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About Siletz news / (Siletz, OR) 199?-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 2017)
Healthy Traditions December Minus Tide Harvesting Minus tides provide access to delicious indigenous foods like clams, mussels, seaweed, sea rose, urchins, and more. The Healthy Traditions project has been working closely with the Natural Resources Department to continue planning and implementing projects that will provide increased opportunities for Tribal members to gather cultural resources. Many of these projects are in the form of habitat restoration, which works to restore a damaged or destroyed ecosystem through restoring the natural processes (such as removing a dike to reintroduce tidal influence to a site), or through the reintroduction of plants and habitat structures (such as planting native species in a meadow). The Tribe is surveying for salmon spawning habitat to include in a larger model determining what part of the habitat is most critical to spawning salmon. Ultimately these hydrological models will describe 60 miles of the Siletz River and identify key areas where conservation and habitat enhancement should occur to support salmon stocks through future climate change scenarios. By conserving salmon habitat, the Tribe hopes to enhance the number of salmon in the Siletz River. Healthy Traditions and Natural Resources are also working to increase Tribal access to Wapato tubers and Camas bulbs for cultural events. Staff collected over 200 bulbs of Wapato and 400 bulbs of Camas from the Willamette Valley, with the intent to plant them out at the Hatchery property. Also in the Willamette Valley, staff have been continuing to work with private land owners interested in restoring native habitats on their property. The restoration of these sites, which focus on oak savannah habitats, would increase access to traditional Tribal food resources such as camas and acorns. Another project that Healthy Traditions and Natural Resources Department are collaborating on is the restoration of native Olympia oysters to the Yaquina Bay. Staff worked with Oregon Oyster Farms to place 900 bags of oyster shell in the Yaquina Bay with the hope that native Olympia oysters will settle on these shells and provide a source population for the Bay. Native oysters have been decimated over the past century, so the initiation of a source population is the first step to restoring Yaquina Bay Olympia oyster populations. Through habitat restoration, not only are we able to work towards healing the land, but work to develop and maintain important traditional and cultural resources for the future. Laura Brown, CTSI Shellfish Biologist Mission Statement The CTSI Healthy Traditions project seeks to improve the health of Siletz Tribal members through educational activities which promote the use of traditional foods through hunting, gathering, gardening, cooking, food preservation and protecting our natural resources. December 2017 • Siletz News • 7
