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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (March 30, 2006)
Page 8 March 30, 2 0 0 6 Spilyay Tym oo, Warm Springs, Oregon Aguilar takes school kids back to time of Chinooks Author speaks at Warm Springs Elementary B y Brian M ortensen Spilyay Tymoo George Aguilar told the chil dren he would take them back to a time 300 years ago. Aguilar is the author o f the “When the River Ran Wild,” a history o f the Chinookan people who lived along the Columbia River. He presented a slide show and answered questions for an audience that included fourth- and fifth-grade students from each o f the Jefferson County School District (509-J) elemen tary schools at the Warm Springs Elementary School gym March 17. He described the Chinook people as people who lived along the river “ 10,000 to 12,000 years ago,” he said. “Along the Columbia River, up into Washington, there were Chinookan-speaking people,” he said. Aguilar, who turned 76 last month, said the Chinook people were one o f two cultures on the American continent that had one particular thing in common. “Only two groups flattened their heads,” he said, “the Chi nooks and the Mayans.” Aguilar said his great-great grandfather, Kli-Mat, was one who did just that, as his head formed a perfect slope down the forehead to the tip o f the nose. This characteristic was documented when Lewis and Clark made their famous explo ration voyage 201 years ago, employed by the U.S. govern ment to investigate the lands it bought in the Louisiana Pur chase. He described Alice Jim , o f whom he had a photo from 1936, as being “the last o f the Chinooks.” Indeed, he said, of the 2,500 Chinook people Lewis and Clark reported as having seen along the Columbia River in the early 1800s, disease, mainly whooping cough and measles, rendered the number o f people who relocated to what is now the Warm Springs Res ervation to only 80. “Now they are no longer known as the C hinookan people,” he said. “They are gone.” Following the slide show, Aguilar answered questions sev eral o f the visiting students had prepared. They asked what animals he hunted when he was younger, and if he fished for salmon. And he was asked how he decided to write “When The River Ran Wild.” “The children were learning these languages, the Indian lan guages, and because if they learn the language, then they have to know the history also,” he said. “This is why the book was started.” He said the most surprising thing he learned while writing and researching the book was that there was so much to write about. “The research,” he answered. “I never knew there was so much docum ented material about our languages, about our customs.” He said his favorite part o f writing the book was finding that he could, and then he found it hard to stop writing. “To me, it was kind o f fun. ‘I didn’t know this. I didn’t know that,”’ he said. “The more I kept on digging in, the more fun it got.” Growing up on the Warm Springs R eservation in the 1930s and 40s, Aguilar said that, in fact, he didn’t know there were other races o f people be sides his own. “To me, there was an inside world and an outside world,” he said. “Growing up on the reser vation was my ‘inside world.’ When I first went out to the ‘outside world,’ whoa! There was all this candy, and good stuff.” And he described sledding down the hill where High Lookee Lodge is now. But, he admits, life wasn’t easy growing up. “In the early years, in the early 1930s, the tuberculosis epidemic was still in force. A lot o f the older people were dying as a result o f the tuberculosis, and I saw my grandmother die, and I experienced tuberculosis.” Aguilar said he is not finished writing and, in fact, has two more volumes to write. O f “W hen the River Ran Wild,” he said, “I wanted to leave something for other people to know, that this was our civiliza tion o f many, many winters ago,” he said. “I ’m leaving a legacy o f things that happened a long time ago.” Arch Wells, deputy director o f the BIA, is on the commit tee but will not be at the meet ing, but Pat Ragsdale, the BIA director, will. Ragsdale has not yet been to Warm Springs. Shaw said Warm Springs has received considerable attention in Washington for its work in developing biomass energy. The work so far includes the recent completion o f the 15.5 megawatt boiler at Warm Springs Forest Products Industries and the Memorandum o f Under standing the Tribal Council signed with the U.S. Forest Ser vice and the Bureau o f Land Management last month ensur ing a fuel supply for the biom ass project. The Department o f Interior gave Warm Springs $200,000 for a due diligence study in 2004. “Now we’re seeing the fruits o f all that labor,” Shaw said. “This is what they want to see, to get out o f Washington, D.C., for a week and see how it is in application.” The Wildland Fire Leader ship Council began in 2002 to help implement the 10-year National Fire Plan the Clinton Administration developed to restore lands affected by past management practices. Erickson said he is aware of the fact that fire affects Indian reservations more so than other public lands. “It’s your land, and you live on the land,” he said. “In other places, other public lands, they live by the land, but they don’t live on it. When a fire burns the forest down, it really hurts you more than it does some o f the other people, because you live right there.” He commended the biomass project in Warm Springs because “you’re not just letting the wood rot and waste on the