Tent of Many Voices: 10300505TMB

good afternoon everyone and welcome to the ten voices and core Discovery 2 there has been a bit of a scheduled change our scheduled presenter is not able to attend so we are going to have continuation in some ways of our last presentation uh Louis pit Jr will be speaking again here in the 10 many voices the 10 many voices is part of core Discovery 2 it's a national traveling exhibit It's been traveling since January 2003 and continue to travel through October of 2006 in the four years of the bicentennial of the leou and Clark expedition what we do here in the T voices is we invite in a wide variety of presenters to share with us both different aspects of the L and Clark expedition the different aspects of the history and culture of all those American Indian nations that were living here before the arrival of lisis andar and I said said we're going to hear from Lewis pit Jr the waren Springs reservation he's director of governmental Affairs and planning he's going to share uh some of the history of treaties treaty a perspective on treaties since the time of Jefferson so let's give him a warm welcome here in the language of this area it took to WEA that's my dad's people the language of U River people just around the corner about uh 12 miles from year it's me P good afternoon my IND name is Yen sh uh my dad's people were Cascade Locks people Cascade wlas and my dad is enrolled at Yak Indian Reservation north of here my mom was a w skin person from just Silo across the way they went back and forth kind of one group of people on different of the river the she's enrolled at Warm Springs about 70 M south of here and u i was uh had a good laugh just thinking about I went up to cilo this morning uh up river to see if they have any Services up there so I can wear my ribbon shirt and U they weren't getting going but I was just laughing about the uh uh we helped them build a louse up there we use of Engineers dollarss to do so we kind of stretched the rules on building our fishing treaty access sites and we're able to build a lawn housee kind of something that was really needed in a neglected community and then we're going to build some houses try to make a bon Bill Dam flooded people out in the D's C when they flooded our people out try to correct those in a better way than they did the first two times but one of the stories was is that when we designed the kitchen of this long house is that uh as I was going through there getting some food one day because were music through my ears is because in the past because their kitchen was so poorly designed and small that they complained a lot about the kitchen well this time they were back to business as usual all they complained about was their husbands so I don't think you going put that down as a standard of uh How well was it constructed cuz anyway that was music to my ears and u one of my projects in a contemporary setting is to work with the tribes of Yakama Warm Springs yilla and N first I also work with nine Oregon tribes and work with at Salem that's my director government Affairs work and I work with federal agencies and state agencies and other tribes um I would like to convey to you probably just a couple of simple messages about uh the 200 years of in the past some of the wrong wrongdoings a term called Discovery I'd like to talk about treaty and give you some insights on treaties you probably never have heard before from a Native American from a tribal Viewpoint of my viewpoint and then again talk about what's the 200 years from now that life is good for thousands of years what we call time immemorial since the beginning of time our people were put here in in the land and of the land there's a that my U River my mom's people say which means at the time of creation we are the people that were put in the land we're of the land and that is our law we're the spokesman of these lands and so to me that is a song that we sing every Sunday that's what I wanted to hear when I was going up cilo was to hear that and then you know how spiritual growth is you sit there and you kind of Wonder you know where am I today what's going on and try to connect with uh my blood and also my spirit so life was good for thousands of years we had our own governments we owned our areas there's a term called occupy we didn't own we just occupied no we own these lands that were given to us by the Creator I'm forgetting one here Paul Kane was an artist that traveled with a number of uh Army engineers and explorers that went through this area in 1847 is showing down river this is the area that LE and Clark were getting the first uh evidence that there were the tidal effect that the the the ocean was raising up and down the waters is that uh it was down in this area about 40 45 miles down life was good again men hunted men fished men did the military thing and protect their bound and um shared decision making processes and some tribes and some uh were you know male oriented decision making women had their roles with the children the management of the camps in the Gathering of Rooks and berries and uh life went on U again that way successfully for thousands of years here's a uh painting by John Mick Stanley I always get a kick out of this because uh of U what ended in his right mind would build a place right down on the river because rivers are rivers they're wild they go up but they go down and U there can be a Natural Dam maybe breaking loose that comes down with a wave that would wipe wipe all that out that's far too close to the river but anyway it it conveys I think if you do look at it for for the knowledge and the information it has uh there were structures squ structures uh W and Clark commented to when they got down