VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, June 10, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 5A
Poetry is in everyone, every culture
W
e weren’t the first backpackers to
head into the Idaho mountains.
My father had even shown us the
wooden frame he once used to pack in to his
work as a crosscut sawyer,
but he was clearly baffled
that my friends and I would
choose to do this for fun.
The ranger wasn’t
encouraging, either. “How’s
the trail to Sheep Lake?”
we asked him, just making
conversation. He eyed us
skeptically. Last year a
woman had left her gear
behind and expected him
to retrieve it. “You gotta be
pretty husky,” he said, finally.
But 1968 was a troubled
time, and we were seeking
solace.
We did make it to the
lake — despite thinking it
would be smart to take a
shortcut — and had a great
time, complete with cutthroat trout and stars.
Those days in the beauty of the mountains
didn’t resolve the pain of that year, but they
helped.
And now? It has been a rough few weeks
here in Oregon, a hard time for many in
our country. Once again, or still, people are
searching for healing. Where do we turn?
Robert Kennedy, whose assassination
we were mourning that summer of 1968,
had turned to poetry — to Aeschylus — as
he shared his own grief when he had to
announce the murder of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. “Even in our sleep, pain which
cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the
heart until, in our own
despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the
awful grace of God.”
I’ve been turning to
poetry, too. Maybe that
was why, when I heard it
again, the all-too-familiar
claim that “there was no
poetry in America before
1855,” I thought back to that
shortcut in the Seven Devils
Wilderness. We were alone
in that canyon. No trail, no
tracks. Were we the first
people ever to walk here,
we wondered? It was an
exhilarating thought.
Not likely, we realized as
we sat around our campfire.
After all, Native people had
been living in that country for thousands of
years.
Of course Natives have been making
poems for thousands of years, too. Some
of their writing survived the conquistadors’
fires. Ceremonial ritual poems were
memorized and are still passed down. It
boggles the mind, really — the idea that
millions of people in hundreds of cultures,
especially the kind of oral cultures that so
honor the generative power of words, would
It boggles
the mind
that millions
of people in
hundreds of
cultures would
not create
songs, lyrics,
poems.
not create songs, lyrics, poems.
But blindness is the easiest kind of
racism, especially when it reinforces the
dominant narrative of a country. The truth is
right in front of us, but we don’t see it.
Recently Oregonians have been stunned
by the murder of two men who tried to stop
a hateful verbal attack on Portland’s MAX
train. Stunned is appropriate; but surprised,
shocked. Not if we know our state’s history.
Many of us don’t, and it’s fair to ask, why
don’t we? And now that the door to this
history has been cracked open just a bit, is it
our responsibility to “discover” our state all
over again?
On May 31, people were invited to the
Tamastslikt Cultural Institute to hear stories
of Celilo Falls, the heart of Northwest Native
cultures for thousands of years before its
death in 1957 when the gates of The Dalles
Dam closed.
As we listened, we could almost hear
the sound of Wyam, sometimes through
voices misted with tears. But sonar images,
speakers reminded us, show us that the
falls are still there, beneath the water. Not
dynamited after all. Not silted in. Thomas
Morning Owl left us with these words:
“Maybe one day, in my lifetime, in your
lifetime, in the lifetime of these young
people ... I pray that those gates are opened
enough that the falls might live. For one
day. Two days. Wouldn’t that be something?
To see what the elders remembered, as that
memory dims?”
The pain was not gone. But as I joined the
B ette H usted
FROM HERE TO ANYWHERE
circle dance that ended the evening, I felt a
little better. What I had just heard was poetry.
And yes, I thought, as I drove home.
Wouldn’t it be something, to see?
■
Bette Husted is a writer and a student of
T’ai Chi and the natural world. She lives in
Pendleton.
Basin’s groundwater at risk from
industrial ag, proposed mega-dairy
By MITCH WOLGAMOTT
For the East Oregonian
he permit for the Lost Valley
mega-dairy, issued by the Oregon
Department of Environment Quality,
my former employer, and the Oregon
Department of Agriculture will make a 30-
year-old pollution problem even worse.
Not long before I left DEQ in 2010, I
was asked to attend the annual Farm Fair in
Hermiston. I was specially asked to address
“the regulatory environment” related to
the Lower Umatilla Basin groundwater
management area.
