Last summer, 28 Indigenous teenagers became the first in a century to kayak the full length of the Klamath River — traveling more than 300 miles from the river’s headwaters in southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California. Their journey follows decades of advocacy by Klamath River tribes to remove a series of dams that had reshaped the river since the early 1900s. … The teens — ages 13-20 — embarked on a month-long expedition documented by producer and Karuk tribe member Jessie Sears in the Oregon Public Broadcast film First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath. Sears and paddler Tasia Linwood spoke with The California Report Magazine about what it took to make the journey — and what it means to move through a river that is still finding its way back.