SILETZ NEWS
Delores Pigsley,
Tribal Chairman
Brenda Bremner,
General Manager
and Editor-in-Chief
Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians
Vol. 45, No. 10
Siletz News
Confederated Tribes of
Siletz Indians
P.O. Box 549
Siletz, OR 97380-0549
October 2017
Presorted
First-Class
Mail
U.S. Postage
Paid - Permit
No. 178
Salem, OR
Stutzman, 4
others receive
Governor’s Arts
Awards
SALEM, Ore. – Gov. Kate Brown
announced on Sept. 6 two artists and
three organizations as winners of the 2017
Governor’s Arts Awards.
Yoncalla artist Esther Stutzman and
Portland artist Arvie Smith both won
Lifetime Achievement Awards. Crow’s
Shadow Institute of the Arts, Portland
Opera and The James F. and Marion L.
Miller Foundation also will be honored.
The return of the awards after a
10-year hiatus coincides with the 50 th anni-
versary of the Oregon Arts Commission.
“Not only do the arts enrich our qual-
ity of life and local economies, arts educa-
tion is key in fostering a spirit of creativity
and innovation in our youth,” said Brown.
“The awards are a great way to celebrate
Oregon’s artistic treasures and honor the
impact they have had to our state.”
Oregon’s highest honor for exemplary
service to the arts, the 2017 Governor’s
Arts Awards will be presented during a
ceremony at 8 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 6, at the
Portland Hilton Downtown. Admission to
the ceremony, which precedes the 2017
Oregon Arts Summit, is free and open
to the public but registration is required.
Award recipients were selected from
a pool of 110 nominations received from
across the state. The nominations were
reviewed and scored by a diverse selection
committee, which submitted its recommen-
dations to Brown for final award decisions.
“So many deserving artists and
organizations were nominated,” said Arts
Commission Executive Director Brian
Rogers. “As a result, the review process
was extremely competitive and we are
extremely grateful to the members of the
selection committee for their time and
thoughtful consideration. Each of the
award recipients has made outstanding
contributions to the arts in Oregon and
we are excited to honor them.”
The 2017 Governor’s Arts Awards
award object will be designed and pro-
duced by artist Marie Watt.
Governor’s Arts Award recipients
Esther Stutzman, Yoncalla:
Lifetime Achievement
Esther Stutzman is a native Orego-
nian and traditional American Indian
storyteller of Kalapuya/Coos heritage. She
learned the stories from her grandmoth-
ers and she has been telling stories of the
ancient ways for more than 50 years.
She is a descendant of the Headman
Camafeema (Halo) of the Komemma/
Kalapuya and is an enrolled member of
the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.
See Awards on page 4
Photo by Andrea Taylor
Jessica Garcia (left) watches her daughter, Chelo, try out the new batting cages in Siletz that opened during the
Wellness Carnival on Aug. 25. The Siletz Tribe helped fund the project through EPR (excess pledge revenue)
funds. The batting cages are located near the Siletz Rec Center.
See more photos from the Wellness Carnival on page 14.
Get college credit along with your high school diploma
By Andrea Taylor
As the 2017/2018 school year resumes,
I realized that reminding friends, family
and students about higher education and
all the options available through both the
Tribe and your local school district would
be most beneficial.
What I am talking about specifically
is early college. College is the word that
almost everyone dreads hearing and talk-
ing about, yet there are so many resources
that make the transition easier.
I learned that the Lincoln County,
Ore., schools and just about every school
district in America offer what is com-
monly known as Early College Program.
What is the Early College Program? This
is when a high school student takes some
form of college credit course while in high
school. This offers students an advantage
of getting the basic required classes for
almost every degree out of the way before
they even graduate high school.
Most high schools offer this, usually
as an advanced placement (AP) class or
as a dual credit (DC) class. However, there
are other versions of the credit program
depending on your school.
For the most part, AP/DC classes are
available free or with a hefty discount of
50 percent or more off the price of each
class through either your local school
district or the college with which they
closely work.
Siletz Valley Early College Academy
(SVECA) works with Oregon Coast Com-
munity College (OCCC) to offer youth
dual credit classes during their junior
and senior years, including homeschool
students. The Early College Program
includes one free college class per term,
per academic year. If you’re a Siletz stu-
dent, SVECA picks up the cost of books.
If the student wishes to take more than
one class in a term, the class is offered at
a 50 percent discount to the student and
books are still covered.
I attended a field trip with the Siletz
11 th - and 12 th -grade classes to the college,
picking up education information from
the many activities set up and from Ben
Kaufmann, Navigate Program manager
at OCCC, who noted the “majority of our
students finish their prerequisites and
transfer to a university or another college
where they can finish their degree.”
Kaufmann explained that one of the
school’s priorities is making sure students
have all they need to get to the next step,
whatever the next step is for that individual.
A topic of interest was how people
are under the impression that you won’t
get a quality education if you attend com-
munity college.
“That myth was started, most likely
when people hear the words ‘community
college’ and think because it’s open that it
must be bad. Also when they see that the
price of a class is much lower, that must
See College on page 6