The management area
had been established in
1990 because of serious
nitrate pollution. Twenty
years had passed with
no improvement. The
early years were spent
studying the problem
and working with
stakeholders to develop
an action plan — a plan
that was agreed to by
everyone, including
large-scale, irrigated
agriculture.
As was customary,
agricultural sources were
asked to voluntarily
implement practices that would improve
water quality. But there was a stipulation
that if things did not improve, regulatory
solutions could be sought. Progress was to
be evaluated every four years.
At the Farm Fair I told the audience that
not only had there been no improvement,
after 12 years the problem was actually
getting worse.
The groundwater was becoming more
polluted, and little progress in reducing
nitrogen pollution by irrigated agriculture
was documented. I stated that if the next
progress report looked like the last one,
DEQ would have to begin looking at
regulations to improve water quality.
Even as acting administrator for DEQ’s
eastern region, I knew I would need
backing from higher up if any regulation
was necessary. So I told the chain up the
line at DEQ what I was going to say and
got agreement on it. Later we arranged an
information item for the Environmental
Quality Commission to brief them on the
situation.
At the EQC meeting Phil Richerson,
the most knowledgeable person in the state
regarding the local water quality, briefed the
Commission on the status of efforts and on
the water trend analysis for the management
area: The pollution was getting worse.
I supported the position that no action
was needed by the EQC at that time. But
I said we would be back after the next
progress report was finalized and may
need to be talk about developing a more
accountable approach to improving water
quality. I left the DEQ assuming there
would be follow-though by the department.
Apparently that has not happened.
Other players in the groundwater
management area had already spent millions
of dollars on water quality improvements
in the basin. The citizens of Pendleton,
Hermiston and other cities have spent
millions on upgrades to treatment plants,
the food processors (ConAG, Simplot,
et.al.) had spent millions upgrading their
wastewater systems, Soil and Water
Conservation districts had done education
and outreach.
T
Tribal leadership must be
transparent, accountable
By BOB SHIPPENTOWER
A
mong his many and diverse
high-level titles, Chuck Sams is
the publisher of the Confederated
Umatilla Journal, the monthly newspaper
of the Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation. In this role,
Sams is responsible for the content of the
articles and information that appear in the
CUJ.
Sams, former Executive Director Dave
Tovey, Deputy Executive Director Debra
Croswell, and CUJ Editor Wil Phinney
were recently sued in
tribal court by a former
tribal employee. The
plaintiff charged
the defendants with
violating her privacy
rights by writing an
article which included
her confidential
personnel information.
The article was a
front-page story in the
CUJ.
The defendants
settled the case with
the plaintiff for an
undisclosed amount of settlement funds.
I was on the BOT when this situation
initiated. At the time, I advised Sams
and Phinney, as the CUJ publisher and
CUJ editor, respectively, to run a short,
general, article on the situation, in the
spirit of transparency and to demonstrate
to tribal members the tribal government
was being straight up with them. They, of
course, refused to. They obviously tried to
keep the situation under wraps.
I understand the East Oregonian made
an inquiry to the tribal administration
about the situation for a possible story,
but was stonewalled by the director of
communications, who is none other than
Chuck Sams. He wrongfully claimed this
is an issue of tribal “sovereignty.”
The CTUIR accepts tens of millions
of federal taxpayer funds every year to
support tribal operations, including our
court and legal institutions. Thus, this
situation is a matter of public information
for the general public. It is inappropriate
and improper for these senior managers to
try to hide their serious misdeeds behind
the time-honored principle of sovereignty.
While the specific terms of the
settlement are confidential, the reason
these defendants were sued by the
plaintiff is not confidential.
This is not a witch hunt. This is an
issue of accountability. Sams, Croswell
and Phinney have never been held
accountable for their mismanagement
and poor judgment that cost the tribe, and
tribal members, at least tens of thousands
of dollars, maybe hundreds of thousands.
They are at work every day as if nothing
happened.
In fact, the Board of Trustees actually
promoted Croswell to the interim
executive director position. And Sams
can now add yet another title to his name;
the BOT promoted him to be the interim
deputy executive director. However,
poor Phinney must feel left out as he did
not get promoted — he had to settle for
retaining his editor’s position.
