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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 4, 2007)
SCA OrColl E 75 . S68 V. 3 2 P.O. Box 870 Warm SDiinas. OR 97761 ,no. 1 University of Oregon Library . Received on: 01-31-07 January 4, 2007 Spilyay tymoo SS ron Coyote News, est. 1976 tenuvy jge PRSRTSTD Warm Springs, OR 97761 A, 2007 Vol. 32, No. 1 Polk-Adams is Miss Warm Springs 2007 B y L eslie M itts Spilyay Tymoo The bubbly 19-year-old Sallie Polk- Adams is no stranger in the Warm Springs Community. She’s worked and volunteered locally over the years, and now Polk-Adams will be representing the community in a new way as Miss Warm Springs 2007. Polk-Adam s has lived in Warm Springs since she was an infant, and said her culture is something exception ally important to her. “I like to dance, I like to go hunting, I like to loom work,” she said. “I like to do a lot of things that pertain to our culture, or working through our cul ture.” The daughter of Dempsena Polk and Mario Adams, she describes her self as being very open-minded. For that reason Polk-Adams enjoys traveling and meeting new people— something she is looking forward to d u rin g h er reig n as M iss W arm Springs. For the Miss Warm Springs pageant, Polk-Adams relied on a skill that she learned growing up— how to dry meat. “A lot of my elders taught me, and my mom and my uncle,” Polk-Adams said. “He taught us how to properly take care of the deer and then after that we just listened to a lot of people and learned by ear.” Skills like cooking salmon, drying meat and picking berries are helpful in a variety of ways, she said. “I think w hat’s im portant about knowing our culture and our heritage is that it is going to help me through a lot of things,” Polk-Adams said. She encourages young people to ask questions about culture and to learn as much as possible during their youth. “It’s important to know that stuff,” she said. “It’s important to know where you come from, who your ancestors are.” Polk-Adams also encourages young people to pursue education. “Stay in school, and if you have a dream, go for it,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help. A lot of people are out there to help you go on the right path.” She added, “Just be creative in what you have and be active in the commu nity and outside.” Polk- Adams said she was inspired to compete in the pageant because of her family. “We’ve never had a Polk in the pag eant before,” she said. “I thought it would be a really good opportunity for me.” “It’s a different way to go and rep resent our tribes,” she said. “I just re ally thought it would be a great oppor tunity for me to get out there more in the community.” In addition, she said, her family is often involved in community events. “We do a lot of medicine singings,” she said, and she enjoys attending as many pow-wows as possible. In her opinion, remaining active in the community is one way to find suc cess in life as well as for entertainment purposes. “I like doing a lot of that stuff be cause it beats being at home and just sitting there watching TV,” Polk-Adams said with a smile. In the future Polk-Adams plans to pursue an education in nursing. Part of the reason, she said, is that she isn’t squeamish and will be able to handle working in the medical field. But mainly, she said, “I just like to help other people.” Polk-Adams has been active in the Warm Springs community as an em ployee at KWSO for two summers, as well as an employee of recreation, the tribal courthouse, legal aide and Kah-Nee-Ta. During high school Polk-Adams helped bring a new group to Ma dras: TRENS, a peer-education group aimed at teaching risk-reduc tion education to native school-age youth. Along with four other students, Polk-Adams attended a training ses sion for TRENS in 2002. After that, the students founded a group at Madras High School. The group traveled to different conferences and gave presentations on topics like HIV and AIDS aware ness. “We just kind of made our names known throughout the northwest,” she said. After Polk-Adams and her fellow students graduated, a new group of students at Madras High School took over the TRENS group— something that Polk-Adams said she hopes will continue for many years to come. “We’re trying to keep it going as long as possible,” she said. Polk-Adams also participated as a cheerleader at Madras High School and time doing volunteer work. Polk-Adams was crowned Miss Warm Springs on Dec. 21. v. Baez brings unique talent to radio show B y L eslie M itts Spilyay Tymoo Brutis Baez is the epitome of laid back. Sitting in the KWSO radio station, laughing gently and always smiling, Baez doesn’t necessarily seem to fit the ste reotype of a fiercely driven entrepre neur with sky-high ambitions. In October Baez joined the team at KWSO, and in his off time he is work ing to expand various business ventures and a music career as the rap artist “Big B.” Growing up, Baez traveled between Warm Springs and Southern Califor nia, and he said the two areas influ enced him in different ways— but mu sic was always something in his life. “Music was always there,” Baez said. “There are so many ways to get into music.” It wasn’t until his freshman year of high school that Baez began to take music seriously. Hip-hop in particular has always been a genre that interested him, Baez said, and he eventually realized the lack o f influence of Native Americans. “There was really no Native Ameri can hip-hop artists,” he said. “I felt like we needed somebody to really rep resent us.” E ventually Baez found business partners and they opened their own label— Sacred Ground Entertainment. He and his brother also founded Gold Mine Productions. In working with all of his various business partners, Baez said, he discov ered that they all had additional talents and areas of expertise to bring to the table. “They all had their own thing,” he said. “I was just an artist that rapped.” When he began working at the ra dio, he discovered that he had a new passion— and one that could potentially aid his business partners. “It was actually like I could do some- 1 Brutis Baez on the air at KWSO. thing for them, help them out,” he said. “This is like