Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
March 29, 2017
Page 5
Family relives tragedy nearly 30 years later
Almost 30 years ago Margaret
Still was brutally murdered with her
boyfriend in an orchard field and
shed, close to where she resided as
a field worker in Live Oak, Cali-
fornia.
The horrendous event was trau-
matic for the families, but in this
case Margaret’s family has had to
relive the experience a number of
times, most recently in February.
Margaret was a member of the
Confederated Tribes, as are many
of her family members. She lived
in Warm Springs before moving to
California. Her father was Paiute
Chief Johnson. Margaret was killed
in the 1987.
For many years police had no
suspect and made no arrest, leav-
ing the family without real closure.
Then in 2002—fifteen years after
the murder—a man turned himself
in and confessed to the crime.
David Castillo, by this time 32 years
old, was convicted based on his con-
fession to police.
With the trial and sentencing,
so many years after the loss of
Margaret, the family relived the
details of their loved one’s mur-
der. This was not the end of it,
though, as Castillo came up for a
hearing in 2012, and then for a
parole hearing last month.
Margaret’s sister Francina
Stevenson lives in Sacramento,
where she works for the Depart-
ment of Justice. She describes the
most recent parole proceeding:
“The hearing was quite exten-
sive,” Francina said. “We sat
through five to six hours of testi-
mony, from the beginning of his
childhood to the time when he de-
cided to take two lives, when he
was 17 or 18 years old.”
Castillo’s story had changed
from the one in the 2002 police
report, Francina says. In the first
report Castillo said he had been
living in Mexico, then came to the
U.S. when he no longer had family
there.
At the hearing last month, “He
told a different story,” Francina
said. “He actually had been in the
U.S. committing crimes during
those 15 years.”
While serving his prison sen-
tence for the murders, Castillo
committed assaults on correctional
officers.
As the parole hearing Castillo
was wearing protective medical
gear reportedly for epileptic sei-
zures. And it was reported at an
earlier hearing that he was going
insane, hearing voices, talking to
himself, trying to hurt himself.
During the hearing Castillo told
the story: how he had desired Mar-
garet, stalked her, and then when
she did not return his affections,
killed her and her boyfriend
Gabriel Ramos.
During his statement, Castillo
talked about hearing voices, hurt-
ing himself, etc. Then it was the
victim’s family’s turn to speak.
“I work at the Department of
Justice,” Francina was saying re-
cently. “We learn to hold our cards
close to our chests, to be profes-
sional, to try and show less emo-
tion. But I’m sorry, I just went at
him, and he had it coming. I said
in very loud words, ‘At no time dur-
ing your statement have you ever
apologized nor shown any remorse
for killing my sister. In fact you
claim you stalked her and wanted
her, but when she didn’t return
your desires, you killed her, after
she begged for her life. And you
raped her, not once but twice.”
The assaults on the corrections
officers are also dishonorable, she
said: “These men come here risk-
ing their lives to protect society and
be with insane criminals like you.
You have no regard for our judi-
cial system, and your sexual atti-
tude for women on staff here is
CRITFC has new executive director
Jaime Pinkham is returning to
the Columbia Basin to serve as the
executive director of the Colum-
bia River Inter-Tribal Fish Com-
mission.
Mr. Pinkham is a member of
the Nez Perce Tribe with more
than three decades of experience
in American Indian governance,
policy and natural resource man-
agement.
After assessing a field of im-
pressive candidates, the leaders of
CRITFC’s member tribes—Warm
Springs, Umatilla, Yakama, and Nez
Perces—selected Pinkham as the
tenth executive director in the
commission’s 40-year history.
He will take the reins at
CRITFC on April 24.
“As a treaty fisher and hunter, I
am humbled to work with the mem-
ber tribes and CRITFC,” Mr.
Pinkham said.
“CRITFC plays an important
role working at the intersection of
each tribe’s individual autonomy
and their unified voice. Healthy
and harvestable salmon runs are
fundamental to the sovereign iden-
tities and cultures of the four
member tribes.”
Pinkham brings substantial Co-
Jaime Pinkham
lumbia Basin fisheries and natural
resources experience, coupled with
strong tribal governance policy cre-
dentials.
Pinkham has been serving the
past eight years as vice president
of the Bush Foundation in Min-
nesota,. There he led the Native
Nations program, working with
tribes across North and South
Dakota and Minnesota as they re-
designed their governing systems.
