Ashia Grae Wolf Wilson

Community Engagement and Leadership Director

Ashia Wilson was raised by her mother and father, both enrolled members of the Klamath Tribes, and carries a lifelong love for the waters of her homelands. Her earliest memories come from gathering wocus and making mud pies along the Williamson River at Rocky Ford near the Klamath Marsh. She grew up in canoes on Wocus Bay, learning first foods and the teachings held in the Upper Klamath Basin.

Ashia’s deeper paddling journey began in 2017 on the Klamath River with Ríos to Rivers, where she participated in global cultural exchanges in the Klamath Basin and later traveled to Patagonia and Central Chile. In 2018, during an exchange in Cochrane, Chile, she paddled a whitewater kayak for the first time and fell in love with forming a new kind of relationship with the river. When she returned home to Chiloquin, she began finding boats and teaching herself to paddle her home rivers, reconnecting to place through movement, water, and community.

Ashia has watched Ríos to Rivers’ programs grow from their earliest days and is proud to have helped lay the stepping stones for Klamath Basin Tribal youth to revitalize their own relationships to paddling through Paddle Tribal Waters. She now serves as the Ríos to Rivers Community Engagement and Leadership Director and as a Board of Directors Member At Large, supporting curriculum development for U.S.-based programs and connecting students with off-water opportunities and watershed advocacy.

Ashia is also the Director of Maqlaqs Paddle—founded in 2018, fiscally sponsored by Ríos to Rivers in 2019, and now an independent nonprofit as of 2025. Her work focuses on creating opportunities for Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin peoples to reconnect with their waters, lands, and first foods practices throughout the Upper Klamath Basin. She is committed to supporting Tribal families in returning to their rivers and homelands for generations to come.

Ashia currently resides in Fort Klamath, Oregon, where she continues to deepen her relationship with the Basin’s waters and communities. She is a proud mother of two children. Her oldest son has been on the water since he was eight months old, rafting the Klamath River alongside Paddle Tribal Waters youth during the program’s early beginner cohorts. She looks forward to watching both her children grow up with a deep love for their waters, hoping that paddling and being on the river become a natural part of their lives and her family’s future- like it once was for her grandparents.