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WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2022
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APPEAL TRIBUNE
Lake
Continued from Page 1A
that was before the Labor Day Fires im-
pacted the town.
For now, with the rain still falling the
Corps expects a good year, but they’ve
started dumping water from the lake
more quickly to get the reservoir back
down to 1,558.5 feet. If May and June
prove exceptionally dry, that could
have an impact on the area’s recreation.
“We want to limit the number of
days that we’re above that 1,558 mark,”
Gaylord said.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors
reporter in Oregon for 15 years and is
host of the Explore Oregon Podcast. To
support his work, subscribe to the
Statesman Journal. Urness is the au-
thor of “Best Hikes with Kids: Oregon”
and “Hiking Southern Oregon.” He can
be
reached
at
zurness@StatesmanJournal.com
or
(503) 399-6801. Find him on Twitter at
@ZachsORoutdoors.
Address: P.O. Box 13009, Salem, OR 97309
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Staff
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Don Currie
503-399-6655
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Deadlines
Shutoff
Continued from Page 1A
person for the utility commission, said.
Asked what type of data that was,
Young said several utilities have mete-
orologists on staff.
“They can better determine how that
weather issue or incident is going to
impact their system because they know
their system the best,” Young said.
The commission calls power shut-
offs a tool “of last resort” because shut-
ting off power can have wide-ranging
effects. Hospitals and nursing homes
Heat
Continued from Page 1A
Heat rules
Last summer, Oregon experienced
historically-high temperatures.
More than 100 people statewide, in-
cluding more than a dozen in Marion
County, died during a late June heat-
wave when temperatures in Salem
reached a record 117 degrees.
Sebastian Francisco Perez, a nursery
worker who had recently arrived from
Guatemala, died on a 104-degree day at
Ernst Nursery and Farms.
Advocates had for months prior
called for the state to establish emer-
gency heat rules to protect farmworkers
and other outdoor workers. OSHA re-
leased temporary heat rules in July, af-
ter the June heatwave.
A list provided to the Statesman
Journal of the heat-related complaints
OSHA received from mid-June to the
end of July shows 19 of the 219 com-
plaints were from agricultural or pro-
cessing sites.
One alleged a Yamhill County nurs-
ery denied workers the ability to leave
work early on a hot day. Another alleged
a Mid-Valley nursery was not providing
workers water in triple-digit temper-
Legacy
rely on power for medical equipment,
and people on well water use electric
pumps.
Temporary rules around shutoffs
were approved for last year’s fire sea-
son but these new rules are permanent.
The commission doesn’t regulate
co-ops owned by customers, like Salem
Electric, so these new rules about how
and when the utilities have to publicize
shutoffs don’t apply to them.
The investor-owned utilities also
have to submit plans to the commission
for dealing with the risks of fire every
year. The commission approved the
2022 plans last month.
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atures.
OSHA’s permanent heat rules say
when the heat index passes 80 degrees,
employees must establish and maintain
one or more shaded areas that are avail-
able to outdoor workers nd supply work-
ers with at least 32 oz. of cool or cold
drinking water per hour.
When the heat index reaches 90 de-
grees, employers must:
h Monitor workers for signs of heat
illness, including regular communica-
tion with employees working alone or
creating a mandatory buddy system.
h Designate and equip one or more
employee at each worksite to call for
medics.
h Develop a written heat rest break
schedule that provides a minimum 10-
minute break every two hours when
temperatures reach 90 degrees and a 15-
minute break every hour when temper-
atures reach 100.
h Develop training on heat illness
prevention, including how workers can
recognize symptoms of dehydration
and how to respond to others who may
be experiencing heat-related illnesses.
Wildfire smoke rules
Thousands of agricultural workers in
the Mid-Valley worked in smoky condi-
tions during 2020’s Labor Day fires.
Farmworker advocates reported hearing
tutions.
Ongoing quest for answers
Continued from Page 1A
Boarding School Initiative, a series of
examinations into the generational im-
pact of 408 federal boarding schools
and more than 1,000 religious and pri-
vately run schools upon Native peoples,
and how to address those impacts.
Deborah Parker, the CEO of the Na-
tional Native American Boarding School
Healing Coalition, spoke during an of-
ten-tearful news conference outlining
the report’s release and next steps.
“Our children had names,” Parker
said. “Our children had homes. They
had families. They had their languages,
their regalia, their prayers and reli-
gions.”
