14
In Other Words
April 15
2021
Genocide of the Chinook Indian Nation continued from page 8
were times where I had to make the choice: Do I buy
my schoolbook and get that grade, or do I have a roof
over my head?”
In 2010, Cushman did graduate, from the
University of Oregon. She gave the commencement
speech wearing green robes and a woven cedar bark
graduation cap, and she introduced herself in Chinuk
Wawa, a creolized Chinookan language that once
spanned from southern Oregon to Southeast Alaska.
Today, she still lives in Eugene, part of the Chinook
diaspora, and serves on the tribal council. “Being on
the tribal council, you are responsible for represent-
ing your people, and you then begin to have a greater
understanding of how you’re treated differently than
recognized Indians,” she said. “And as a parent, I real-
ized what opportunities my kids would have based on
their status.” Cushman’s husband is an enrolled citizen
of the Oneida Nation in the Midwest, so her young
children have access to more educational opportuni-
ties than she did. The kids are already aware of their
tribe’s status, and Kanim, her 7-year-old son, has par-
ticipated in letter-writing campaigns seeking recogni-
tion. Although her children deeply identify as Chinook
— they attend gatherings, their names are Chinookan,
and Kanim was born during a Chinook potlatch —
the government considers them solely Oneida.
Federal laws designed to protect In-
digenous rights, including the Indian Child
Welfare Act, don’t apply to unrecognized
tribes. As of 2015, Native children in
Washington were put in foster care at
a rate nearly four times higher than
they are represented in the state’s
general population, removed for
problems that the tribe struggles
to address: houselessness, incar-
ceration and poverty. A decade
ago, a research group in Wash-
ington found that Native children
in the state were five times more
likely to be removed from their
families than white children. Cush-
man’s own relatives in Oregon had
children removed, though fortunate-
ly they were placed with a non-Native
family who does keep in touch with the
tribe and brings the children to cultural
events. That doesn’t always happen to kids
who are adopted or fostered out; many never
reconnect with their tribe or family. The fami-
lies still struggle today because of past government
policy, Cushman says. The government’s refusal to
recognize the tribe did not prevent it from taking Chi-
nook children to settler-colonial boarding schools and
subjecting them to federal Indian policy. “It’s cyclical,
and it’s all (a) product of not being federally recog-
nized,” she said.
AS A CHILD, TONY JOHNSON often fished with
his uncle and went clamming with his family in the
waters of Willapa Bay. It’s an expansive, remote place,
where gray skies still constitute a beautiful day. John-
son’s family traveled for council meetings or com-
munity events and often visited Bay Center, a sleepy
town without a grocery store, school or gas station,
where many of Johnson’s elders lived. As a kid, Tony
absorbed their stories, peppering them with questions
and listening to them speak Indigenous languages like
Lower Chehalis and Chinuk Wawa.
He returned to South Bend after college, where
he majored in silversmithing and studied anthropology
and American Indian studies, but he didn’t stay long.
In 1997, he moved to Oregon when he got a job help-
ing the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde build
a language program. At that time, only about a dozen
people still spoke Chinuk Wawa, which was verging
on extinction. Johnson, who is fluent in Wawa, worked
on a 500-page dictionary, and in 2002, helped Grand
Ronde launch a Chinuk Wawa immersion school. The
schooling starts 30 days before a child turns 3, and
continues five days a week through preschool and kin-
dergarten. Students are entirely immersed in Chinuk
Wawa. Throughout elementary school, a maintenance
language program remains part of their regular edu-
cation, keeping them fluent. The school’s atmosphere
is familial: Teachers are referred to as uncle, auntie
or grandma, and the curriculum combines the place-
based and cultural knowledge of the elders. There’s a
whole unit on cedar and another on rushes that blend
botany with music and history lessons. The unit on ha-
zel notes that the best time to gather and peel hazel
shoots for basket weaving is in spring, when buds are
the size of a squirrel’s ear.
In 2005, Johnson married Mechele, a woman
he’d known since high school and a Chinook descen-
dant enrolled with the Shoalwater Bay Tribe. Four of
their five kids were enrolled in the Grand Ronde pro-
gram. But the couple were homesick: In late 2010, they
relocated to Willapa Bay, to be closer to relatives and
work toward tribal recognition. Leaving the school he
helped build was difficult for Johnson, whose younger
kids would no longer have the same access to language
immersion.
