VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, October 16, 2021
East Oregonian
BETTE
HUSTED
JAMIE
DAWSON
FROM HERE TO ANY WHERE
OTHER VIEWS
We can learn
to belong here
Even our smallest
streams, tributaries
can play a big role
L
ast week, President Joe Biden
issued a first-ever proclamation
to recognize Indigenous Peoples’
Day.
“On Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” he
wrote, “our Nation celebrates the invalu-
able contributions and resilience of Indig-
enous peoples, recognizes their inherent
sovereignty, and commits to honoring the
Federal Government’s trust and treaty
obligations to Tribal Nations.
“For generations, Federal policies
systematically sought to assimilate
and displace Native people and eradi-
cate Native cultures. Today, we recog-
nize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and
strength as well as the immeasurable posi-
tive impact that they have made on every
aspect of American society.”
He also officially recognized the
federal holiday of Columbus Day
and honored the contributions of Ital-
ian-Americans. But, he added, “Today,
we also acknowledge the painful history
of wrongs and atrocities that many Euro-
pean explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations
and Indigenous communities. For Native
Americans, western exploration ushered
in a wave of devastation: violence perpe-
trated against Native communities,
displacement and theft of Tribal home-
lands, the introduction and spread of
disease, and more.”
The first national Columbus Day came
after a mob broke into Orleans Parish
Prison in 1891 to kill Italian immigrants
who had been found not guilty of murder.
The New York Times wrote that “while
every good citizen” would agree that
“this affair is to be deplored, it would be
difficult to find any individual who would
confess that privately he deplores it very
much,” and Theodore Roosevelt, in a
letter to his sister, wrote, “Personally, I
think it a rather good thing.”
Italy — and Italian-American voters
— were angry, and since communities
were already planning celebrations of the
400th anniversary of Columbus’s landing,
President Benjamin Harrison was urged
to proclaim a one-time national holiday
to win their support and “impress upon
our youth the patriotic duties of American
citizenship.”
People had fun — who doesn’t love a
holiday with a parade? — but it clearly
wasn’t an acknowledgment of the discrim-
ination against Italian immigrants, and it
didn’t celebrate a patriotic determination
to live up to America’s ideal of equality.
The word “resilience” is repeated
in Biden’s proclamation of Indigenous
Peoples’ Day for good reason, it seems to
me. Resilience is what has enabled Indig-
enous peoples not only to survive but
to thrive, to grow, to adapt, and to keep
offering alternative perspectives to their
non-Native neighbors.
The times we are living in now are test-
ing us all — this week there was even talk
of “shock troops” and “civil war.” Can our
society as a whole be as resilient?
I take heart from people like Julia
Ward Gillis, whose “Letter from an Army
Wife” (which I found in the Oregon Liter-
ature Series) reveals an American with
courage to face painful truths. When she
came west as an Army bride she wrote
to her parents about the accommoda-
tions at Fort Dalles, where on the parlor
walls were “swabs, rammers, sabers, and
other things whose names I have not yet
learned” while on the floor “with its nose
(Jim says I must say muzzle) pointing
out the window is the dearest brass gun
mounted on a wooden carriage. Captain
C. says it is a mountain howitzer.”
The next year she and her husband are
living in a slab hut with a sloping dirt floor
in what is now Harney County, where
Gen. Crook’s troops are searching for
people to kill.
This time she writes, “I think it is a
wretched unholy warfare; the poor crea-
tures are hunted down like wild beasts
and shot down in cold blood. The same
ball went through a mother and her baby
at her breast. One poor little creature just
the size of my baby was shot because he
would some day grow up.”
Julia would be amazed, I think, and
grateful for Biden’s proclamation, for the
steps our country is taking toward becom-
ing a better people.
On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day I’m
reminded that those of us who are immi-
grants or descended from immigrants are
not and can never be indigenous to North
America.
But we can, as Robin Wall Kimmerer
suggests in her book “Braiding Sweet-
grass,” become “naturalized.”
We can learn from Indigenous peoples,
realize that relationships with “all our
relations” are reciprocal. We can learn to
belong here. All of us, together.
———
Bette Husted is a writer and a student
of tai chi and the natural world. She lives
in Pendleton.
A5
river, as all great things, must start some-
where. Like the network of blood vessels
in your body, our watersheds are inter-
connected. You have big arteries running to your
organs, and from those arteries stems a complex
network of millions of tiny blood vessels that
allow the rest of your body to function.
So too is true for our watersheds.