into this area oh finally we run into people that have something that's similar to us they had wooden buildings that were square and rectangular and uh we have folks that uh all up and down to Wasco area which is again from about 12 miles up and down to the same almost same speakers all the way down to the Pacific Ocean use plank houses have wooden plank houses made out of cedar cedar has a quality of being able to be split just like a good plank board you can do that with fairly rudimentary tools and so you have here you have houses you have drying areas uh you have um storage areas uh Terry Courtney Jr was here talking the first day a Wasco person we put him first I suggested he be first cuz he's of this place and he talked about a building like this is that if you had a dis size proportionately your family would only live in this section right here is that because then the rest of it would be for your survival and living through winter not only survival but also trading back and forth where you could get other material and though you just lived in the part of it that was the realities of the time um circle of life circle of life is a real valuable tool for governmental guys like me is that when I was looking and thinking about the circle of life for salmon now wait a minute I've been and talked to my boss about that is that salmon salmon right here is that but if you look through their whole existence he that salmon not only uh are important when you catch them in the net you have to make sure that you have salmon as babies you have salmon to go out and get big when they grow out in the ocean so the whole life of salmon from um they get by the net they call it escapement they go up into the spawn up into the mountains these are wonderful creatures I fell in love with s when I worked with fish in fisheries and um their last Great ACT is to spawn and and have their babies and then in the springtime these little these little guys precious little guys come just fight their way out of the sand and then they're they just start drawing and the wild salmon there's nothing more exciting than a wild salmon they're just so so alive and so fresh just like a little kid you know about about a one and 1/2 year old I got a lot of energy a lot of kind of will to live and uh but those Sal go Downstream they're dependent upon clean water cold water bigger streams Taking Chances all the way down before there wasn't a uh uh a d Dam and ab bomil Dam and they went out to the oceans to thed and grow and so with my boss I talked about that we only seem to be concerned about one part of that circle is the Harvest part we need to think about the whole circle from gravel to gravel so we invented reinvented rediscovered the circle and that's where we've been working with u all of our neighbors US Government the BLM forest service we have four um uh we we have U ceremonies throughout the year and starts out uh with water and in this early spring we have Lati Lati we have the root Feast thanking the Creator for the many gifts and uh we have then the uh first salmon ceremonies and then we have the Huckleberry past and we all thank water for that and water again is the blood of the land water like other creations from the gifts from the Creator you take care the Creator's gifts and they'll take care of you it's very simple doctrines that have lasted for thousands of years we uh uh on the table when we eat is that we start out this is way it's been since I've been a baby boy and I've been around a while it's 57 years I know some of you have been around longer than that but starts out with water and salmon then deer roots bears and back to water again so and again it's been sing song sung thanking the Creator talking about life in our churches uh we we don't call them churches we live a way of life not just in the church not just on Sunday every day and we're real proud of that if you've ever gone hunting or fishing you can sure feel that in your blood as a myself when I did go to u b Falls to do some fishing down there it just seemed so wonderful I was so aligned with the universe you know kind of a um almost a mystical type of experience but I felt as a connected to Forever and uh so it's very much in the blood that's what I teach my kids is don't fight your inding blood you'll go crazy if you do let's jump right back to where some problems started with working with uh between the United States of America and many tribal peoples of our homelands here George Washington talked to Indian people on the East Coast we need people everywhere I guess is what he was really thinking the gradual extension of our settlements will certainly cause the Savage as the wolf to retire both being beasts of prey though they differ in shape we weren't even human we we were wild we hunted we didn't settle down we didn't make those square houses back then we didn't we did agriculture folks back in those days did agriculture they uh uh did so in their own way um but this really does say a lot about again the country and uh kind of a distant type thing George Washington was uh really somebody that didn't have time to sit down and learn who Navy people were he had to deal with those and Nation to nation and in a real political realm so very hard statement but very much a sign of America at the time and another person in that same era said to leave them in possession of their country was to leave the country A wilderness a waste of land John Lock who was a real fan of discovery of an Enlightenment era philosopher talked about the uh it was almost a sin to leave the land in its natural form wild wilderness or wild is is even evil look at Wilderness as being dark and evil and remember some of your a lot of your um uh uh Fairy Tales