A8
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Saturday, July 16, 2022
Voices:
Continued from Page A1
Yasser Marte/East Oregonian
Vendor Krissy Burchette sets up her tattoo truck Friday,
July 15, 2022, at the Pendleton Round-Up Grounds for the
Pendleton Run weekend.
Bikers:
Continued from Page A1
“Charging admission to a
midway with vendors didn’t
seem right to us,” Richards
said. “And they had an inter-
esting cast of security staff.”
Richards said he promotes
events all over the country.
“I’ve done six events
in seven weeks,” he said.
“From here I’m going to New
York, then to Sturgis (South
Dakota). Support from local
businesses here has been
huge.”
And Pendleton Run is not
just motorcycles.
“We’re family friendly,”
Richards said. “Pendleton
rules: no weapons and no
dogs.”
Many vendors attending
the event could not be happier
with the venue.
“It’s going to be one of the
better ones, I can see that,”
said Ira Owen, a vendor and
Pendleton member of the
Bikers For Christ organiza-
tion.
Owen and fellow member
Kricket Nicholson have been
attending the Run since its
inaugural year as Bike Week.
Nicholson, also a guide at
the Pendleton Underground
Tours, said she is grateful
they’ll be able to stand in the
shade of Roy Raley Park, as
opposed to other years where
they camped in the Pendleton
Convention Center parking
lot.
Most of the vendors in
the park are not experienced
Run veterans, but first-timers.
Joanna Emry of Pendleton
owns Emry Farms with her
husband, James. She said they
learned of the event through
a man who came to the door.
She now has a stand in the
park selling their all-natural
baked goods.
Joh n Sicoca n of
Milton-Freewater said he
heard of the event in its prior
years, but this was the first
time he and his Smokey
Mountain BBQ truck has
been able to attend.
“I’m just here to promote
Ski:
Continued from Page A1
1999 — had safety concerns
for skiers due to snowmobil-
ers using the north parking
area. According to Weseman,
the Forest Service worked
with the Murrays and tried
to resolve the conflict, but no
resolution was ever reached.
In November 2021, their
permit was revoked and the
infrastructure became prop-
erty of the U.S. government.
“The Forest Service is
committed to providing for
public safety while maintain-
ing a balance of public access
to the Forest surrounding
Spout Springs Ski Area,”
Weseman said.
Spout Springs’ future
The list of required duties
to operate Spout Springs is
long.
Weseman said the new
operators will be responsible
for the operation and main-
tenance of infrastructure
and equipment, physical site
management, staffing, food
and beverage, planning and
development.
Interested parties are
encouraged to include ways
the recreation area could
be used year-round in their
proposals. Weseman said
candidates should consider
four-season operations in
order to make the oppor-
tunity more lucrative and
successful. Previous owners
have promoted summer recre-
the meat, cook and have a
good time,” he said.
And it’s not just local
vendors coming to attend.
Russell Johnson, a market-
ing representative for Russ
Brown Motorcycle Attorneys,
of Studio City, California, said
he has traveled to rallies all
over the country but this is his
first appearance in Pendleton.
“I love going to rallies
at rodeos,” he said. “It’s the
perfect place to see a motor-
cycle sideways at 100 miles
per hour.”
Johnson, a native of
Modesto, California, said
Richards, Pendleton Run
co-organizer, let him know
about the revamped experi-
ence in Eastern Oregon. John-
son’s employer, Russ Brown,
hopped on as a major sponsor
for the event.
Other motorcycle-based
companies, including Rattle-
snake Mountain Harley-Da-
vidson and Motostuff, have
joined on as well. And
swarms of biker parapherna-
lia, T-shirts and even a tattoo
artist have set up shop in the
Round-Up Grounds.
The reinvigorated event
has brought hopes of success
for both vendors and organiz-
ers. Rice said he anticipates
somewhere between 3,000
and 5,000 attendees during
the weekend.
Most events of the week-
end are free, excluding the
July 15 performance from
classic rock band Blue Oyster
Cult and the marque flat-track
races on the night of July 16.
Other features include free
music, a poker run and a
400-mile motorcycle ride
through the Columbia Basin.