But as Parker, a member of the Tula-
lip Tribes, pointed out, a system of fed-
eral, private and religious-run boarding
schools over more than 150 years did its
best to wipe out thousands of years of
Native languages, cultures and family
ties. The damage done to these children,
and to the generations that followed,
was immense, she said.
The report was commissioned by
Haaland in 2021 following the discovery
of hundreds of unmarked graves of chil-
dren in Canadian residential schools.
Like the U.S. schools, the Canadian resi-
dential school system sought to wipe
out Native cultures, languages and tra-
ditions, and assimilate Indigenous chil-
dren.
Just as the U.S. government’s failure
to consult with and respect the prac-
tices of Indigenous peoples’ land stew-
ardship may have led to the environ-
mental tragedies of the 20th and 21st
centuries, Haaland said, federal policies
moved to exterminate, eradicate and as-
similate Native Americans, Alaska Na-
tives and Native Hawaiians.
“The languages, cultures, religions,
traditional practices and even the histo-
ry of Native communities was targeted
for destruction,” Haaland, a member of
the Laguna Pueblo, said. “Nowhere is
that clearer than in the legacy of federal
Indian boarding schools.”
Haaland said her own grandparents
were taken from their parents and
placed in boarding school at age 8. They
joined tens of thousands of other Indig-
enous children as young as 4 who were
forced into boarding schools run by the
Interior Department and religious insti-
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Oregon Gov. Kate Bown called the re-
port a “somber reminder” of the “na-
tion’s legacy of colonialism, violence
and intergenerational trauma against
Indigenous and tribal students and
their families” in a tweet.
“We must recommit ourselves to
building a just and equitable country, to
ensure that our Indigenous communi-
ties are able to grow & heal from these
terrible acts,” Brown added.
Chemawa Indian School was one of
the 408 federal schools across 37 states
that operated between 1819 to 1969 iden-
tified in the Department of Interior’s in-
vestigation. The official list of Federal
Indian boarding schools lists nine
schools in Oregon:
h Grand Ronde Boarding School.
h Kate Drexel Industrial Boarding
School.
h Klamath Agency Boarding School.
h Siletz Boarding School, Simnasho
Boarding and Day School.
h Umatilla Boarding and Day School.
h Warm Springs Boarding and Day
School.
h Yainax Indian Boarding School.
Families of former Chemawa Indian
School students have long called for an-
swers.
They spoke to the Statesman Journal
last year about their desire to discover
precisely what happened to their ances-
tors and their hope for a public apology
for the trauma endured.
An emotional great-niece of Tillie
Franklin recounted her experience dis-
covering Franklin’s burial site near the
entrance of Chemawa’s cemetery.
Franklin’s siblings were put into differ-
ent off-reservation boarding schools af-
ter their family home burned down in
1916.
“I can still hear my grandmother say
to me that she never saw Tillie again,”
Medina said.
It took decades for her to find out
Franklin had been sent to Chemawa.
School records identified Franklin’s
family as unknown.
Advocates organized a run last year
to raise awareness for unidentified chil-
dren buried at Chemawa. The school’s
cemetery was established in 1886, a year
after the school was moved from Forest
Grove to its current location.
SuAnn Reddick, a former volunteer
from countless people describing head-
aches, nausea, loss of appetite and oth-
er smoke-related symptoms, as well as
pressure to continue working in danger-
ous conditions.
OSHA issued guidance, but no rules,
during the Labor Day fires.
Air quality in Salem during wildfires
in 2020 topped 400 on the air quality in-
dex (AQI) scale, and in Bend topped
500. Levels over 100 are considered un-
healthy. Members of sensitive groups
may experience more serious health ef-
fects when the AQI is over 151. Levels
over 300 are considered hazardous, ac-
cording to the U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency’s air quality index.
A report from the Oregon Depart-
ment of Environmental Quality high-
lighted that there’s been an increase
in the number of days that wildfire
smoke creates unhealthy air conditions
for sensitive groups. Climate change
also is expected to make wildfires more
frequent and intense.
OSHA established temporary smoke
rules last year that required employers
to train employees on wildfire smoke
hazards.
Similarly, the permanent rules re-
quire employers whose workers are ex-
posed to wildfire smoke to take precau-
tions when the ambient air concentra-
tion for fine particulate matter is at a
PM2.5 or an AQI of 101.
A PM2.5 are solid particles and liquid
droplets suspended in air, known as fine
particulate matter, with an aerodynam-
ic diameter of 2.5 micrometers or small-
er and measured in micrograms per cu-
bic meter.
