Friday June 17, 2022
KUNR —
On a hot spring day on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Reservation in Northern Nevada, clouds hung over miles of remote desert land while mountain ranges pierced the overcast sky.
At the edge of a bluff, tribal member Susan Albright looked down at the Truckee River. Its cold, clear waters come from melting snow on the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Albright, who works for the tribe’s natural resources department, caught fish in those waters as a child.
“We used to go to the mouth of the lake and just throw triple hooks out there and grab a bunch of fish and come back,” Albright said. “That’s our lifestyle. That was what everybody ate.”
Specifically, they ate Lahontan cutthroat trout, Nevada’s state fish, and cui-ui, which aren’t found anywhere else in the world. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe refer to themselves as the Cui-ui Tucutta in their Native language, which means “the cui-ui eaters.”