Behind every rushing river I raft and every
hefty steelhead I catch is a vast web of small
streams all lined up to do their part. No matter
what you call them (tributaries, headwa-
ter streams, intermittent streams, spawning
grounds), they’re incredibly important.
Yet when we look at the various policies
crafted to safeguard water, they’ve been rele-
gated to somewhere on the spectrum of “over-
looked” to “intentionally ignored.” In fact, many
of these waters don’t even appear on maps, and
Oregon has no comprehensive inventory. This
isn’t because they’re useless. Far from it.
Without their cumulative influence, Oregon’s
great rivers would be shells of themselves.
Now, science is highlighting the need to make
up for decades of neglect. I recently discovered
the paper “Where Rivers Are Born: The Scien-
tific Imperative for Defending Small Streams
and Wetlands,” in which stream experts detail
the myriad contributions to natural ecosystems
and human economies coming from headwaters,
even those that don’t run all year.
For example, scientists have catalogued 290
types of plants, animals and other living organ-
isms in headwater zones, including some that
are unique to these areas. This fact comes as no
surprise to me.
Though I love to fly fish, I also love to snor-
kel, and I’ve discovered the ultimate way to get
to know some of these smaller streams is by
dipping my head in to take a look. While they
might not look like much on the surface, headwa-
ter streams are quite literally bursting with life.
My most recent snorkel in a small bedrock-
lined creek revealed great plains of algae-cov-
ered rocks upon which hundreds of caddis fly
larvae were munching, while schools of juvenile
wild steelhead and salmon poked curiously at my
feet.
The health and abundance of the tiny crea-
tures I saw inhabiting those streams high up in
the river system directly contributes to the down-
stream success of Oregon’s recreational and
commercial fishing industries.
The abundant food, complex structure and
lower flows that headwater streams provide
create ideal conditions for young fish to grow.
In Oregon, fish biologists have found coho
salmon frequently head to intermittent streams
to spawn, and young salmon will later return
to these streams for refuge when conditions in
mainstream rivers prove to be treacherous.
But more than just fish benefit. “Where
Rivers Are Born” outlines how our human lives
and economies are also very directly affected
by the health (or lack thereof) of these streams.
Protecting these areas in their natural condition
helps prevent downstream flooding, cleans and
recharges the groundwater that fills municipal
water stores (like your well, if you have one), and
leads to healthier forests and more stable flows
throughout the summer.
By drastically altering these forests, or remov-
ing them wholesale as we often do on private
and state lands across Oregon, we accelerate the
water cycle and lose many of these key functions
in the process. We are already seeing the conse-
quences of overlooking these integral compo-
nents of our watersheds: struggling salmon runs,
toxic algae blooms and drought.
If we fail to protect these headwater streams,
we will continue to see the state of our larger
rivers deteriorate.
———
Jamie Dawson is an enthusiastic angler,
hunter and public lands advocate for Oregon
Wild. She lives in Bend.
A
Reading is helpful tool for
catching kids up in school
SCOTT
SMITH
THE EDUCATION CORNER
hildren across the country and
around our communities are
returning or have returned
to classrooms. However, parents,
teachers and students have expressed
significant concern.
How do we make up for the past
year and a half with so much loss of
instruction? First, some students were
not able to connect with the online
learning, parents were overwhelmed
and trying to help them with their
school work, and then some students
just disappeared not showing up at
school when schools resumed, creat-
ing frustration for parents, teachers
and students.
Teachers have experienced chal-
lenges over the years with multiple
levels of students in the classroom.
They have become more over-
whelmed with students at more signif-
icant learning gaps upon returning to
school. There are those students who
were able to connect with and partic-
ipate in online learning, as well as
those with parents who could adjust
their schedules to participate in home-
schooling. Still, some parents didn’t
have those opportunities, and their
children faced new challenges.
We can’t go back. We have to keep
things moving forward. Our children
are resilient, and they will bounce
back quickly. But, we all have to be
aware and provide additional support
if we see a child struggling.
As parents and community
members, one of the best things we
can do to assist our schools is to
engage our children. Language is key
to the child’s development and under-
standing of their surroundings. Take
the time to have a child tell you what
they are doing and why not just when
they have done something wrong,
builds pathways in their brains to
increase their comprehension of what
is happening around them.
Reading with or to children
remains one of the best learning
opportunities an adult can do with
children. When you read with a child
or to a child, there are several key
activities you can engage the child
with to increase their understanding.
C
Questions along with asking their
opinion will increase their knowledge.
If you can relate the activities in what
you are reading to real-life experi-
ences, it will help the child build the
comprehension skills they may have
missed during the last couple of years.