stories deal with that same type of theme about the kind of evil this and evil that um again if time is the tach of what's successful is don't forget those folks over there on the East Coast those Indian folks again they were out since time of memoral and how old was America back in George Washington's time months old months what is who is he to tell us this is the one that really gets me going I've got a I've got a scrap going on with Ken his staff tells me he suckers for a left hook so I'll keep that in mind Ken kisy is the executive director here at the Discovery Center discover my goodness I have a lot of problem with some of the legal fiction that was created by those mechanics of civilizational progress known as lawyers they had and still do yes and U How could somebody that didn't even know we existed say that we didn't own the land but only h occupied it my gosh that was back when the world was flat that was back when you traveled or all so far and then he dropped off and um so I really have always going to I'm I'm planing a CD my kids and we're going to learn more of this as I get older and get more alerted in it too and I'm not sure what I'm really asking for in this but to be acknowledged Warm Springs as a tribe with three tribes Warm Springs w you we have gotten a pretty good deal with our treaty we have had to fight for it from day one you have other tribes that have just been raked over the cold unfair inhumane treated still yet almost the sub 58 tribes are so in Oklahoma most of those tribes don't even come from Oklahoma they come from Georgia they come from what was North Carolina they come from what was is sou South Carolina their homelands are a th000 miles away from where they are I'm standing on my homelands and I'm talking to you about how I feel right now not only as Authority as an American but as a tribal member too I don't think some of those folks have that privilege that right so there's a lot of things that we have to correct but I'm mad about the arrogance the arrogance of of a nation state the League of Nations the Manifest Destiny this really Viewpoint of almost Supremacy over in declaring me subhuman sometimes but no seriously it's just it's a it's a incredible leap for me to to say that no we didn't own the land this I missed this the first time around excuse my back this is uh tomin tomin there's a Mr George Ager who spoke about tomin one of his relatives from before and he's also notorious too because uh he raised Cain with uh Lou and Clark and I think it was these dog Sean and U that poor dog my nieces sent me a note Sean the Seaman's dog uh when his master uh pined away his life howling over his master's grave you know they went 4,000 miles together and Sean was a you know dog did what dogs do protect their masters and so anyway this gentleman one of the many things that he did he took off for a while with one of the with his dog and that was almost a unforgivable sin so anyway we we like to kind of raise cane with these big officials when they come through and uh um on the way back up there was also another Skirmish of sorts when one of the uh Lewis and Clark expedition uh just marched right into one of The Lodges and says oh you know here's that Tomahawk pipe that uh you guys stole from us the first time through oh yeah you think so huh so it was a very almost a Beyond diplomacy to more of two military Powers looking at each other eye to eye as equals don't forget at any time our folks on the river here could have gave the signal and we could have amassed probably 3 to 400 Top Line Warriors down here to take care of business that's part of the allegiance that's part of the way we succeeded we had to fight the Shoni BX the snakes the PES all this time that were very very military people and knew how to get around and so LS and Clark militarily with their cannons so what they got to get to it first no we didn't history even if we did so what people would still be in the area we still it just been another War we had many wars in this area to which you'll see later uh T is um Yak person that was a great Statesman and really had a lot of skills to uh I think help tribes unite and he was a part of an encounter with Phil Sheridan uh down here and there's another uh I think the senior officer was a gentleman by the name of Wright that down in the Cascade Locks area they ended up because of a war and Skirmish that kamay from yakam with p p mukmuk from yumaa who was like a consultant in war is uh they uh got the Cascade Locks folks in trouble and it ended up for Sheran hanged nine Cascade lock folks and U chief chief chth was U he gave a war hoop according to a book written by one of U Chen's relatives of my relatives too by Chuck Williams The Bridge of the Gods Mountain of Fire that he gave a war hoop hoping he was at the last minute going to be save and then made it pretty clear he was really scared of the herea that they were going to put him in the ground instead of out on the islands in the uh death vaults that our people the Wasco folks got put in we had these vaults above ground where people would be put in their this naturally Decay and become part of the of the area being in the ground scared him almost more than death so again another encounter between us and the United States there's a point to be made here though too in the territorial orent l there was more wrongdoings being done by the territorial citizens of Oregon and Washington then the US government the US government really did play a role in trying to protect us especially when we try to choose to be peaceful because uh really we had all the time we get our weapons taken away and fairly much had to depend on the US government very hard to do that's what happened down in