For a fellow motorcycle
enthusiast in Rice, the event
is a long time coming, and one
he said he hopes will stay for
even longer.
“I want this thing to
survive long after I’m gone,”
he said. “I want to make it
successful, get people in and
involved, and get to be with
the community.”
The celebration began
w it h a k ickof f pa r t y
July 14 before two full days of
events July 15-16.
MORE
INFORMATION
Submission guidelines
for interested parties
are available on the U.S.
Forest Service’s website.
Prospective applicants
are encouraged to
visit Spout Springs and
inspect the infrastruc-
ture in person prior to
submitting a proposal.
To schedule a site visit,
contact Andy Steele at
andrew.steele@usda.gov
with “Spout Springs Site
Visit” as the subject line.
The proposals are due
by Sept. 1 and are being
used to gauge competi-
tive interest. They will be
reviewed by Walla Walla
District Manager Aaron
Gagnon, with support
provided by the staff at
the Umatilla National
Forest Headquarters.
ational activities, such as
mountain biking and hiking,
and the Umatilla Forest
Service is open to allowing
activities aligned with the
intended use of the land, like
camping.
The ultimate goal is to sell
the existing infrastructure and
issue a new Ski Area Term
Permit to a qualified applica-
tion. According to Weseman,
the ski area could be operated
under a special use permit for
government-owned facil-
ities until the sale of the
infrastructure is finalized.
For Indigenous fami-
lies, the struggle to prose-
cute crimes committed by
non-Natives on tribal land
has created lasting trauma.
And a lack of crime data,
high rates of cases being
declined by federal prosecu-
tors and meager resources for
help leave some feeling aban-
doned, a consensus among
tribal officials, advocates and
survivors.
Violent criminal acts
committed on tribal land by
non-Natives have historically
fallen through the cracks due
to a dizzying jurisdictional
maze that critics say made
Indian Country lawless.
Changes to laws giving tribes
more authority over non-Na-
tive offenders started in 2013.
However, those came with a
caveat: finding the resources,
including jail space, courts
and court-appointed attor-
neys before tribal courts
could be authorized to pros-
ecute.
A ruling from the U.S.
Supreme Court last month
also could shake the legal
landscape by giving states
concurrent jurisdiction
with federal authorities
over crimes committed by
non-Natives on tribal land,
according to legal experts,
though others are hopeful
the ruling won’t make a big
difference in Oregon.
Despite painfully slow
progress and a growing
movement calling attention to
missing and murdered Indig-
enous women, generations of
survivors like Coyote have
suffered decades of trauma
with only each other to turn
to.
“The United States has
done a terrible thing for Indig-
enous people and continues
to do terrible things to Indig-
enous people,” Coyote said.
“Left to our own ways before
boarding school, before fur
trappers, this would not exist.
Sexual violence would not
exist here.”
Changing laws
Critics tie the high rates of
violence on tribal land in part
to a 1978 ruling, Oliphant v.
Suquamish Indian Tribe,
when the U.S. Supreme Court
stripped tribes of the author-
ity to prosecute non-Natives.
Instead, cases involving
non-Natives were forwarded
to federal authorities.
But the threshold for pros-
ecuting these crimes is high,
tribal and legal experts say.
Between 2011 and 2019, the
only years for which data
is available, federal figures
show the U.S. Attorney’s
Office in Oregon declined
to prosecute nearly 25% of
violent crime cases forwarded
by law enforcement from
tribal land, while nationwide
case declination was around
35%. The U.S. Attorney’s
Office declined to provide
comparative data about
declined non-Indian Country
crimes, citing Justice Depart-
ment policy.
The Violence Against
Women Act reauthoriza-
tion in 2013 gave tribal
courts authority to prose-
cute non-Native offenders for
acts of domestic violence, if
certain conditions were met.
“Before, abusers could do
horrible things to their wives,
their partners, and run free
and nothing would happen to
them because they couldn’t
be prosecuted by the tribes,”
said Rep. Tawna D. Sanchez,
D-Portland.
Minimal funding has
hindered progress, however,
officials said. Only 31 of 574
federally recognized tribes in
the U.S. have been authorized
to prosecute non-Natives as of
May 2022, according to the
National Congress of Amer-
ican Indians. And only the
Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation
is authorized in Oregon.
