General Speaker Bio
Brook Thompson is from the Yurok and Karuk Tribes of Northern California. Brook is a Ph.D. student, scientist, engineer, author, activist, and artist. Growing up Brook spent her time fishing for salmon on the Klamath River like her ancestors before her when she witnessing the heart-breaking 2002 fish kill, the largest fish kill in West Coast history. The death of tens of thousand salmon is what has motivated her career in water engineering and activism. In 2020 Brook graduated Portland State University's Honors College with a bachelor of science in civil engineering with a minor in political science, in 2022 she received a master’s in environmental engineering from Stanford University with a focus in water resources and hydrology. Brook now attends UC Santa Cruz working on her Ph.D. in environmental studies with a designated emphasis in Coastal Science and Policy where she researches Spring Chinook Salmon and Restoration in the Klamath River with interdisciplinary social science, natural science, and policy methodology. While attending university full time over the last decade she has also interned at the Yurok Tribe, the City of Portland, the United States Senate, the California State Water Resource Control Board, a current board member of Save California Salmon, and is an international public speaker. Among other accolades Brook is a 2024 NDN Collective Change Maker, a 2023 Ford Foundation Fellow, a 2022 Native Journalism Award Winner, a 2020 United National Indian Tribal Youth 25 Under 25 Recipient, was the 2017 Undergraduate American Indian Graduate Center Student of the Year, and a Gates Millennium Scholar. In 2025 her Children's Book about her life titled, "I Love Salmon and Lampreys" was published. Thompson’s goal is to uplift the nexus of Native American knowledge, engineering, public policy, and social action to transform how water rights, restoration, education, and climate change are approached at the local and international levels.
Pronouns (She/They)
Yurok is pronounced like ["Yur-rock"] and Karuk is pronounced like ["Car-rook"]
Children's Book Bio for Elementary Schools
Brook Thompson is from the Yurok (pronounced like "Yur-rock") and Karuk (pronounced like "Car-rook") Native American Tribes of Northern California. Miss Thompson is an author, scientist, engineer, activist, artist, and a Ph.D. student at University of California Santa Cruz. A Ph.D. student means that she is still going to school, she would be in about 23rd grade. She is doing this so she can one day to be Dr. Thompson. She also has a college science degrees in engineering from Stanford University and Portland State University. Miss Thompson grew up in Klamath, California and Portland, Oregon. Miss Thompson is our author for today and her book is a true story about her life growing up along the Klamath River and her and her tribe's connection to salmon and lampreys when she was about your age.
Artist Bio
Brook Thompson is a Yurok and Karuk Indigenous Ph.D. student at University of California Santa Cruz studying Chinook Salmon in the Klamath River in Northern California where she grew up fishing with her family like her ancestors have since time immemorial. Thompson is inspired by her Californian Native American culture, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), science, engineering, disability, community, and nature. She uses a multitude of mediums including beadwork, digital art, acrylics, paint pens, animation, digital photography, water colors, textiles, tree roots, and more. The combination and mixing of art with science is important to Miss Thompson because she believes Yurok artwork and crafts are full of scientific understanding and that art and science are not two separate skills, but instead two sides of one coin that benefit from one another.