the road they took people's those tribes rifles away rifles are still the one of the best tools still used today to hunt deer to hunt elf to hunt bear so they when they took the rifles away they really hurt the survivability of a tribe this lady here is related to tomama Ken too she's a she's the one um Virginia Virginia Miller a relative of Chuck and therefore a relative of mine she um uh told her own story to one of the ethnographers of the time about what she felt was the true story and what happened and uh so she's a again you can see just a little remnant of the head shaping of the uh I get a kick out of thinking about this too you know the forehead shaping of the Wasco people little Side Story here I work with the Condor too down on the uh Carver uh with the p Oregon Zoo there was this one Tony Tony who runs the uh Zoo there he was always talking about let's go up raising for a condor you ever seen a condor up close they're not the you know prettiest looking Critters but old Tony is that he says hey you know people were trying to get me infused about this you know Condor is a um you know it's got It's kind of got a bald head and it's got a big beak and Tony turns sideways and he's an Italian and he so so I think that's kind of sexy so okay to okay okay we get your point but anyway moving right along here P mm I I called him almost the consultant before because PE he's got one of his uh you know things he's really noted for he was a great uh strategist in military moving and Maneuvers and things like that uh we had different functions in all of the tribes and I think his was mainly military but he was down here and he was all around trying to I think probably un against the the new people coming through the area and he from yumaa a wala wala person the Wula pums are from an area well the river takes a turn left and that's known as Wula and then right in that area is wala wala otherwise let's see what is it called it's a it's got its own name Wu Wu it's on those yellow um like play sheets that the humillas have W some people say that's that's C I thought it well okay moving along kamin kamin is the uh Yak chief that basically north of the river he kept a good eye on and and Forge deals that help protect the Integrity of uh north of the river here this is just I put this in here as an example of the plank house plank houses were uh anywhere from kind of loosely made for Summertime with the wind blowing through that you could fix and tighten up later to down river where of course remember leis and Clark what they complained about most of all down river was that darn rain it rains and Rain miserable rain I well what you expect this is going to be Oregon and uh the canoes uh um I forget if it was Clark or Lewis but U uh one of them spotted for the first time in this area here a canoe that had a like this I guess a bow that was really uh really different than anything you'd ever seen and U they mostly look like this all the way across it didn't have this part and then it had a design and it it um you know Lewis uh had I think six canoes types that he saw different types and one of the theories and discussion by u u Gilmore Carolyn Gilmore in this book here that possibly the one that he was looking at was uh maybe traded cuz canoes like all other trading things went up and down the river Rivers were highways Rivers unite mountains divide is U from um Canada or from British Columbia from the uh uh Vancouver Island because it was something that uh would fit very well in those bigger Waters and so anyway we you know it's one of those those conjecture things how do we find that out well maybe we'll know more later um again uh some people talk about life being hard life being as such is nevertheless is what our people were able to live by for thousands of years um The Narrows the mighty Nana the Big River just as tremendously the biggest river in the Pacific Northwest narrow down down to about 50 y right there it was a tremendous wonderful thing I was a kid that used to drive by here and be able to look out and uh it was just amazing that such a huge River could narrow down to an area maybe just a little bigger than this and like darn fools that the Indians thought they were guess who's going to go down this in their canoes so we talk about uh our Indian folks like to gamble and like to bet on anything things were won and lost the foot race horse race whatever and they gathered up to watch watch them go down and uh they made it and I'm sure somebody must have want a lot of money on that bet amount of making it because it it those very very dangerous U again uh I think the Gilmore book talks about of today to be classified as class five dangersous do not pass very dangerous um again here's the Columbia River probably up here the width like it is now maybe a almost a 3/4 of a mile but down to just relatively small area half of a football field why here's the depiction of GE um ethnologist archaeologist your own scientist talking about the villages down here in Cascades area again some Shameless advertising our casino is planned to be right there on that one Village is that our people have been in this area since time IM Memorial most of the villages on the North side it's just the lay of the land type thing um this area right here is a real bottleneck so our folks were uh talk about again we acted as if we owned it cuz we did is that if you didn't pay to get past these folks you didn't go past if you didn't pay to get back down river you didn't go down river you had to deal with the tollgates that were set up here by the Wala or the Cascade peoples and U again down here is a a Villages that the L and Clark talk to they go all the way down to the N what is the other one nir Kuli down