Spilyay
P.O. Box 870
Warm Springs, OR 97761
ymoo
PRSRTSTD
Warm Springs, OR 97761
50 cents
January 20, 2005 Vol. 30, No. 2
Coyote News, est 1976
ill
Michelle Najera
Kah-Nee-Ta
boosts tribal
employment
By Dave McMechan
Spilyqy Tymoo
Michelle Najera began working at
Kah-Nee-Ta last year and is the lead
custodian at the resort. She says she is
having a great time at her job and was
named the Kah-Nee-Ta employee of
the month recently.
Najera is one of about 100 tribal
members working at the resort. As
many as 134 tribal
member employees
have worked at
Kah-Nee-Ta during
the summer. The
number of tribal
members working
at Kah-Nee-Ta is
now about 12 per
cent higher than it was four years ago.
Improving the number of tribal
member workers at Kah-Nee-Ta has
been a priority of the resort board of
, directors. Toward this goal, the board
. developed the Tribal Member Devel
opment and Recruitment Program.
Najera came to the resort through
the program, as have other employees
who are doing well. Davy Culps, for
instance, is working in the resort
kitchen this winter, on his way to be
coming a chef.
The Tribal Member Development
and Recruitment Program is part of
the Kah-Nee-Ta Human Resources and
Personnel Department. Urbana "Toto"
Ross is the program director. The tribal
member development and recruitment
program works in parallel with the dif
ferent branches of the resort and ca
sino, said Ross.
The program brings new tribal em
ployees to the resort, she said, and as
sists them in advancing through the
organization. Entry-level positions that
come open at the resort, she said, "can
and should be filled by tribal members."
At the same time tribal employees
should be given the experience to fill
the supervisory positions.
Over the past four years, tribal mem
ber employment at the resort has gone
from 22 percent to just over 34 per
cent. At the same time, the instance of
non-Indian employment at Kah-Nee-Ta
has gone down by about 10 per
cent. The "married into the tribe" and
"other Indian" categories have stayed
about the same.
The employment numbers have
gone up for tribal members, but there
is plenty of room for improvement,
Ross said. She has a stack of 180 ap
plications from tribal members that
were filed at the resort last summer.
For some reason these applicants were
not hired, but Ross is using the appli
cations for recruitment. She's review
ing the information anddetermining
who might be qualified for what jobs.
Ross has a staff of three people:
Priscilla Frank, the program coordina
tor; Arlissa Rhoan, program specialist;
and Leroy Smith, the community liai
son. Priscilla Frank brings many years of
experience in human services to the
resort recruitment and development
program. Two years ago, she was about
to retire after working for 27 years in
the tribal treatment and counseling pro
gram. Then she joined the resort re
cruitment and development program.
"It's been slow and steady in trying to
get the program set up," said Frank.
Arlissa Rhoan has been with the re
cruitment and development program
since last August, having moved back
to Warm Springs from the Lincoln City
area, where she worked at Chinook
Winds. Rhoan was raised in Warm
Springs, and was the 1997 Miss Warm
Springs.
See KAH-NEE-TA on page 8
Tribes considering charter school
By Brian Mortcnscn
Spilyuy Tymoo
Spurred on by efforts at other
Indian reservations in Oregon, and
by what many tribal members be
lieve is inequitable treatment from
the school district that serves stu
dents from Warm Springs, the edu
cation committee of the Confeder
ated Tribes has introduced the idea
of opening a charter school.
The idea is to have a charter
school for middle school and high
school-age students. The proposal was
brought out by members of the edu
cation committee at the Jan. 10 meet
ing of the Jefferson County 509-J
School District.
"We would be focusing on traditional
values, as well as our sovereignty,"
Marie Calica, chairperson of the tribes'
education committee, said at the school
board meeting.
The committee, Calica said, plans to
hold a community meeting in Warm
Springs to help gauge the popularity of
such an idea sometime within the near
future.
Calica, along with fellow committee
members Dorothea Barney and Gin
ger Smith, have said they are acting via
a directive of the Tribal Council.
"Even tribal officials are turning to
creating charter schools. And I think
the best opportunity is so that they can
reach students, with our traditional val
ues, our sovereignty, our history, be
sides learning the basic academics,"
Calica said.
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V Mi.
Of
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I 1 1 I
Dave McMechanSpilyay
The Lincoln's Birthday
Powwow Court are Cassi
Tanewasha and Rheianna
Rayann Wolfe (left and
right above), and Kayla
Jones (right).
The girls are selling raffle
tickets to benefit the
powwow, which happens at
the Simnasho Longhouse,
Friday-Sunday, Feb 11-13.
See page 5 for
statements from the
Powwow Court.
i ft f, . J
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OPB documentary focuses on reservation
Smile, Warm Springs!
A camera could be watching you
in the next week or so.
A camera crew from Oregon Pub
lic Broadcasting is filming a docu
mentary on life on the Warm Springs
Reservation.