It is blatantly unfair in situations like
this when some are rewarded for their
failures, and others
have been terminated
for much less serious
issues that cause tribal
members to lose faith
and trust in tribal
government.
However, many will
remain silent in fear
of retaliation, such as
having an employment
application be denied,
or having a housing
application be denied. I
have been around long
enough that I am not so
naive and gullible to act like these things
do not happen in our tribe.
If I cost our tribe tens of thousands of
dollars, maybe hundreds of thousands,
because of my incompetent actions,
would I realistically expect to keep
my job? Or would anyone in any
organization?
Of course not. We would be fired with
clear justification. These senior managers
are in their high-paying positions because
they are expected to be competent and
have good decision-making skills, and to
not make very poor decisions like they
did in this situation.
A directly related issue is the East
Oregonian, as an independent newspaper,
has an obligation and responsibility, on
behalf of the public, to be a “watchdog”
on the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars
the CTUIR receives annually.
However, all the EO does is accept
and repeat whatever Chuck Sams, as
the director of communications, decides
to provide them. And, of course, this
is all one-sided feel good articles and
information. This does not begin to meet
the values and principles of the profession
of journalism.
An annual random audit by a private
firm is not enough. Tribal officials should
have no problem with this.
■
Bob Shippentower is an enrolled
member of the Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation and former
member of the Board of Trustees.
It is inappropriate
and improper for
senior managers
to try to hide their
misdeeds behind
the principle of
sovereignty.
Only big, industrial agriculture could not
document progress.
About 80 percent of the nitrogen loading
in the basin is coming from big irrigated
agriculture. These irrigators are not what
comes to mind when most people think of
farming. If you’ve seen it from the air, you
know these are industrial operations — just
as mega-dairies are industrial scale and need
to be regulated as any other industry.
What’s worse is that these mega-dairies
are also industrial scale irrigators. The
Hidden Valley farm will add up to
5,000 acres of large scale irrigation and
fertilization. By issuing this permit, adding
more irrigation over
groundwater that is
already polluted, the
DEQ and ODA almost
guarantee that the
pollution will continue
to get worse. The
permit will result in
a significant increase
in what is already the
biggest contributor to the
problem — industrial
scale irrigation (we are
not talking abut your
grandparents’ farm here).
It’s clear that the
only way to solve the
Lower Umatilla Basin
groundwater pollution is to decrease the
amount of nitrogen and irrigation that is
reaching the groundwater from industrial
scale irrigation.
After nearly 30 years of increasing
pollution, a new management plan is
woefully needed. To be successful that
plan must bring the irrigators to the table
and get documentable and, yes, enforceable
commitments to reducing nitrogen
application per acre by industrial scale
irrigators.
The nuclear option: Groups that are
continuing to fight the Lost Valley mega-
dairy are right to do so. The problem cannot
be solved while allowing large increases in
nutrient application at the present rates. It’s
time to halt increases in industrial agriculture
until the existing pollution problem is
solved.
I remember an analogous situation in
Western Oregon back in the late 1970s or
1980s. In Washington County there was
serious surface water pollution. After
years of struggle the agencies were unable
to make progress in solving the problem.
Progress was stalled by the fact that
the competing cities were not working
together but staying in their silos. Finally,
as a last resort, the Environmental Quality
Commission imposed a growth moratorium
on Washington County. Practically
overnight everyone came to the table and
worked out plans to address the problems,
the moratorium was lifted, and progress
continues to be made in protecting water
quality while the economy booms. Perhaps
it is time that the EQC consider such a move
here. As a last resort, consider a prohibition
on any further increase in large-scale
irrigation/fertilization within the GWMA
until there is an aggressive, and enforceable,
plan to improve the groundwater quality. It’s
been almost 30 years now and the problem
is only getting worse.
■
Mitch Wolgamott is a former acting
administrator of the Department of
Environmental Quality’s Eastern Oregon,
and a former chair of Oregon Rural Action.
He lives in Summerville.
Only big,
industrial
agriculture could
not document
progress on
improving water
quality in the
basin.
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues
and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspa-
per reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual ser-
vices and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted
letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime
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published. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@
eastoregonian.com.