TRIBAL PROGRAM NEWS
Siletz Tribal Head Start students made their annual appearance to sing songs
for the Restoration crowd during the afternoon event.
(photo above and both below by Diane Rodriquez)
Delores Pigsley presents Mike and Max Clements with a framed photo of their
brother, Rudy Clements, which also includes an eagle feather, in appreciation
of the family’s support of the Siletz Tribe.
Quanna Pigsley, Hattie Imbler-Bremner, Jr. Miss Siletz Rose Pigsley,
Delores Pigsley, former Gov. Vic Atiyeh and Delores Atiyeh enjoy the
Restoration Pow-Wow. (photo by Brent Merrill)
Bud Lane and Delores Pigsley present Charles Wilkinson with a Pendleton
jacket following Charles ' heartwarming keynote address.
Restoration, con’t from page 1
ties signed only a century before. The
people of the Siletz Tribes had origi
nally inhabited the entire western por
tion of the State of Oregon from the
Columbia River to the Klamath River
in Northern California, from the ocean
shores to the eastern foothills of the
coastal mountain range.
“Restoration is important to re
member because when the Tribe was
terminated much was lost,” said Chair
man Pigsley. “Few Tribal members to
day remember those years from termi
nation through Restoration. The Res
toration Act is as important as our Tribal
treaties. It gave us back programs and
services and it outlined a plan for ob
taining a land base.”
What the Tribe lost is hard to mea
sure. Spirituality, personal oral histo
ries and loss of traditional ways of life
are hard to measure in acres.
In 1855, a 1.1 million-acre Reser
vation was created by the federal gov
ernment for people of the Siletz Tribe
on the Oregon Coast. The Tribe's 3,000
people watched as the government took
200,000 acres of Reservation land sur
rounding Yaquina Bay in 1865. That
prime coastal hunting and gathering
land was opened up to white settlers.
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Siletz News
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Just I0 years later, another 700,000
acres was taken by an act of Congress
in 1875.
The final blow was dealt when the
remaining Reservation land was taken
by the federal government through the
Allotment Act in 1892. The Allotment
Act left 551 Tribal members with 80-
acre allotments.
In the early 1970s, the remaining
people of the Siletz Tribe began to meet
in each other’s basements and kitch
ens to discuss the process of Restora
tion. Siletz Tribal leaders had heard of
the Menominees successful efforts to
achieve Restoration for their people in
1972. After years of members meeting
after work and holding bake sales to raise
money for their cause, then-President
Jimmy Carter signed Public Law 95-
195 officially restoring the Tribe to fed
eral recognition.
Restoration celebration guest speaker
Charles Wilkinson, who played an in
strumental role in the Tribe's Restora
tion efforts and is currently writing a
definitive history of the Siletz people,
talked to a Tribal member crowd ear
lier in the day about the changes that
have taken place since he first started
December 2007
traveling to the remote, coastal moun
tain Reservation.
Wilkinson began traveling the road
to Siletz in 1975.
“I love to drive the west and this is
one of my favorites, emotional and
central to me beyond saying,” he said.
Wilkinson spoke about his emotion
when driving to Siletz along Highway
20. He had made the route many times
before, beginning 32 years ago.
“As I climbed toward the low crest
of the Coast Range, the old, heavy mix
of the land and the long stretch of time
and human experience in western Or
egon welled up and took over,” he said.
“Then as I always do, I pulled over and
parked a few miles east of Eddyville. I
got out and let the feelings sink in. For
it is there, just out of Eddyville, where
lies the eastern border of the great 1855
treaty reservation. This eastern border,
24 miles east of Newport, stretched 110
miles from north to south, beginning
well south of Eugene and reaching all
the way to the suburbs of Portland. The
reservation encompassed 1.1 million
acres, nearly 2 percent of Oregon, and
it took in the magnificent spruce, ce
dar and Douglas fir forests in the Coast
Range and all the salmon rivers feed
ing the ocean and, on the edge of the
sea, the rocks and beaches and points
and capes and heads and harbors and
mussels and oysters and seals and sea
lions. It all belonged to the Siletz.”
Wilkinson went on to say that he
felt all the hard work and extraordinary
effort by this small core group of tena
cious, yet gracious people was worth
it in the end.
“If my stop at Eddyville and my
immersion in the Oregon Coast’s history,
so real, so tangible, brought sadness and
anger, so too does it bring forth joy and
inspiration,” he said. “Especially at the
end of the trip. For the people of the
Siletz in the 1970s had the look of the
eagle in their eyes.”
Wilkinson said the people surprised
him when they were so willing after years
of failed government policy toward
Indian people had delivered “blow af
ter blow.” He admired their “staying
power.” He watched as the people’s
first act was to roll up their sleeves and
clean the Tribal cemetery on Govern
ment Hill.
“No one realized it at first, but it
was a sign of what was to come.”