by what's Troutdale and uh Sandy area Pierce going up River we are excuse me we are right about here that color area I colored that in cuz that's what we're I'm uh hoping to name the I call it the Disco Center to be honest I don't like to call it Discovery Ken and I we're going to keep arguing about this is that there's Indian names for this place right here there's a village here a couple of villages right here over here Wasco all the Dallas now Wasco uh klasco twin clock um and oh what else was there there's one more Village and then up River you have what's suck what is right there Long Pine we really had two Wasco here's the Wasco and this is the fish waso another fishing site I was I got a research job I'm doing now for myself I I want to find the exact spot where the treaty was signed right there is number one suspect but it doesn't help when you have Wasco fishing Wasco you have the town of wasow 28 miles of there and you have a couple other sites right here on 3 Mile Creek some people say that's where it was signed some people would say it's signed there and some say it's signed over there I'm going to find that out hopefully in a couple of years we'll get evidence to where our treaty was actually signed yeah I I had to rule out the town of ow was 28 miles away 28 mil today is what about a half hour in your car and U but back then with an entourage on horses that's a good day ride would we go up pick our whole families cuz we had hundreds of people in our treaty thing that you know cuz if if you sign for somebody in Indi ways you had to have good representatives in the crowd that would just kind of give you the knob that may you um you know you're okay to sign this we agree if you didn't have them there then you're kind of sticking your neck um tribal Villages here's the cookat villages all along both sides of the river the L and Clark right here The Friendly Village they they had an encounter there that was positive uh that's called Doug's beach now Doug's Beach is one of the best wind serving places around as well it's also a sacred cultural site to us I came down here and we cut a deal with u the local folks that use that area for them to have a strip to get them down to their wind surfing sites and then protect the rest of the site and uh I kind of went way out of the limb on that and finally it took me about a week to get Yakima to buy into the idea and then War Springs to buy into the idea I did the same type of thing uh out of a place called ly they had a development down there and I called up one lawyer and said from from arm Springs and I said hey the yak my lawyer is going to be there you better be there and then I called up the other lawyer and said hey that other lawyer will be there so then we got them both on site to help us protect them all Indian trick we have we have relatives that speak the same language that kitchen folks all the way down to the Pacific Ocean I'm going to talk down here about the learn more about that relationship um again the same type of group of people the worm Springs people here wos these are dob the ti look out your matilla and Caillou country there first and you got to know what you're doing today when you go up in that area the P the 13 different tribes of that area in Oregon wonderfully diverse people traditionally we were always at odds with them um the valley people the Rogue River tribes down here almost they could have won that war until they gave a lot of things up we gave to the United States millions of Acres 10 million acres for us 12 million 8 million and about 10 Million Ne first treated the do Clark very well didn't do them any good they uh got lands that are roughly even now smaller than anything they imagine one of the views of success they're about 15% tribally own in control about oh I don't know 55% tribally owned in control about 60% tribally owner control arm Springs 99% this is what we look like we have plans for our lands Wilderness areas protect our water quality try to keep things working order don't break them the 10 million Acres we gave to the United States in return for the right to fish hunt gather roots and berries and the pasture our stocks 13 counties we have to work with Louisiana Purchase was a um the point of Louisiana Purchase was just the nations were deciding who got first the on who got to buy the lands from the original owners that was the tribal folks of this area they didn't buy anything it wasn't a real estate transaction until they through treaty or purchased through treaty or war that they acquired the lands Jefferson described America I think as the still Tred to work it for public deliberation and civic education through participation in politics little Rebellion goes a long ways this what Jefferson said unfinished Revolution that's where we are now how do we make this a better place and a greater country this is the thing the next 200 years this says it just better than anything I can say the casino is not a statement of who we are but only a means to get us where we want to be we have tried property for 200 years so we decided to try something else so we're going to be using our economic sovereignty our whatever tools we can buy into see those is this one to try to continue our life as uh Indian people various tribes throughout the nation and uh we one of the things that we have to learn as Americans is to accept the diversity of different peoples and their different governments within the country and outside of the country so thank you very much wow and thank you Louie for sharing again uh hearing the 10in voices Lou was kind of a last minute replacement for this particular hour so we kind of rushed his program a bit and we appreciate him put it out with our time schedu e