Shasta Indian Nation and the
K’íkac’éki District Sacred Landscape
The lands of northwestern California and southwestern Oregon, has been, and still is, the traditional homeland of the Shasta Indian people. Most traditional Shasta villages were located along the Klamath, Shasta, Salmon, and Scott Rivers, and their tributaries.
Forced off of our lands during the Gold Rush in the mid 1800’s, Shasta Indians began a concerted effort to acquire or control the land including the K’íka·c’é·ki District Sacred Landscape. By the late 1880s, our ancestors owned outright or tacitly controlled a significant portion of the lands that would become submerged by the Klamath Dams.
THE LOSS OF OUR ANCESTRAL LANDS
In the early 1900s, planning began for the construction of Copco No. 1 Dam at the Íkwík fishing site along the Klamath River, which would flood the valley. In 1911, most of the lands owned and controlled by our ancestors were taken by eminent domain. Our people did not leave willingly. The dam construction was devastating to our people and it eliminated the land base that our elders had worked so hard to create.
HEALING THE RIVER, HEALING OUR PEOPLE
Following the construction of the Klamath River Dams, some Tribal members relocated to the nearby town of Hornbrook and throughout Siskiyou county. Maintaining our culture from afar. Over a century later, we were able to return home. In 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that following the completion of dam removal, 2,800 acres of our homelands were to be returned to us.