through rural areas in the upper Sacramento Valley where Euro American settlers changed the land to better suit an agrarian economy. The Winnemem Wintu and supporters remember the indigenous people who were forcibly removed and killed. An apology in Redding for the genocide may be well intentioned, but Chief Caleen Sisk insists action must accompany words.  

As the Run4Salmon continues to travel upstream, the Winnemem Wintu and supporters witness more obstacles faced by migrating salmon. Once a vast marshland, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta was an important haven for juvenile salmon, but now is a gauntlet of human engineering. Chief Caleen Sisk stands up for salmon and water health at a bureaucratic meeting of Sacramento Valley water districts.

The Winnemem Wintu and supporters start a two-week Run4Salmon prayer to call salmon back to the waters above Shasta Dam. The Run follows the salmon’s migration path from the ocean to the mountains. It starts in the Bay Area where the Winnemem Wintu and supporters encounter environmental devastation first set in motion 200 years ago.  

In Part II, we shift the focus away from the fight against a bigger dam and towards a different struggle: for salmon. The Winnemem Wintu feel a close connection to salmon, a keystone species that impacts the well-being of other creatures and habitat around them. They miss them on the McCloud River where their ancestors fished. We journey alongside the Winnemem Wintu through the San Francisco Bay and up the Sacramento River to witness the obstacles faced by the fish. Along the way, we learn about the historical events that have shaped these waterways and threatened the continued existence of Chinook salmon populations here.

An elder remembers indigenous life back before Shasta Dam was built. The legality of the proposal to raise Shasta Dam is considered. Meanwhile, Chief Caleen Sisk considers a new strategy to fight back: turning an adversary — the Westlands Water District — into an ally.

We go to Shasta Dam and learn about the history behind its construction in the 1930s and 1940s. We hear from Chief Caleen Sisk about how the federal proposal to raise the dam another 18 and a half feet opens old wounds for the Winnemem Wintu and further threatens their tenuous survival.

We accompany the Winnemem Wintu to sacred sites near the McCloud River. The federal government’s Shasta Dam and Reservoir Expansion Proposal threatens these sites and the Winnemem Wintu way of life.

In a peaceful protest, the Winnemem Wintu call out the U.S. government for its refusal to acknowledge the destruction caused by Shasta Dam. The protest at the Shasta Dam Visitor Center reveals the Winnemem Wintu’s ongoing reality. They are ignored and later a security guard threatens to forcibly remove them.

A Prayer for Salmon is coming soon! The series, which has been five-and-a-half years in the making, follows the Winnemem Wintu people as they resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project that would flood their sacred sites, and fight to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam. Over the course of the eleven episodes, A Prayer For Salmon investigates the Shasta Dam and Reservoir Enlargement Project, which gained traction during the Trump years and proposes to raise the 602-foot dam even higher, which would flood important Winnemem Wintu sacred sites. Episodes then take listeners on a journey with the Winnemem Wintu and allies who walk, run, bike and boat on a two-week, 300-mile Run Salmon ceremony that follows the migration of Chinook salmon from the Pacific Ocean to historical spawning grounds above Shasta Dam. The podcast also follows the Winnemem Wintu’s nearly two-decade attempt to return Chinook salmon that originated in California, but now swim in New Zealand, to the heart of their homelands on the McCloud River where salmon have not swum for nearly 80 years.

A Prayer for Salmon is a new audio documentary series from The Spiritual Edge podcast that tells the story of the Winnemem Wintu people of Northern California and their clash with Shasta Dam. The dam’s construction turned California into an agricultural powerhouse, but it left the Winnemem homeless and without say over their land. The series details the Winnemem’s fight to resist a proposed Shasta Dam Enlargement Project. It also highlights the Winnemem's aspiration to return Chinook salmon to their homeland on the McCloud River, a major tributary of the dam. We will investigate the Shasta Dam Enlargement Project, which gained traction during the Trump years and proposes to raise the 602-foot dam even higher. It's an alarming prospect for the Winnemem who worry they'll lose sacred sites critical for their way of life. We then travel with the Winnemem and allies on a two-week, 300-mile Run4Salmon ceremony as they walk, run, bike and boat, following the migration of Chinook salmon from the Pacific Ocean up the Sacramento River to spawning grounds. Along the way, we study the environmental and political issues that threaten the survival of salmon, whose numbers plummeted after Shasta Dam was built. The Winnemem believe caring for the salmon is their spiritual and moral obligation and that their two fates are linked. This isn’t necessarily going to be a piece of traditional journalism where you hear from one side and then you hear from the other. The way we think about is that colonial ideology is inextricably entwined with the American way of life. With it, comes assumptions about history, culture and property that most of us don’t question. We all know that point of view. So we invite you to listen to A Prayer for Salmon with an open mind. Allow yourself to walk in the shoes of another culture. Our hope is that you will come away with an understanding of the Winnemem Wintu, who they are and what they’re fighting for — and what all of us will lose if they disappear. A Prayer for Salmon drops August 2022.

A week from now Muslims all around the world will begin observing the holy month of Ramadan. We thought this was a good time to share our one-hour documentary version of Becoming Muslim with you.  You could say it's our latest season in distilled form. We tell the stories of some unlikely converts to Islam and what happens to them after. In case you missed the full 8-episode series this is another way you can listen. In the documentary, Hana Baba walks us through the stories of four Americans who have chosen Islam and the joys and challenges of their lives after conversion.

How did Islam first arrive on the North American continent? Did enslaved West Africans bring it to America? Or did Muslims sail with Christopher Columbus first? Later, Islam spread in the United States, among various communities. How did that happen? In this BONUS conversation that's part of the Becoming Muslim series, host Hana Baba dives into the history of Islam in America with Dr. Edward E. Curtis IV, a scholar of Muslim American, African American and Arab American history and life.

Aaron Siebert-Llera and Raul Gonzalez both live in the Chicago area and both converted to Islam twenty years ago. And both have been trying to answer the question of how to reconcile their identity as Latinos — and Muslims — ever since.

Sofie Lovern is a Latina convert and comedienne who learned the difficulty of trying to merge two very different cultures in a marriage, even when their religions were the same.  Her struggle with marriage is not uncommon with new convert women who are often rushed into marriage. Her marriage fails, but her comedy brings her through it all. She emerges unmarried but still Muslim.