Starting Oct. 1, tribal
courts legally will be able to
exercise their inherent juris-
diction over non-Natives for
additional crimes, includ-
ing child violence, sexual
violence, stalking, sex traf-
ficking, assaults of tribal
justice personnel and obstruc-
tion of justice.
Brent Leonhard, an attor-
ney for CTUIR, said the reau-
thorization is another step
toward overturning the 1978
Kathy Aney/For Underscore
Merle Kirk, standing at a spot high above her nearby home on the Umatilla Indian Reserva-
tion near Pendleton holds a portrait of her sister, Mavis Kirk-Greeley, who died in 2009 after
her boyfriend allegedly hit her with his vehicle on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.
case that has prevented tribes
from holding non-Natives
accountable.
“It’ll just show, once again,
those who have concerns
about Indian Country exer-
cising authority over non-In-
dians that they’re just wrong,
that there isn’t anything really
to be concerned about,” Leon-
hard said.
Still, before being able
to prosecute non-Native
offenders the tribes will need
resources — trained law
enforcement, developed tribal
codes and robust courts — to
carry out justice.
“A lot of tribes don’t have
their own financial capacity
to run this program,” Sanchez
said, “and federal resources
are relatively thin.”
Since Oliphant v. Suqua-
mish Indian Tribe, the high
court earlier this month
placed limits on a 2020 deci-
sion recognizing a large area
of Oklahoma as unceded
Indian reservation land. This
gives states the authority to
prosecute non-Natives who
commit crimes against Native
Americans on tribal land.
While state officials in
some parts of the country
the time that there was “a
strong possibility she was
murdered,” as reported by
the Yakima Herald-Repub-
lic. Forty years later, another
28-year-old family member,
Lisa Pearl Briseno, went
missing. She remains one of
the 11 missing Indigenous
people in Oregon, according
to a February report from the
U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The latest tragedy came in
2009, when Mavis MayAnne
Kirk died after she was hit by
a car following a workplace
Christmas party on the Warm
Springs Indian Reservation,
said her sister, Merle Kirk.
Family members at first did
not suspect foul play. But an
autopsy report indicated that
Mavis Kirk had been run
over twice, and the family
later learned that the driver
— Mavis Kirk’s boyfriend
at the time — asserted his
Fifth Amendment right to
remain silent in an interview
with authorities, Merle Kirk
said. That’s when the family
suspected Mavis Kirk was
murdered.
In less than a year,
however, the U.S. Attorney’s
Office told the family they
“THE UNITED STATES HAS
DONE A TERRIBLE THING FOR
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND
CONTINUES TO DO TERRIBLE
THINGS TO INDIGENOUS
PEOPLE. LEFT TO OUR OWN
WAYS BEFORE BOARDING
SCHOOL, BEFORE FUR
TRAPPERS, THIS WOULD NOT
EXIST. SEXUAL VIOLENCE
WOULD NOT EXIST HERE.”
— Desireé Coyote, assault survivor
have applauded the ruling,
many tribal leaders say the
decision strikes a major blow
to nearly two centuries of
precedent and could imperil
tribal sovereignty and further
complicate law enforcement
on tribal lands.
Umatilla Tribal Court
Chief Judge William Johnson
said many tribal leaders still
are trying to figure out what
the ruling could mean, but
that it’s a reversal of centuries
of policy and practice. Still,
he’s hopeful that Oregon’s
history — where state author-
ities have had some jurisdic-
tion on tribal land since the
1950s, and where reservation
boundaries are more clearly
defined than in other states
— will mean the ruling won’t
have a big impact in Oregon.
“I think it’s a wait and
see thing, and we hope it just
stays simmering in the back-
ground and doesn’t explode
into anything else, that’s what
I would hope,” Johnson said
in an interview after the deci-
sion.
Finding a way forward
For families whose loved
ones’ cases were declined
by federal authorities, there
are unhealed wounds. Mavis
MayAnne Kirk of Warm
Springs, whose family
lives on the Warm Springs,
Umatilla and Yakama reser-
vations, and in urban areas
of Oregon and Washington,
is among those cases and her
family has been repeatedly
struck by tragedy.