the perfect job too.” Now, he said, he’s found another outlet through working at KWSO. “I’ve kind of been trying to find my way into the music business,” Baez said. “I finally found it through the radio.” Working with the radio is something that Baez knows will help him out with anything he pursues in the music busi ness, he said. In his opinion, “It gives you experi ence with different music other than just hip-hop.” “It’s my stitch,” he said. “Everyone has their own stitch and I finally found mine” But working in radio wasn’t neces sarily something that Baez had always planned on. He explained, “I actually stumbled into this.” While working at Kah-Nee-Ta, he said, he heard of the job opening from another employee. Leslie Mitts/Spilyay After dusting off his resume, Baez was hired for the job without knowing how it would eventually affect him. Right now Baez covers the 9-3 show, and has hip-hop readily available to put on the air at all times— something that not all listeners have come to appreci ate yet. Most understand, Baez said glee fully—“They know that I love hip-hop,” he said. But in Baez’ experience, many young people in the community have begun to listen to the station frequently. “Even people in Bend listen to me now,” he said. Baez has branched out from work ing with music, too. He has also co-founded several clothing companies— Savage Style; Native Passion, Reservation Life Cloth ing and GAMEsta Clothing. Baez was inspired to create hip-hop style clothing lines locally because of the lack of shopping for such attire. Ideally he wants to help create a hip-hop scene like those in larger cities. GAMEsta, he said, is almost the opposite of the related word gang ster— “It’s like a player in a game,” he explained. GAMEsta will also be the name of his next album. Baez and fellow musicians have an upcoming tour with the Native Bailers Association— a tour that will be passing through Warm Springs on March 3. “This show is actually going to be for Native American youth,” he said. Eventually he will be releasing a compilation CD and a DVD with business partners, among many other unfinished and in-progress projects. “The main thing I look forward to is the tour though,” he said. His new CD will feature 18 songs and will be distributed by his label. In Baez’ opinion, his music dif fers from a lot of mainstream hip- hop in that it expresses a variety of emotions and themes. “It’s not a sad, droopy album,” he said. “Life is good right now.” However, he said, the album is targeted to audiences who are 21- years-old and older. “All our music is basically party music,” Baez said. “That’s the main thing is just to have positive music.” His status as a rapper has grown a lot since the beginning, Baez said. “We started out doing shows at bar and grills,” Baez said, occasion ally even being allowed to slip in and perform when they were underage. Baez credits consistency and reli ability to the success of his business ventures and his dealings with equally reliable business partners. At this point in his life, selling a huge amount of records isn’t how Baez measures his success. See BAEZ on 8 50 cents Workshop focuses on better tribal government B y M aren Cohn Warm Springs Ventures The Tribal Council met in Decem ber at Kah-Nee-Ta, the second of a series of governance workshops. The workshops began in response to needs identified in last summer’s membership opinion survey, and seek to help Coun cil improve its quality and effectiveness as a leadership body. The Council reviewed its work done at the previous session in November, and approved the general plan of ac tion developed there with the help of Teresa Hogue, OSU Extension direc tor, and her colleague Clint Jacks. The approved action plan has four major goals: to establish productive meetings; supportive policies, procedures and practices; higher ethical policy leader ship; and a strong, sound infrastructure. Council also began to address the specific structural changes and policies that would help achieve those four goals. Recommendations include estab lishing committees to oversee particu lar Council functions, and adopting policies to regulate the conduct of meetings and provide consistent rules for Council members to follow. The recommendations themselves come from a variety of sources, includ ing extensive research into governance issues in Indian Country and the expe rience of several individuals in other leadership settings. Council responded positively to the action plan and agreed to explore spe cific recommendations more fully in the next workshop scheduled for Jan. 29. A noted drawback to this session was the high level of absenteeism. Six Council members attended— true also o f the N ovem ber session. W hen Hogue asked what councilors thought would make for a better meeting next time, nearly everyone mentioned the need for full participation. The full Council originally agreed to the workshops last October during a two-day session that looked closely at the survey results and addressed three critical areas of improvement for the tribe: economic development, admin istrative reform, and governance. For that workshop, the consulting firm of Hamstreet & Associates prepared a series of short documents providing Council an overview of the key issues, challenges, and strategies involved in addressing each area. These documents along with more detailed policy work related to them, have provided ground work for subsequent action in all three areas. Initiatives d ealing w ith the economy and administration are cur rently underway, with Hamstreet lead ing the administrative team and repre sentatives from several tribal groups working on the economic issue. Differ ent teams are working under a Feb. 15 deadline for reporting back to Council. Youth art show opens this month The Fourteenth Annual Tribal Youth Art Exhibit begins this month at the Museum at Warm Springs. The open ing reception honoring youth artists will be from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 25 in the museum lobby. The dead line to submit art is 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 12. Anyone with questions can contact Natalie Kirk at the museum, 553-3331, ext. 412.
