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About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (July 14, 2021)
4A | WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2021 | APPEAL TRIBUNE Sweetheart cherries on a branch at Vaughan’s Cherry Farm outside Salem. CONNOR RADNOVICH/STATESMAN JOURNAL Farms weather the heat Connor Radnovich Salem Statesman Journal USA TODAY NETWORK The Chemawa Indian School band, late 1950s. PROVIDED BY GRAND RONDE CULTURAL RESOURCES, CHARLES HOLMES PAPERS AND MELISSA PARKHURST At Vaughan’s Cherry Farm, co-owner Dan Vaughan can point out the branches of Sweetheart cherry trees that resemble what the trees on the rest of the 10-acres should look like during a typical growing season. However, ideal cherries aren’t as common this year after the historic heat wave two weekends ago shrunk, shriveled and burned cherries at farms across the Mid- Willamette Valley, and did a number on raspberry plants as well. “The cherries are smaller, even though we irrigate, and we’ve gotten sunburn on our cherries as a result of the run of hot weather that we’ve had,” said Judy Vaughan, co-owner of Vaughan’s Cherry Farm. “When it gets up to 117, the tree will absorb the water and the water won’t go to the fruit.” However, other crops, including peaches and blue- berries, were largely unaffected by the heat, as was the u-pick season as people from around the region are still buying fruit despite what some would consider a sub- par crop. Judy said they won’t have the farm open for u-pick as many weeks this year because the quality drops the longer cherries are on the tree. At some point, they pre- fer to donate instead of charge. At other farms, the heat moved up the peach season. Kathy Beachy, a co-owner of Perryhill Farm, said their season will start in mid-July. “Things are ripening faster. Usually we don’t have peaches coming on this far in advance, usually it’s to- ward the end of July. We already have varieties that are ripening,” Beachy said. As with other farms, it was the cherries and rasp- berries that showed the worst damage, she said. While the heat this year was abnormal, Beachy said the smoke from last year’s wildfires was actually more damaging to crops, blotting out the sun and starving the leaves of clean air. Stuart Olson of Olson Farms said they haven’t seen as much impact from the heat as other locations, with raspberries and blackberries faring the worst for them. He attributes the farm’s location for helping save them from the worst of the heat – they sit at a higher elevation than other farms and having consistent winds. “It was hot, don’t get me wrong, but that wind helped,” Olson said. “That doesn’t let the heat settle down into the orchards.” Peaches can take heat a lot better than other fruits, Olson said, though he added they may still see lingering effects later in peach season. During the heat wave, they limited picking for u- pickers and employees, for several days forcing both groups to leave by late morning. U-pickers were in- structed to use the buddy system and the farm had a plan in place for how to cool people down if they were experiencing heat-related illness. They did not have to implement it, Olson said. Reporter Connor Radnovich covers the Oregon Leg- islature and state government. Contact him at cradnovich@statesmanjournal.com or 503-399-6864, or follow him on Twitter at @CDRadnovich. Vaccine Continued from Page 3A Work has now shifted to add vaccine education and vaccination events to that focus. The OHA is committed to eliminating the gaps in vaccination rates, Banks said. “We’ve been working with our local public health authorities to have them submit equity plans,” she said. Counties that submit equity plans to reach parity by Aug. 31 will receive 50% of the funding requested upon submitting those plans. Demonstrated effort to close gaps and success will bring the rest of the fund- ing. Marion County’s equity plan was made available in May and it outlines their goals to partner with com- munity-based organizations to offer vaccinations to communities of color. Lane and Polk counties also released their equity plans in May. Lane County described similar partnerships with community organizations in addition to the use of both U.S. Census tract and ZIP Code level data to un- derstand vaccination rates across race and ethnicity categories. Polk County’s equity plan celebrated targeted vac- cine events alongside Salem Health partners that led to the distribution of 2,200 vaccine doses at mobile vaccine events. They also outlined ongoing work with 12 local community-based organizations funded by OHA in an effort to serve communities of color, LGBTQ people and people experiencing homeless- ness. “What we’re really trying to do is offer vaccines and, ideally, have people accept and have 80% of our Black, Indigenous, communities of color vaccinated or offered vaccines by the end of August,” Banks said. Overcoming barriers, hesitancy PCUN has collaborated with OHA and other part- ners to organize mobile vaccine clinics, including some at agricultural worksites. School Continued from Page 1A now. But this history and trauma have been here for decades. Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819 and running through the 1960s, the United States en- acted laws and implemented policies establishing and supporting Indian boarding schools across the nation. During that time, the purpose of Indian boarding schools was to culturally assimilate Indigenous chil- dren by forcibly relocating them from their families and communities to distant residential facilities where their American Indian, Alaska Native, and Na- tive Hawaiian identities, languages, and beliefs were to be forcibly suppressed. In most instances, Indigenous parents could not visit their children at these schools. Many students endured routine injury and abuse. Some perished and were interred in unmarked graves. Survivors of the traumas of boarding school policies carried their memories into adulthood as they became the aunts and uncles, parents, and grandparents to subsequent generations. The loss of those who did not return left an endur- ing need in their families for answers that, in many cases, were never provided. Distance, time, and the scattering of school records have made it more diffi- cult, if not impossible, for their families to locate a loved one’s final resting place and bring closure through the appropriate ceremonies. There have been calls to investigate gravesites at Chemewa specifically for years. Marsha Small is a doctoral candidate at Montana State University, and until recently was the Teppola distinguished visiting professor at Willamette Univer- sity’s anthropology department, according to a recent article by Oregon Public Broadcasting. She conducted research on Chemawa’s cemetery in 2016 for her master’s thesis. In her research, Small dis- covered 222 sets of remains at Chemawa, OPB report- ed. That’s more than the 208 she said the federal gov- ernment had documented at the school cemetery. But other than one row of graves, the markers and locations of remains don’t match up, according to the report. Also, Small noted her radar technology could only penetrate one meter into the ground, leaving her to suspect there are more remains buried deeper. She’s hoping to find out more when she returns to the Salem campus in September. Chemawa’s school site has been used almost con- tinuously since the 19th century, with the date 1880 displayed prominently on campus. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has created a list of at least 367 school sites across the country, the vast majority of which haven’t operated as schools for years. Kevin Alejandrez, a community navigator at Centro de Servicios para Campesinos and a member of PCUN’s healthy workplaces team, said his work at vaccine clin- ics has included coordinating people’s appointments, serving as an interpreter and once driving two men who didn’t know how to use a phone and didn’t have a car to their appointments. Access issues like these also led to the disparities in vaccination rates, Quiroz said. Not having insurance, not having a regular provider, transportation challenges and other factors make it more difficult for people to get vaccinated, she said. Bedolla Sotelo said she successfully advocated for accessibility on the committee through not making so- cial security numbers required on the vaccine form, and not turning away people who lacked a photo ID. Health care systems are not built to accommodate Latino farmworkers, Alejandrez said. Adding in a new vaccine many people have questions about may make it more difficult for them to navigate these systems and trust if the vaccine is safe, he said. Ensuring that more people receive a vaccine starts with choosing accessible locations, which have includ- ed churches and laundromats, Bedolla Sotelo said, and being mindful about where people may not be comfort- able. “When I was on the vaccine committee, the major place where people could go was the Salem fairgrounds, and the National Guard was there helping, and that was a huge concern for us,” she said. “Obviously our com- munity doesn’t associate the police and National Guard with feeling safe, so there was a lot of people who didn’t want to go and were more comfortable at an organiza- tion.” Clinic organizers all speak Spanish, Alejandrez said, but there’s not enough vaccine information and inter- preters available who speak Indigenous languages. The greatest need is for Mixtec, Mam and Zapotec speakers, Bedolla Sotelo said. PCUN has one organizer who speaks Mixtec and is working on hiring a Mam-speak- ing organizer, she added. Organizers try to offer people a choice among the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, Be- dolla Sotelo said. They noticed that some migrant and seasonal workers preferred the one-dose J&J vaccine, but people generally wanted the Pfizer vaccine after the Outside of the living dorms at the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oct. 2, 2019. MADELEINE COOK / STATESMAN JOURNAL It lists nine schools in Oregon – the current Chemawa site in Salem and its predecessor in Forest Grove, as well as seven other locations scattered throughout the state that are not currently open, according to the healing coali- tion. In more recent memory, Chemawa was featured by NFL Films for rebounding from a winless, pointless sea- son. The school was also at the heart of an original investi- gation by OPB that highlighted allegations of fraud, mis- management and student deaths. A 2017 investigative series by OPB reported the deaths of three Chemawa students, one who died on campus and two who died shortly after leaving the school. A fourth student died in Wyoming less than two weeks after leav- ing Chemawa and after the series was published. The reports came to light during a congressional hear- ing in 2019 when Oregon U.S. Reps. Kurt Schrader and Su- zanne Bonamici criticized the school for failing students and the tribes who entrusted their children to the school’s care. A federal gag order stopping school administrators and community members from speaking to journalists and elected officials was lifted that year, leading to a story pub- lished by the Statesman Journal in 2020. When the announcement for the federal review initia- tive first came out last month, Amanda Ward, Chemawa’s academic principal and acting superintendent, said she hadn’t heard anything yet on how it could impact Chema- wa. The Statesman Journal has reached out to Chemawa leadership since but has not heard new updates on the school’s role in the future investigation. Were you or your family members students at this school? We would appreciate hearing about your ex- periences. Natalie Pate is the education reporter for the Statesman Journal. She can be reached at npate@statesmanjournal.com, 503-399-6745, Twitter @NataliePateGwin, or Facebook at www.Face- book.com/nataliepatejournalist. temporary pause on J&J, she said. More support wanted from employers Alejandrez said he’s encountered some vaccine hes- itancy, usually stemming from people worrying about post-vaccine symptoms and their ability to go to work after, or wondering how the vaccine may affect them if they have various medical conditions. The solution has been allowing people to ask plenty of questions, being transparent about the various vac- cine reactions people may experience, and sharing their own vaccine experiences, Alejandrez and Bedolla Sote- lo said. Quiroz said it’s up to agricultural employers to help make it easy for workers to get vaccinated. She said she would like to see OSHA and the Department of Agricul- ture take a more active role. “They rarely get sick hours, and for the farmworker community, this is the season where they make more money, and this helps them to sustain themselves and get a little savings for throughout the year,” Quiroz said. “It’s really difficult for the farmworker community to step away, get the vaccine when they don’t feel support- ed by the owner. By losing their job, they’re putting their family’s wellbeing at risk.” Alejandrez said most employers he’s interacted with look forward to their employees being vaccinated, but have tended to be less receptive to the idea of employ- ees taking time off to recover and have favored employ- ees getting their vaccines at the end of the workweek. “There’s been this culture in U.S. agriculture and cul- ture in general in terms of how unequal accessing health care is,” Alejandrez said. “They’re still out work- ing six days a week and putting themselves in these po- sitions, and they’re scared to ask for a day off to get vac- cinated.” Dianne Lugo is a reporter at the Statesman Journal covering equity and social justice. You can reach her at dlugo@statesmanjournal.com, 503-936-4811 or on Twitter @DianneLugo. Dora Totoian covers farmworkers through Report for America, a program that aims to support local journal- ism and democracy by reporting on under-covered is- sues and communities. Reach her at dtotoian@states- manjournal.com.