In 1957, a 32-year-old
family member, Mavis Jose-
phine McKay, was found
dead in an irrigation canal
in Washington, and a crim-
inal investigator said at
would be dropping the case,
Kirk said. No one has been
prosecuted for Mavis Kirk’s
death.
“They made it like she
didn’t matter,” Merle Kirk
said. “It hurts. She matters.”-
A spokesperson for the
U.S. Attorney’s Office said
in an email response to ques-
tions about this case that the
office “cannot discuss the
specifics of investigations
that do not result in criminal
charges.”
Merle Kirk remains
shaken. Every year, she pins
red ribbons on every stop sign
in the Warm Springs commu-
nity to remind people of her
sister. This year, six days
before the anniversary of her
sister’s death, Merle Kirk’s
daughter had a child. She
named her newborn daugh-
ter Mavis.
Money for justice
Congress has passed two
pieces of landmark legislation
providing billions of dollars
in federal support for crime
victims: the Victims of Crime
Act in 1984 and the Violence
Against Women Act in 1994.
In 2001, Oregon also estab-
lished the Oregon Domestic
& Sexual Violence Services
Fund, which began funding
49 nonprofit organizations
supporting victims statewide.
Tribal victims services
programs rely heavily on state
and federal grant awards that
are funded by these pieces
of state and federal legisla-
tion, according to state and
tribal officials. But for years,
Oregon struggled to connect
these resources with tribes
across the state.
During listening sessions
with tribes in 2010, Diana
Fleming, program analyst
for the Oregon Department
of Justice Crime Victim and
Survivor Services Division,
and Coyote, who also worked
for the state, said many tribes
told them they didn’t even
know grant funds through the
state of Oregon were available
to them.
“The bottom line is, yes,
we acknowledge that the
funding wasn’t getting to
tribal nations in the way that
we had thought it was,” Flem-
ing said.
It wasn’t until 2011 that
the nine federally recognized
tribes in Oregon became
eligible to receive funding
from the Oregon Domestic
& Sexual Violence Services
Fund and the Violence
Against Women Act. Two
years later, seven of the
tribes could start receiving
these grant funds for victim’s
services — $20,000 per year,
per tribe.
In the following years,
state and federal grant funds
for tribal victim’s services
would continue to increase.
Now, tribes in Oregon can
receive $120,000 per year
from the Oregon Domestic
& Sexual Violence Services
Fund and the Violence
Against Women Act, and
eight of the nine tribes in
Oregon can receive an addi-
tional $125,000 per year from
the Victims of Crime Act.
But advocates say the
slow progress and meager
funds help explain why it is
such a challenge for victims
of crimes on tribal land to get
support. In Oregon, there is
one domestic violence shelter
on tribal land.
Voice of resilience
In the decades since
Coyote reported the alleged
kidnapping to tribal police
in 1991, and the authorities
did not charge him, Cruz
has twice pleaded guilty in
federal court to child sex
crimes, the latest coming in
2013, when he pleaded guilty
to two counts of first-degree
child molestation in Rhode
Island. He was sentenced to
15 years in prison.
William Cruz declined to
comment for this story.
Coyote has shared her
story from that night near
Deadman Pass in northeast-
ern Oregon countless times.
As an advocate for Indige-
nous survivors of violence,
she hoped to amplify injus-
tice and help survivors feel
less alone. And yet, as she
opened the red and white
envelope with the police
report in May, she wondered
if memory served her right,
or if perhaps it had all been a
bad dream. She was silent as
she read the four-page report
in her office in the Nixy-
aawii Governance Center in
Mission.
For years, she had said that
Cruz did not rape her, that
somehow she convinced him
to stop and drive her home.
But now, the report told a
different story. A memory she
had long suppressed flooded
back.
“I think I chose not to
remember it,” she said. “I do
think it happened. Because it
wasn’t the only time he raped
me.”
No matter how many years
go by, she cannot forget that
night up near Deadman Pass.
But that hillside has taken on
a new meaning. Each year,
on Memorial Day weekend,
Coyote returns to those foot-
hills near the Blue Mountains.
There, alongside her daughter
and grandchildren, she picks
flowers and spreads them on
her mother’s grave.