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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (March 1, 2007)
SCfì OrCo11 75 . S6S no, 5 March 1, £007 Spilyay Tyro P.O. Box 870 Warm Springs, OR 97761 Acquisition Dept./Serials Knight Library 1299 University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403-1205 March 1, 2007 Voi. 32, No. 5 Coyote News, est. 1976 Mi U.S. Postage PRSRTSTD Warm Springs, OR 97761 50 cents Remembering Celilo Falls ,,A * i-sity of Oreqon Library Received on; 03-08-07 ^piiyay tymoo Leslie Mitts/Spilyay Tribal Council Chairman Ron Suppah cuts the opening day ribbon at the new Eagle Tech Systems technology center. The grand opening of the center, located at the Plaza across from the Museum at Warm Springs, was this past Saturday, Feb. 24. On hand for the event were Lorraine Suppah (left) of Eagle Tech Systems, Warm Springs Chief Delvis Heath, and Lloyd Phillips, Eagle Tech general manager (right). The center is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The hours are expected to change when the cafe at the center opens. (Story on page u .) It was a place of civilization from time immemorial. The place is gone now but the m em ories and the people are are still alive. The coming weeks and months will be a time of remembering the place that was Celilo Falls. Saturday, March 10 marks the 50- year anniversary of the flooding of the falls by The Dalles dam. Celilo Village will remember and honor Celilo Falls w ith several public events in the village and adjacent Celilo Park. The events will be on Saturday and Sunday, March 10-11. The Ceilo L egacy - Com m em orating 50 Years Since the Losss o f Celilo Tails events include: A canoe and honoring ceremony, traditional salmon dinner, traditional powwow and stick games, and ad dresses from regional and national dignitaries. Speakers will include tribal chiefs Council considers advisory committees B y M aren Cohn Warm Springs Wentures At its recent meeting on governance, Tribal Council considered a proposal to form three committees out of its own members. The proposal aims to improve gov erning practices by encouraging Coun cil to adopt rules and ensure that its members and top tribal officials com ply with them. At the meeting, consultant Clyde Hamstreet presented and explained the proposal to Council using a chart (see p age 11). It lays out the broad respon sibilities of each committee, which help divide up Council’s workload and in fluence into three basic areas: rule- making, rule auditing, and rule enforce ment. Hamstreet gave several examples to help Council members understand and assess the proposed structure. To take just one: responsibility for “Standards of Council-member conduct” in the top left box of the table means that the governance committee would de velop policies to regulate the conduct of Council members. Items that could fall under that cat egory include an attendance policy, a travel policy, a code of ethics, a con flict of interest policy, a policy on nepo tism and favoritism, and procedures for the orientation and ongoing education of Council members. The governance committee would draft the policies and bring them to the entire Council for discussion and ap proval. Once the policies were in place, the audit committee would have the responsibility of tracking compliance with them. For instance, taking the attendance policy as an example, the audit com mittee would periodically examine each member’s attendance record to see whether he or she was in compliance. If someone were not in compliance, the audit committee would then refer the matter to the rules committee. The rules committee, meanwhile, would have developed a set of guide lines outlining what kinds of disciplin ary actions would be appropriate in what kinds of situations. The commit tee would then look into the particular case before it and make a recommen dation to Council of the action it be lieves appropriate under the circum stances. In presenting the proposal, the Hamstreet team emphasized that the committees would be advisory in na ture and would not possess author ity or power independent of the Council as a whole. Their job would be to make recommendations to the full body. Council members understood that the committees should not be delegated the full Council’s policy making powers. “But in that case,” asked one, voicing a question shared by many, “if they don’t have any power, how will these committees make any difference?” “They’ll make an immediate dif ference by breaking up existing camps on Council and getting people to work together who otherwise wouldn’t,” said Hamstreet. See COUNCIL on 11 Little Miss Warm Springs Pageant girls learn valuable skills and lessons B y L eslie M itts S pilyay Tymoo The Little/Junior Miss Warm Springs Pageant kicked off last week with the first night of judging. The next queens and princesses of the pageant were to begin their reign after being crowned on Tues day of this week (which was after deadline for this paper. Final results of the pageant will be in the next edition of the Spilyay.). D u rin g the first even in g o f events, participants introduced themselves and spoke to the audi ence about their traditional clothing. The young ladies also gave a pre sentation about their family and spoke about their individual displays of their family history. Wilson Wewa served as master of cerem onies for the event, while Leland George opened the evening with flute music and Anita Davis pro vided a prayer. The 4-H Social Dancers also sang and eld ers, and Gov. Ted Kulongoski. Gen. Carl Strock, chief o f engineers and Com m anding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is also scheduled to speak, according to information from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC). Celilo Village and Celilo Park are located at milepost 97 off US In terstate 84. For more information please call (888) 289-1855 or visit www.celilowyam.org. (See page 14 fo r a schedule o f events.) On Thursday and Friday, March 8-9, CRITFC and the Tribal Lead ership Forum will co-host Remember ing Celilo: Indian Fishing and the Co lumbia River in Portland. This event will highlight many issues surround ing tribal treaty7 fishing rights, salmon, the Endangered Species Act, and the Columbia River. For more informa tion please call (503) 238-0667. Gaming Update Hearing planned at Kah-Nee-Ta on draft impact statement Tribal and BIA officials are expect ing to hold a public hearing soon at Kah- Nee-Ta regarding the Bridge of the Gods Resort and Casino. The hearing would be the first pub lic hearing on the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the planned resort and casino at Cascade Locks on the Columbia River. A specific date for the hearing has not yet been set, but early April has been m en tio n ed as a ten tative timeframe, gaming officials say. The draft EIS is expected to be re leased soon. Release of the draft EIS will be a significant step in the process of bring ing the Cascade Locks casino site into tru$t, and presenting the tribes’ fee-to- trust application to the Secretary of the Interior. The BIA schedules and conducts the hearings on the draft EIS, which will likely be open to public comment for 60 to 90 days. The public comments are used to develop a final EIS, which forms the basis of the BIA recommendation to the Secretary of the Interior regarding the Confederated Tribes’ fee-to-trust application. The tribes already have a gaming compact approved by Gov. Kulongoski. The compact, however, is awaiting fed eral approval. The federal approval of the tribal- state compact comes after the EIS pro cess and fee-to-trust application, the De partment of the Interior decided last May. In other casino news: Leslie Mitts/Spilyay Pageant participants spoke to the crowd about their family history and traditional clothing. a song in all three of the languages of the Confederated Tribes. Sallie Polk-Adams, the current reign ing Miss Warm Springs, praised the participants at the end of the evening. According to Polk-Adams, “They came a long way from being really ner- vous to coming up here and speaking.” Attending the pageant were several form er Miss Warm Springs: from 1970, Debbie Jackson; from 1988, Minnie Yahtin; from 1997, Arlissa Rhoan; and from 2001, A drienne Merrifield. In addition, visitors included two former Miss Yakama Nation: from 1988-89, Michelle Crowe-Trevino and from 1 9 9 6 -9 7 , R eb ecca Trujillo. See PAGEANT on 11 The City of Cascade Locks has formed a public facilities team to work with the tribes on issues of infrastruc ture needed for the Bridge of the Gods development project. The four-person committee includes the mayor of Cascade Locks, the chair of the city budget committee, a two other city councilors. The committee will work with the tribes on issues such as of water ser vice, sewer, and fire protection.
