Seattle Times/Associated Press: report a study of youth in Oregon and their growing anxiety and depression due to wildfires, smoke, scarily high heatwaves and disappearing wild salmon:
"The report underlines that marginalized communities are more likely to experience adverse health effects from climate change, and notes that “emerging research is showing similar disproportionate burdens in terms of mental health.”
Te Maia Wiki, another high school student in Ashland, touched on this.
“For me, it’s important to mention that I’m Indigenous,” she said. The 16-year-old’s mother is Yurok, an Indigenous people from Northern California along the Pacific coast and the Klamath River.
“In my mother’s generation, when she was growing up, she would go to traditional ceremonies and have smoked salmon that was fished traditionally by our people on our river which we have fished at since time immemorial,” Wiki said. “In my lifetime, eating that fish, seeing that smoked salmon in our ceremonies, is scarce. This is a full spiritual, emotional and physical embodiment of how I am stressed out by this and how this impacts me.”
For more, read my nonfiction book "Rough Waters: Alaska to Oregon"