Consider a nonfiction book in your
child’s area of interest. We all enjoy
a good story, but a nonfiction book
might help make up for some lost
classroom time. Again the learning
happens during the discussion about
the information.
Still, no matter how hard we try,
the time has been lost because of
the pandemic, and we have to keep
moving forward. Getting our chil-
dren engaged can be difficult some-
times. You’re ready or have time to
work with them, and they start crying
and arguing making a whole different
challenge. If you should experience
your child pushing back, know you are
experiencing a learning opportunity.
Our children want to have some form
of control in this out-of-control time.
So knowing how to deal with this will
make everyone’s day happier.
You might start with a question,
such as, “Would you like to read a
book?” Whatever activity you have in
mind. We would hope to hear “Sure,”
but it doesn’t always happen. Then, if
you start to get push back, this is your
child showing they want to challenge
control. So give them a statement like,
“We need to complete this story or do
our reading today so we can do it now
or when you’re ready, but we need to
start in 15 minutes to complete it in
time for ... Which would you prefer?”
Doing this shows your child they can
control something in what seems to be
an out-of-control time in their world.
In most cases, children will come and
read because the number one thing
they want is time with you. Our chil-
dren want our time, whether it be posi-
tive or negative. We as adults have to
make it positive, and this trick is quick
and straightforward.
Looking forward is our way to
help our children move past these last
couple of years. Spending time and
interacting with them will also help
overcome the time missed in the class-
room. Let the learning begin.
———
Scott Smith is a 40-plus year
Umatilla County educator and serves
on the Decoding Dyslexia Oregon
board as its parent/teacher liaison.
We need more problem-focused responses
KEVIN
FRAZIER
OTHER VIEWS
ou learn that the Clintons, Laura
Bush, two major philanthropic foun-
dations, and even Jay-Z are behind
a project. Surely, you think, this must be a
silver bullet solution.
Who supports a solution, though, matters
far less than actually understanding the prob-
lem and learning from the people dealing
with it. That’s why PlayPump, which relied
on children using merry-go-rounds to pump
water from wells in Africa, was a complete
disaster. The “toys” were placed in commu-
nities without their consent. Children in some
communities were forced to “play” so that
others could get water. And, the devices soon
were in disrepair without any sort of servic-
ing on the horizon.
Policymakers and philanthropies in
Oregon often demonstrate the same trou-
bling behavior of endorsing a solution before
truly understanding the problem. On the left
and right, politicians may feel like they have
to embrace certain solutions because the
“Clintons” or “Bushes” or some fill-in-the-
Y
blank celebrity endorsed it. So they search
for a problem to apply their solution. This is a
horrible idea.
Any good entrepreneur, community
organizer or faith leader will tell you that
problem solving starts with listening. And
this isn’t listening to some contrived focus
group or even knocking on doors as part of
a campaign; this is the sort of listening that
actually leads to exposure to a problem,
to seeing the roots of that problem, and to
understanding how and why it is a pain point
for a member of your community. This is
the sort of listening that takes time, genu-
ine empathy and a commitment to constant
reevaluation to see how the problem is evolv-
ing and changing.
This approach to problem solving doesn’t
allow for cookie-cutter, universal solutions.
Instead, it forces people to create highly
localized, contextualized and adaptable solu-
tions that require substantial investment and
monitoring. In other words, these solutions
are not the “easy way” nor the sort of thing
that fits nicely into a tweet or Instagram post.
That’s precisely why we rarely see these
sorts of solutions emerge out of our politics.
Politicians make plenty of time for listening
to donors, but limit their listening to “town
halls” packed with hundreds of people who
never have the opportunity to truly teach the
officials about the problems in their lives and
neighborhoods. Legislative solutions and
grant-funded projects commonly display the
faults of solution-first thinking, rather than
problem-focused responses.
For instance, a bill or nonprofit may
pursue an unalterable intervention that may
become outdated in just a few years, if not
months. Or the bill in question or project
under review may just be the hot thing of the
day, so of course it deserves outsized atten-
tion and support.
Let’s stop asking those in positions to
institute change about their solutions. Let’s
start demanding that they outline their under-
standing of the problem. The latter approach
will make it abundantly clear if they’ve actu-
ally done the hard work of studying the roots
of our biggest issues and of getting to know
the people most impacted by those issues.
———
Kevin Frazier formerly led Passport
Oregon, which helped young Oregonians
explore the state’s outdoors. He operates
No One Left Offline, which has distrib-
uted nearly 100 Wi-Fi hot spots throughout
Oregon, especially Central Oregon. Kevin
will graduate from the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley School of Law in May 2022.