Marc Dadigan is a freelance investigative journalist  and PhD candidate in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. He has worked with Tribes and Indigenous communities in Northern California for more than 14 years as a journalist, public history project organizer, curriculum editor and community-based researcher.

He is working on a dissertation in collaboration with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, the Indigenous people of the McCloud River (Winnemem Waywaket). Titled Listening to Lendada Nur (Ancient, Wise Salmon), the dissertation is an ethnographic and historical investigation into the Winnemem Wintu’s partnership with wildlife agencies to restore salmon to their ancestral watershed for the first time since the Shasta Dam blocked the cultural and ecological keystone species from returning home 80 years ago.

Tribal members are assisting in the scholarship by identifying research objectives, interpreting archival and ethnographic data and developing the theoretical framework based on concepts from the Winnemem Wintu language.