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.
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