The project, produced by Eric
Cain, is funded by a U.S. Department
of Agriculture Rural Development
grant.
OPB has produced 16 one-hour
programs using the Rural Develop
ment grant monies, and Cain has
produced "seven or eight," on such
subjects as residents of Lakeview and
Lake County and students at Crane
High School, a boarding school in
Harney County.
"They've won several Emmys,
they're adequately funded shows,"
Cain said. "And they've been really
nice portrayals on the subjects."
For this particular project, Cain
said, after deciding to film at Warm
Springs, he initially contacted J.P. Part
and Louie Pitt Jr., to help introduce
him to residents of Warm Springs who
share their stories and lead them to
others with interesting people and ex
periences. "We're trying to portray a slice of
life on the reservation," Cain said. "It'll
be an informal program, loosely struc
tured." On Patt's recommendation, Cain
said he talked with local folks who com
pete at pocket pool both locally and
regionally.
"We'll shoot a bit at the radio sta
tion (KWSO), and we'll shoot a seg
ment in the language program," he said.
Additionally, he talked to a member of
a Warm Springs family involved in ro
deo. "We'll see if we can get them to go
outside in the cold and talk to aspiring
young rodeo riders," he said.
He said he was interested in meet
ing the kids who congregate at and use
the brand-new skateboard park at
Elmer Quinn Park, as that "might be
a naturally occurring clump of
people."
In all, Cain said he has funding
lined up for 10 to 12 days of shoot
ing around Warm Springs. He and
an assistant were in Warm Springs
talking with possible subjects both
two weeks ago and last week. Cain
began shooting in Warm Springs last
Tuesday.
"And we'll spend time with folks
doing what they do," he said, "whether
it's going to the Rialto (Tavern, where
local pool action happens), going
bowling, talking with them and get
ting to know them, and getting to
know a bit about who they are.
"And we don't know what we'll
come up with."
In fact, Cain said that for the most
part, he and his crew would follow
wherever their leads take them while
in Warm Springs.
"It's kind of exploratory," he said.
"The idea is to collect some neat foot
age and get to know people.
"I hope people can relax and for
get we're there."
See OPB on page 8
Charter schools are independently
run public schools, created for the pur
pose of molding their own curricula
or programs.
Though autonomous in terms of
direction, they arc under the umbrella
of local school districts.
A "charter" is a contract with the
local school district detailing the school's
mission, goals, methods of assessment,
and ways of measuring academic success.
See CHARTER SCHOOL on 8
Officer saves
2 children from
burning house
By Brian Mortensen
Spiyay Tymoo
As a parent himself, Joe Davino
wasn't concerned with the possibility he
could get burned when he walked into
a burning house last Thursday morn
ing. He just ran in and saved two little
girls from what could have been a tragic
result.
Davino, 27, a Warm Springs Police
officer since last October, was one of
the officers and Warm Springs Fire and
Safety personnel responding to a house
fire at 2355 Oritz Loop at 1:34 a.m.
last Thursday.
"We responded there, and I saw a
male standing in front of a different
residence waving his hands, and I as
sumed that's where the fire was,"
Davino said. "He said, no, it's two
houses up, and, of course, I could see
the smoke coming out of the doors."
Once at the house, Davino yelled
and asked if anyone was in the house.
"There was a female in there, so I
told her to get out of the house, and I
asked her if anyone else was in the
house," he said.
There were, said Connie Daniels, 31.
Two little girls, her daughters, were
asleep in their beds.
"I asked where they were. She said,
in the back bedroom, so I entered into
the residence and saw two small chil
dren lying in a back bedroom, picked
them both up and ran out of the
house," he said.
Running through the house, he ran
into a wall of "thick gray smoke" and
found the bedroom.
"I probably should have crawled in,
but I just ran straight to the back bed
room," he said. "Quickest way to get
in, quickest way to get out."
Naturally, the girls, Callista and
Racquel Smith, ages 6 and 4, respec
tively, were surprised to be awakened
by a stranger.
"I made sure when I grabbed them,
I said, 'I'm a police officer, it's OK,' so
they both came right to me, pretty
much grabbed me around my neck,"
he said. "And I carried them out and
put them in a car sitting out toward the
end of the driveway, and I set them
inside the car so they could warm up a
little because it was really cold that
night."
Emergency personnel examined the
girls and Daniels along with Davino at
an ambulance on the scene.
"We were all coughing, choking re
ally hard," he said. That, he said, was a
small price to pay for saving the girls.
"Actually, to be honest, all I thought
about was those two girls. I have a child
of my own (an 8-year-old son)," he said.
"I care about the people of this com
munity, and that's why I moved over
here and work out of here. I just did
what had to be done."
Daniels was determined to be un
der the influence of alcohol and was
arrested for Reckless Endangerment
and Child Neglect.
See RESCUE on page 8
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