Employers must:
h Monitor wildfire smoke when em-
ployees are exposed to an air concentra-
tion of 2.5 particulate matter above a 101
AQI.
h Provide information and training to
employees on addressing wildfire
smoke, including symptoms of expo-
sure and the chronic effects of exposure.
h Train workers on the importance of
using a filtering facepiece respirator and
requiring employers to make them
readily accessible to workers for no
charge.
h Communicate wildfire smoke in-
formation to employees, such as
changes in air quality and health symp-
toms that may result from exposure to
smoke.
Former Statesman Journal and Re-
port for America reporter Dora Totoian
contributed to this story.
Virginia Barreda is the breaking
news and public safety reporter for the
Statesman Journal. She can be reached
at 503-399-6657 or at vbarreda@states-
manjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter
at @vbarreda2
historian for Chemawa, conducted re-
search for 25 years to compile a list of
names of those buried at the cemetery.
Her research was published last year in
partnership with Eva Guggemos, an ar-
chivist and associate professor at Pacif-
ic University.
According to the website:
h At least 270 students died in the
custody of the schools at Forest Grove
and Chemawa between 1880 and 1945.
h 175 of those children were buried in
the school cemetery.
h The remains of approximately 40
students were returned home near the
time of their deaths.
h The locations of approximately 50
student remains are unaccounted for.
Maps indicate there could be up to 40
plots in the cemetery that contain re-
mains of unidentified students or staff.
Reddick said she had reached out to
the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Depart-
ment of Interior to offer her research but
neither she nor Guggemos received any
inquiries from the DOI about their work
in publishing the new website with
deaths at Chemawa.
tices and relatives,” Newland, an Ojibwe
and a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian
Community, said.
“There’s not a single American Indi-
an, Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian in
this country whose life hasn’t been af-
fected by these schools. We haven’t be-
gun to explain the scope of this policy
era until now.”
Haaland and Parker referenced a re-
cent study by researcher Ursula Run-
ning Bear that found adults who attend-
ed boarding schools now suffer from
poor physical health. They also said Na-
tive people have the highest rates of sui-
cides, children in foster homes and in
the criminal health system.
Jim LaBelle Sr., an Inupiaq from
Alaska and vice-chair of the Native
American Boarding School Healing Co-
alition, said Alaska Natives are 18% of
the state’s total population, yet repre-
sent 40% of people in the state’s crimi-
nal justice system.
Effort to locate graves,
acknowledge trauma
The federal report stipulates that due
to missing records, the exact numbers
may never be known, but Haaland said
one goal of the new initiative is to enu-
merate them as fully as possible.
Many of these children never made it
home. The report seeks to locate those
children and bring them home.
To date, the Interior Department and
its partner, the Native American Board-
ing School Healing Coalition, has identi-
fied 53 burial sites, both marked and un-
marked, and hopes to locate all of
them. The department will not make
public the specific locations of the iden-
tified burial sites to protect them
against grave-robbing, vandalism and
other disturbances, Assistant Secretary
for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said
during the news conference.
Another legacy of these schools was
the intergenerational trauma inflicted
on children, families and communities.
Newland said the impacts of the board-
ing schools have left lasting scars on In-
digenous peoples.
“That impact continues to influence
the lives of countless families from the
break up of families and tribal nations to
the loss of languages and cultural prac-
Report sets out next steps
Newland and Haaland said an all-of-
government approach will be necessary
to rebuild the bonds within Native com-
munities that the boarding school sys-
tem set out to break. Haaland added
that President Joe Biden supports the
initiative.
“We have begun working through the
White House Council of Native Ameri-
can Affairs on the path ahead to pre-
serve tribal languages, invest in survi-
vor-focused services, and honor our
trust obligations to Indigenous commu-
nities,” Haaland said.
The report identifies the next steps
that will be taken in a second volume,
aided by a new $7 million investment
from Congress through fiscal year 2022.
In addition to locating the remaining
burial sites, the agency will determine
an approximate amount of federal fund-
ing directed to support boarding
schools, produce a list of students
brought to the schools over the years,
including tribal affiliations, from exist-
ing records and a deeper investigation
into the impacts of the schools on Indig-
enous communities today.
On Thursday, the Indigenous Peoples
Subcommittee of the House Natural Re-
sources Committee will hold the first
hearing on a bill to establish a truth and
healing commission on Indian boarding
See LEGACY, Page 3A