News from Indian Country
Page 8
Spilyay T y m o o
A u gust 31, 2 0 0 6
Umatilla tribe will assert right to hunt bighorn
B A K E R C IT Y — The Con­
federated Tribes o f the Umatilla
will revive one o f their ances­
tors’ ancient traditions this sum­
mer.
For the first time in more
than half a century, tribal mem­
bers will hunt bighorn sheep and
mountains goats in northeastern
Oregon, under a right the tribes
reserved in a treaty they signed
with the U.S. government 151
years ago.
That was in 1855, four years
before Oregon became a state.
Umatilla tribal m em bers,
whose forebears for millennia
hunted sheep and goats to get
food, hides and other products,
hope to kill two bighorns and
one mountain goat in Baker
County outside their reservation
between late August and late
September.
B ak er County is unique
among Oregon’s 36 counties in
that it harbors herds o f moun­
tain goats and both subspecies
o f bighorn sheep native to the
Umatilla.
Another tribal hunter will try
to bag a mountain goat in the
Elkhorn Mountains west o f
Baker City, Scheeler said.
Although the Umatillas’ 1855
treaty guarantees them the right
to hunt and fish, Oregon offi­
cials have at times tried to regu­
late tribal hunting and fishing,
said Stephanie Soden, a spokes­
woman at state Attorney Gen­
eral Hardy Myers’ office.
Scheeler, though, contends
the 1855 treaty supersedes the
state’s authority.
Regardless, the state’s stance
now is to not contest tribal hunt­
ing unless the hunting could
cause the extinction o f a spe­
cies in Oregon, Soden said.
The Umatillas’ hunts pose no
such threat to Baker County’s
bighorns and mountain goats,
according to the Oregon D e­
partment o f Fish and Wildlife.
‘T h e state tries to respect that
(hunting) is a culturally significant
thing for the tribes to do,” Soden
Rocky Mountains and Califor­
nia.
The Umatilla are now assert­
ing their right to hunt for big­
horn and mountain goats in
Baker County.
Elsewhere in Oregon in re­
cent years, the Confederated
Tribes o f Warm Springs have
taken a similar course in hunt­
ing bighorn sheep and antelope
in Eastern Oregon, according to
Ron Anglin, O D FW Wildlife
Division administrator.
The Umatilla’s planned hunts
are limited to tribal members _
three lottery tags will be distrib­
uted to tribal members, who
can’t sell the hunting rights to a
non-tribal hunter.
One tribal member will hunt
for California bighorns in the
Burnt River Canyon between
Durkee and Bridgeport, and
another will go after Rocky
Mountain bighorns on Lookout
Mountain near Huntington, said
Carl Scheeler, who manages the
w ildlife program for the
said. “As long as the herds are
maintained, it’s allowed.”
Scheeler said tribal officials
would not have asserted their
treaty rights had any o f the af­
fected herds been struggling. In
fact, he thinks the Umatilla have
been admirably patient. He
points out that O D FW has al­
lowed non-tribal hunters to pur­
sue mountain goats and bighorns
in Baker County for more than
a decade.
The bottom line, Scheeler
said, is that the tribes want to
work with, not against, O D FW
“The tribes will be coordinat­
ing with the state to assure all
data collection and pre-hunt ori­
entation that (non-tribal) hunt­
ers adhere to will be done by
the tribal hunters,” Scheeler said.
For instance, O DFW requires
non-tribal hunters who kill a big­
horn or mountain goat to take
the animal to an O D FW office
within 72 hours so state biolo­
gists can examine the carcass
and compile data, such as the
animal’s age, that help the agency
keep track o f how herds are
doing.
The Umatilla tribal hunters
will have to comply with the
same schedule, Scheeler said.
The Confederated Tribes,
who have a 172,000-acre reser­
vation near Pendleton, comprise
the Umatilla, Walla Walla and
Cayuse peoples.
The tribes once occupied 6.4
million acres in Eastern Oregon,
but in 1855 they signed a treaty
that gave the federal govern­
ment control over most o f that
land.
In exchange, the tribes kept
their comparatively small reser­
vation and retained the right to
hunt, fish and gather berries on
what are known as “ceded ter­
ritory” — lands outside the res­
ervation, but inside the tribes’
original 6.4-million-acre home­
land, which includes most o f
Baker County, Scheeler said.