Moon by Greg A. Robinson
Cultural influences run deep. Sam Robinson,
vice chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation, has the
type of kindness about him that you can sense even
from six feet away behind a surgical mask. When
Robinson was a kid, his family frequently visited his
great-aunts and uncles in Bay Center. In spring and
fall, as soon as they turned off the highway and the bay
came into view, he could smell the rich scent of fish
in smokehouses. When his family went fishing, they
didn’t need state licenses; their “blue cards,” issued by
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, recognized Chinook fish-
ing rights. But that changed after a federal court deci-
sion in the 1970s, when fishing rights were quantified
for recognized tribes in the Pacific Northwest. Unrec-
ognized tribes, like the Chinook, were left out. Fifty
years later, Robinson still has his dad’s blue card. He
loves to be out on the water in Willapa Bay or the Co-
lumbia River, putting in thousands of paddle strokes
on canoe journeys from Suquamish to Tulalip. But he
doesn’t fish anymore; he refuses to pay the state for a
license to do something he believes that Indigenous
people like him have the right to do.
IN THE SUMMER OF 2002, 18 months after the
Chinook were formally acknowledged by the Clin-
ton administration, Gary Johnson and his wife, Cristy,
received an envelope from the Bush White House,
addressed in looping script, inviting them to D.C. to
commemorate Lewis and Clark’s “Voyage of Discov-
ery.” They attended with the other tribes whose ances-
tors had met Lewis and Clark during the expedition,
bringing gifts including a 19 th century hand-carved ce-
dar canoe filled with a long string of beautiful beads.
In the East Room of the White House, they listened
to remarks by President George W. Bush and histori-
ans and tribal leaders. Two days later, while they were
sight-seeing in D.C., Johnson got a phone call: Neal
McCaleb, Bush’s assistant secretary of the Interior for
Indian Affairs, had rescinded Chinook recognition fol-
lowing the Quinault Indian Nation’s opposition.
The Quinault had argued that even though
Chinookan families existed before 1951, they did not
constitute a tribe with a united community and politi-
cal authority. During a recent House of Representa-
tives hearing about reforming the petition process, the
Quinault objected to proposed changes, specifically
citing the Chinook’s petition. The Quinault maintain
that they do not oppose “the right of any group to seek
a political relationship with the federal government.”
Rather, the tribe is against any federal action that could
“jeopardize” its own treaty rights or sovereignty. In
2011, Pearl Capoeman-Baller, who was then the
Quinault president, told The Seattle Post-Intel-
ligencer: “If the Chinook will permanently
waive any rights to hunting, fishing, gath-
ering and other treaty rights,” she said.
“And if (they) will also waive any
claims that the Chinook share govern-
ment authority over the reservation,
then the Quinault will withdraw
objection to (federal) acknowledg-
ment.” (The Quinault Nation did
not respond to questions about
how Chinook recognition might
jeopardize its treaty rights or sov-
ereignty.)
In the final decision, McCa-
leb noted one reason for the re-
versal: “As people who had been
closely connected as children and
young adults died, the succeeding
generations interacted less often and
intensely until the community of Chi-
nook descendants became indistinguish-
able from the rest of the population” — an
ironically apt description of the stated purpose
of past U.S. policies.
Ripples of shock and anger followed the news.
Tony Johnson cut his hair in mourning. One promi-
nent Chinook elder, elated by recognition, was close to
death at the time. His family couldn’t bring themselves
to tell him that the decision had been reversed; they
let him go believing the Chinook held their formally
recognized status.
Tribal disagreements over recognition are not
uncommon, especially given the rise of the gambling
industry in the 1990s. States, federally recognized
tribes and businesses all have competing interests and
rights over land, water and wildlife. That can be com-
pounded by the lack of funding in Indian Country by
Congress.
The Quinault have opposed Chinook rec-
ognition since the Chinook first formally sought it,
in 1981. (The Quinault also fought a petition by the
Cowlitz Tribe in the 1990s.) A coastal nation compris-
ing two tribes and descendants from several others,
the Quinault live about 100 miles north of Bay Center.
Their relationship with the Chinook is complicated;
during one treaty negotiation, Chinook leaders made it
clear to the U.S. government’s representative that they
did not want to move north onto the Quinault Reser-
vation, in part because of past conflicts. Despite this,
in the 1930s, the courts designated some of the lands
on the Quinault Reservation for the Chinook and other
tribes.
Today, a number of Chinook have moved
north and enrolled as Quinault, and the two tribes
share plenty of friends and relatives. In an oral history
continued on page 15