ground. You’re trying to use it. “I ’ve been around Warm Springs clear back almost 30 years, and I ’ve seen the good things you’ve done with your land,” he said. “And I think you need to share that. Nancy talks about us being a fire leadership council, but in my mind, that’s pretty narrow thinking. It’s not just about fire. I t ’s about all those resources.” Eighteen members o f the W ildland F ire L ead ersh ip Council are expected to attend the m eetin g in the W arm Springs. Along with their staffers and other guests, the tour will in clude about 60 people. Attending members o f the W C LF council will meet with th e W arm S p rin g s T rib a l Council for dinner during the week. federal government will reim burse state and local agencies 75 percent o f the money spent to fix roads, bridges, and other public infrastructure, said Nicol Andrews, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Manage ment Agency. R. David Paulison, the agency’s acting director, named Lee Champagne as coordinating officer for the federal recovery operations. A series o f wet, winter storms hammered the state in Decem ber and January. Mudslides closed Interstate 5 over the Siskiyou Sum m it south o f Ashland on Dec. 30, and rising waters on Bear Creek prompted evacuation o f two trailer parks in Ashland and Phoenix. The Rogue River w ent over its banks, flooding some homes on the outskirts o f the town o f Rogue River and damaging a park in Gold Hill. Damage was heaviest in the southwestern part o f the state, although it stretched from Clatsop County in northwestern Oregon to Wheeler County in the central part o f the state. Coos County suffered nearly $5 million in damages, including a broken dike that flooded about 20 homes in late December. Officials — (Continued from page 1) ■ Nina Hatfield, WCLF chair person and the deputy assistant secretary for Business Manage ment and Wildland Fire, will at tend the meeting. Hatfield is from the Depart ment o f Interior, as leadership in the wildland fire council shifts between the Department o f In terior and Department o f Agri culture each year. From the D epartm ent o f A griculture, Mark Rey, the undersecretary for resources and environment, will attend, as will Biomass — (Continued from page 1) The hope is to have the power sale agreement in place in the near future, said N oteboom . This would then provide the basis to seek financing, he said. The tribes are negotiating with two companies toward a power sales agreement. Jim Manion said that the most economical way to deliver power from the plant to P G E ’s system may be through construc tion o f a transmission line from the plant to the facilities at Pelton-Round Butte. With its own transmission line the tribes could avoid having to David Tenny, the deputy undersecretary for resources and the environment, and Dale Bosworth, chief o f the U.S. Forest Service. “Mark Rey has oversight of agriculture, not just over the Forest Service, but the Natural Resource Conservation Service and a number o f other ag pro grams,” Shaw said. Each o f the bureaus under the Department o f Interior um brella within the committee will be represented in Warm Springs at the meeting. pay Pacific Power & Light for use o f the P P L line, said Manion. Bc)bby Brunoe told the Council that the Environmen tal Protection Agency has shown great interest in the tribes’ bio mass project. He said there may be grant money available, as the plant could be considered as an air- quality improvement project: The wood and slash would burn cleanly in the plant, rather than being burned in slash piles or during wildlifes. The construction cost o f the plant is estimated at $26 million. Relief (Continued from page 1) Still, a spokesm an for Kulongoski said the governor was pleased and relieved to learn o f the disaster declaration. Kulongoski “sees this as a definite help to the taxpayers o f Oregon,” said spokesman Lonn Hoklin. “He’s eager to get the (federal) money in place so these agencies and local governments can get their reimbursements.” The declaration means the Transfer — (Continued from Page 1) timber sale, and determined how large the trees were that had been there and how much the timber would have been worth. “The key to the case was going to the stumps and determining how large the trees had been, judging from the stumps,” said Arnett. The experts also had to de termine whether trees that had been harvested had actually been damaged by the wind storm , or whether the trees were standing green timber. Dewey mentioned that the late Zane Jackson had served the tribes very well during the time that the blowdown harvest was taking place. “He was very alert in looking out for the in terest o f the tribes,” said Dewey. Jackson at one point had to call the tribal police to bring a halt to the improper logging o f the McQuinn area. At the luncheon last week, tribal secretary-treasurer Jody Calica said it was good to see several o f the people who helped the tribes with the law suit. “Too often we don’t take the time to say thanks to the people who make a difference in our lives,” he said. GUNS t GOLD - JEWELRY at CASH AND RELEASE Time for Spring Cleaning! We consign CLEAN Flat Bed Trailers, Horse Trailers, Tractors, and Boats For information call Jay at R 5414750157 579 S.E. 5th Street Madras, O R 97741 Commercial & Residential VISA 94 GM C VANDURA CONV at , ac . m PL can. A u m . c d , ps vumsmm. RD NDA 2DR, LXI, LOADED DH 97 FORD ESCORT LX 4DR, AUTO, ACL PS, PB. 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