He said Umatilla officials will
award the three hunting tags by
way o f a lottery system similar
to the one O D FW uses to dis­
tribute big game tags to non-
tribal hunters.
He said tribal hunters will
have to use either a centerfire
rifle o f .243-caliber or larger, or
a bow.
The Umatilla tribal hunts will
not force O D F W to cut the
number o f sheep or goat tags it
sells this year to non-tribal hunt­
ers, said Ryan Torland, a wild­
life biologist at the O D F W ’s
Baker City office.
O D FW has already awarded
five tags to non-tribal hunters:
one for the Burnt River Can­
yon sheep hunt, two tags for the
Lookout Mountain sheep hunt
and two tags for the mountain
goat hunt in the Elkhorns.
In addition, the hunter who
won a raffled mountain goat tag,
which entitles that hunter to pur­
sue goats in the E lk h o rn s,
Wallowas or Hells Canyon, plans
to hunt in the Elkhorns in Sep­
tember, Torland said.
%
Technology helps to preserve Indian languages
W H IT E E A G L E , Okla.—
Suzanne W hite Eagle never
dreamed in her 71 years that she
would see her native tongue—
the Ponca language— speak back
at her the way it did with new
technology.
White Eagle, a Ponca tribal
citizen, and Henry A. Lieb, Jr.,
80, are two o f the few people
who speak the Ponca language.
The Ponca Tribe has only about
two dozen flu ent speakers
among its 3,000 tribal members,
said Dan Jones, tribal chairman.
W ith the help o f the
Phraselator P2, a handheld de­
vice capable o f recording and
playing back thousands o f
phrases, words, songs and sto­
ries, White Eagle and Lieb re­
corded their native language
Wednesday.
The Phraselator was devel­
oped for the U.S. military after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist at­
tacks, but D on Thornton, a
Cherokee citizen from Califor­
nia, knew this device could be
useful for more than just na­
tional security.
“My mother was part o f that
boarding school era where In­
dian kids were made to be
asham ed to be In d ia n ,”
Thornton said.
After a couple o f years o f
endless requests, Thornton fi­
nally was able to purchase the
Phraselator from the defense
contractor Voxtec International
to be used for Indian language
revitalization. He said he spent
about $12 million developing the
device for use by tribes. The
Phraselator costs about $3,300.
“It’s the only thing invented
for communication,” Thornton
said. “The inventor o f the de­
vice never imagined it could be
used for language revitalization.”
Thornton and his wife, Kara,
run Thornton Media Inc., which
is based out o f Banning, Calif.
They spend most o f their time
traveling around the country and
Canada recording the language
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White Eagle said despite her
determination and willingness to
help teach the language, she
knew it was going to take much
more than just her to get it done.
“So I thought, ‘I ’m going to
pray about this,”’ White Eagle
said.
Tuesday, W hite E a g le ’s
prayers were answered.
The Thorntons recorded with
White Eagle and Lieb for two
days, and by m id-afternoon
Wednesday, the two had re­
corded several hundred words
and phrases.
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The Ponca speakers said they
can’t believe that they are go­
ing to have this sort o f help in
preserving their language.
White Eagle has lived most
o f her life in W hite Eagle,
which is about five miles south
o f Ponca City and has the
namesake o f her husband’s
grandfather. She moved away
for about 15 years while her
husband was in the military.
White Eagle said even before
she left home she felt her tribe’s
language was “fading away.”
“It scared me— to see our
language slipping away,” White
Eagle said. “So I said, ‘let’s get
started. L et’s teach our lan­
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o f many different tribes.
Some o f the tribes in Okla­
homa whose languages have
been recorded are the Choctaw
N ation , U nited K eetoow ah
Band o f C herokee Indians,
Comanche Nation, Ponca Tribe
and the Cheyenne-A rapaho
Tribe o f Oklahoma.
About a dozen tribes have
already recorded their speakers
and have purchased the
Phraselator.
T h o rn to n said the next
couple o f stops to record with
tribes include the Eastern Band
o f Cherokee Indians and tribes
in M ontana and A lberta,
Canada.
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