Portland State Magazine Winter 2016

18 pORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE winter 2016 BROOK THOMPSON was seven years old when 34,000 salmon died on the Klamath River. She remembers walking down the beach among rows and rows of rotting fish as far as she could see. Drought and low water flow from a dam had contributed to the die-off on the Yurok Reservation in Northern California, where she spent summers with her dad. “It had a bad omen feeling,” she says. “That was really hard for me, because fish are everything in the tribe pretty much.” That summer there wasn’t enough fish to eat, smoke and sell, so the whole tribe felt the economic and cultural hit all year long. Thompson, now 20 and a sophomore at Portland State, draws on this early experience to explain why she works so hard in school: She wants to improve the environmental, economic and social conditions for her tribe and others. Her determination has paid off with a full-ride Gates scholarship, acceptance to PSU’s Urban Honors College, a spot on the Dean’s List each term in her freshman year, and a chance to study abroad in New Zealand. She credits PSU with giving her all the support she needs to succeed. “Even though it is stressful, it is a lot better because of the great resources PSU has,” she says. “I haven’t had a bad teacher yet. I’m not just taking the classes; I’m really learning the content.” THOMPSON witnessed the effects of poverty and environmental damage from an early age. She developed a strong connection to her tribe and its land by participating in traditional dances, interning in her tribe’s education office, and learning the Yurok language from her grandfather, one of the last native speakers. She’s had a commercial fishing license since age 12. “Anytime you pick a plant, you say ‘thank you’ to it, and you pray every time you kill a living thing,” she says. “You think about the generations ahead of you.” When she was five, Thompson moved to Portland with her mother and visited her dad on the reservation during school breaks. In the city, she doesn’t see the same ties between the people and the land. She hopes to ease the impact of cities on the environment by studying civil engineering at PSU and someday designing green buildings with zero net energy consumption. her her trib WRITTEN BY SUZANNE PARDINGTON Brook Thompson, a member of the Yurok Tribe, could have gone to any university with her Gates Scholarship but chose Portland State.