[8][9] American ethnologist George Gibbs first recorded the term as 'Yourrk' while traveling with Col. Redick McKee in 1851, and mistakenly used it as the name of the tribe in his book, Observations on the Indians of the Klamath River and Humboldt Bay, Accompanying Vocabularies of Their Languages, published in 1887.

However, all these terms were merely practical descriptions of how to get to or from a village location within the Ancestral Land of the Yurok Tribe; the Pue-lik-lo', Pey-cheek-lo' and Ner-'er-ner' were, and are, all still Oohl.

[10] This forest management has significantly disempowered the Yurok people and disrupted their ability to access natural resources, land, and practice Indigenous lifeways.

[14] There are descriptions of some contact being made with Californian Indians as far back as June 1579 by Francis Drake and the crew of the Golden Hind.

[14] Following encounters with white settlers moving into their aboriginal lands during a gold rush in 1850, the Yurok were faced with disease and massacres that reduced their population by 75%.

"[18] The Resighini Rancheria attempted to challenge the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act in 1992 case Shermoen v. United States, 982 F.2d 1312, 1314 (9th Cir.

[20] The tribe's involvement in condor reintroduction, along with traditional burning, environmental restoration, wildfire preparedness, the drought, and juvenile fish kill, was discussed with Governor Gavin Newsom when he visited in June 2021.

[22] The Yurok Tribe Construction Corporation has several projects that it is taking part in at the moment, including Orick Mill, Coffee Creek, Heliwood, Oregon Gulch and Condor Aviation.

[26] Using the cap-and-trade scheme, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) issues one offset credit ($12) for each metric ton the Yurok can prove its forests have sequestered.

[25] After starting negotiations in 2010, the Yurok have paid off loans, supported schools, youth programming, housing, road improvement and off-reservation businesses through carbon sequestration.

[26] Through working with companies and organisations such as New Forests and The Trust for Public Land, the Yurok will employ a blend of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western science to re-create the environmental conditions that existed in this region.

[25] Tribal member Marty Lamebear agreed that the carbon project had brought in money but said: "They buy our air, so they can, you know, pollute theirs.

Robert Hemstead, vice-chairman for the Trinidad Rancheria said that people from the tribes had come together "to move forward in a good way on renewable energy".

[28] Yurok Chairman Joseph L. James said that the tribes did not want to see other industries "take advantage of our natural resources and contribute little or nothing to the local community.

"[28] In 2023, Frankie Myers of the Yurok tribe wrote that since colonization began, natural resource extraction had devastated indigenous communities.

In the future, tribal nations may decide to support offshore wind development, but that they "must be in leadership positions through every phase of the process".

[29] While offshore wind can help provide the clean energy America needs, unless the industry "truly engages with the Native American tribes that suffered the impacts from previous natural resource extraction, it will be as dirty as the rest of them.

[30][31] The Council gave several reasons on their Facebook page for this stance:[30] The Yurok join the Bear River Band and the Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation in its opposition.

[31] In 1995, researchers observed that "control of reservation and allotment [of] natural resources has been withheld from them [Yurok people] under the auspices of scientific forest management."

[33][34] Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League, explained that the agreement would be starting a process of changing the present narrative about who, and for whom, natural lands are managed.

[35] Joseph L. James, Yurok chairman, said: "Together, we are creating a new conservation model that recognizes the value of tribal land management".

[34] Rosie Clayburn, the tribe's cultural resources said: "This is work that we’ve always done, and continued to fight for, but I feel like the rest of world is catching up right now and starting to see that Native people know how to manage this land the best".

"[43] Fish census from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggest an estimated 650,000 to 1 million adult salmon used to make the run from the mouth of the river to Upper Klamath Lake and beyond to spawn.

[46] But with a changing climate, the salmon which were once plentiful now face a drastic decline in numbers linked to water quality and fish health.

[42] Tori McConnell, Miss Indian World 2023–2024, said that without salmon "we wouldn’t have had the brainpower or the physical power to create and maintain and preserve the beautiful culture that we see today.

[51][15] While based on the latest scientific protocols, Yurok Traditional Ecological Knowledge provided by the tribal elders informs the restoration program.

[60][61][62] The condor feathers, headdresses and deerskins had been part of the Smithsonian's collection for almost 100 years and represent one of the largest Native American repatriations.

Shamans would use plants, prayer, and rituals to heal people and also performed ceremonies to ensure successful hunting, fishing, and gathering.

[3] Some sources refer to it Yurok society as socially stratified because communities were divided between syahhlew ("rich"), wa's'oyowok' / wa'soyowok' ("poor"), and ka'aal ("slaves").

[74] The Yurok reservation of 63,035 acres (25,509 ha) has an 80% poverty rate and 70% of the inhabitants do not have telephone service or electricity, according to the tribe's Web page.