His work led to the creation of
the Native Governance Center, a
Native-led non-profit delivering
technical support to tribes in gov-
ernment redesign.
Prior to that, Mr. Pinkham
spent two decades in the Pacific
Northwest advocating for tribal
sovereignty, self-determination,
and treaty rights.
He worked for CRITFC as Wa-
tershed Department manager
from 2005 to 2008, supporting the
commission in regional coordina-
tion and Congressional affairs.
After graduating with a Forestry
degree from Oregon State Univer-
sity he worked for state and fed-
eral agencies before moving home
to Nez Perce Country in 1990.
During his time there, Mr.
Pinkham held a variety of posi-
tions including being elected twice
to the Nez Perce Tribal Execu-
tive Committee. He led the its
natural resource programs engag-
ing in salmon restoration, water
rights negotiations, wolf recovery,
and land acquisition
“Jaime Pinkham’s decades of
work on tribal sovereignty and
natural resources stood out amid
Spring chinook estimate may be high
Fisheries managers have been
predicting a slightly below-average
run of spring chinook salmon on
the Columbia River this year, but a
newly published suggests that it
may be worse.
According to researchers from
Oregon State University and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, ocean conditions
were historically bad in the spring
of 2015, when migrating yearling
fish that will comprise the bulk of
this spring’s adult chinook salmon
run first went out to sea.
In fact, Pacific Decadal Oscil-
lation values—which reflect warm
and cold sea surface tempera-
tures—suggest it was one of the
warmest nearshore oceans encoun-
tered by migrating chinook salmon
dating back to at least 1900.
The lack of food for the salmon
in 2015 may have resulted in sig-
nificant mortality that will show in
this year’s run of Columbia River
springers.
Results of the research, which
a strong field of candidates,” said
CRITFC Chair Leland Bill.
“We look forward to working
with Jaime as we face a number
of current issues that impact
salmon and tribal treaty fishing
rights including climate change, an
altered federal government land-
scape, and the renegotiation of the
Columbia River Treaty.”
Pinkham succeeds Paul
Lumley, who ser ved for eight
years in the position before leav-
ing to lead the Native American
Youth and Family Association in
Portland. Rob Lothrop, interim
executive director since Lumley’s
departure, will continue in that
capacity until April 24.
CRITFC, based in Portland, is
the technical support and coordi-
nating agency for fishery manage-
ment policies of the Columbia
River Basin's four treaty tribes.
CRITFC, formed in 1977, em-
ploys biologists and other scientists,
public information specialists,
policy analysts and administrators
who work in fisheries research and
analyses, advocacy, planning and
coordination, harvest control and
law enforcement.
was funded by the Bonneville
Power Administration and NOAA,
have just been published in the
journal Marine Ecology Progress
Series.
About 80 percent of a typical
spring chinook run on the Colum-
bia River come from fish that went
out to sea as yearlings two years
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horrible.”
Speaking for family members,
Francina says, “Daniel Castillo
made a personal choice to execute
a kind, trusting and helpless young
woman—our sister, a mother of
three, a daughter of a tribal Chief,
an aunt, and someone who was be-
loved by hundreds of people on
the reservation.”
The Parole Panel told Castillo
he was denied for an additional ten
years, and that the hearing had
been among the worst they had
seen in years.
The panel went further to say
that in ten years, if he is paroled
for the murders, then he will serve
an additional 8 years for assaulting
a correctional officer.
Castillo is housed in Corcoran
Prison, where Charles Manson and
John Albert Gardner (Chelsea’s
Law) are among the nearly 4,000
inmates.
State bill
to protect
from rail
oil spills
Oregon tribes and oth-
ers spoke last week in sup-
port of two bills that aim
to prevent, or at least miti-
gate, an ecological disaster
like an oil spill into the Co-
lumbia River.
One bill would require
railroads that own or oper-
ate high-hazard train routes
to adopt oil-spill prevention
and emergency-response
planning.
Railroads would also
have to carry adequate in-
surance to address a worst-
case spill.
The other bill would pro-
hibit the Legislature from
funding new bulk coal or oil
terminals.
Regarding oil transport by
rail, especially along the Co-
lumbia, the Confederated
Tribes have been against its
expansion as a threat to
treaty fishing rights.
earlier.
Two key statistics stand out from
2015. The California Current sys-
tem off the West Coast was more
than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit
warmer than normal, and the ju-
venile chinook were smaller and
skinnier than during a cold-water
year.