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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (March 10, 2021)
Spilyay Tymoo Coyote News, est. 1976 March 10, 2021 - Vol. 46, No. 5 Wiyak’ik’ila – Winter - Anm PO Box 489 Warm Springs, OR 97761 ECR WSS Postal Patron U.S. Postage PRSRT STD Warm Springs, OR 97761 Roadway construction through the summer Expect the 8-minute traffic de- lays through October on Highway 26 through War m Springs, as crews are working on the $6.5 mil- lion Safety Corridor project. Tribal Council and the Oregon Depart- ment of Transportation planned this project to address highway hazards for pedestrians and vehicle traffic. “I’m really liking it. I get to work from home this spring and sum- mer,” said Rena Shippentower, traffic control flagger on the project. Rena will stay busy, be- cause the road work requires clo- sure of one lane of traffic, inter- mittently at least, until November. Tribal Council, ODOT and state legislators initiated this project three years ago. The state officials allocated the funding, then last year the virus pandemic caused a one-year delay. Roadway repaving will be from the Highway 26-Kah-Nee-Ta junc- tion—milepost 103.2—for eight miles toward Madsras to milepost 111.2. Besides the paving, a feature of D.McMechan/Spilyay Rock-fall mitigation (above); and traffic control, left. the Safety Corridor will be a pe- destrian path along the highway from the Shell station area at Hol- lywood Boulevard to the casino and museum. Highway 26 is a major east-west connection for the local commu- nity, and also serves high volumes of through traffic as a major con- nection between Central Oregon and the Portland area. Currently there are no sidewalks or bicycle lanes provided within the Warm Springs corridor. The traffic volume on High- way 26 through Warm Springs is about 6,700 vehicles per day. This is good for commerce, the casino and museum, for instance; and yet a concern for pedestrians and vehicles. A recent four-year sur vey showed 50 reported crashes along the corridor. Several accidents in- volved injury, and there was one fa- tality. (See page 5 for a detailed im- age of the project.) Vaccine access at Celilo Village “Our Longhouse is a place of worship, and we haven’t been able to use it during covid,” says Karen Whitford, tribal elder who lives 12 miles east of The Dalles in Celilo Vil- lage. In late January, after prayer, Ms. Whitford and 103 other tribal members from through- out the Columbia River Gorge received first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine at the Celilo Longhouse. It was a vaccination event that required collaboration be- tween two states, four counties, the Columbia River Inter-tribal Fish Commission, a number of social service agencies and transportation partners. Leading the effort was one of the Oregon Health Authority’s partners, One Com- munity Health—OCH for short—based in Hood River and The Dalles. “We advance health and so- A Health Care Career Growing up, Kaliyah Iverson was always around healthy things. Her father Otis was a basketball coach, and Kaliyah later went to play stand-out basketball at Madras High School. Her mother Yvonne worked at the clinic. So growing up, “I got to know many people in health care,” Kaliyah says. The experience made her want cial justice to all in our community regardless of the ability to pay,” says Max Janasik, OCH chief executive officer. The group offers medical, be- havioral health and dental services, as well as education and outreach to tribal members, seasonal farm workers and others. Gladys Rivera, OCH preventa- tive health manager, led the effort to vaccinate Celilo and The Dalles area tribal members who would have struggled to access vaccines. Many live at tribal fishing sites, often hours away from the nearest Indian Health Services clinic, with limited or no access to running water, electricity, cell phones or other basic needs. OCH sent three community health workers and a nurse who lives in one of the villages to 16 sites along the Columbia River to register tribal members. This meant knocking door-to- door, gathering people’s informa- tion, scheduling an appointment to help people. And something in the health care field, she decided, would be the best way to do this. During high school, she was a Tribal Health Scholar with the Or- egon Health Sciences University On-Track program. As a senior, she spent one day a week at the Warm Springs clinic, learning about the different aspects of health care services. The summer after her first year of college at Arizona State, she worked with On-Track as an intern with the St. Charles Health System. Kaliyah was at Arizona State for and arranging transportation. Over four days they registered 104 tribal members. “That is what equitable access should look like,” Rivera says. “We can’t expect people to come to us. Warm Springs TERO The Tribal Employment Rights Office—the War m Springs TERO—is accepting new skills sur- veys for the 2021 construction sea- son. Warm Springs TERO serves Natives enrolled in a federally rec- ognized tribe, seeking work on con- struction projects, on and off the reservation. Warm Springs TERO is now seeking: Equipment operators, truck drivers, flaggers, laborers and spe- We need to go to them. My favor- ite part has been establishing that rapport and trust. To be invited to their home and provide that ser- vice there hasn’t happened before.” Ms. Whitford added, “And we like to make the Longhouse use- ful.” She and many other tribal members have by now had second doses. Ms. Whitford lost her cialized positions. Skills surveys are available online at wstero.com under the employ- ment tab; or at the front door of the Warm Springs tribal adminis- tration building. Text a copy of your tribal en- rollment card and a valid driver’s license, or call for an appointment to provide a copy. For more information or to make an appointment, text or call 541-675-5439. Dave McMechan nephew to Covid-19, and her husband is still suffering its af- tereffects. On the Celilo vaccination day, watching people arrive in their cars, she said, “It was happy heartbreak, seeing who was alive and who wasn’t.” She is still being very cautious but now says, “I feel safer.” Courtesy The Longhouse at Celilo Village, where One Community Health provided vaccines. Kaliyah Iverson two years, then transferred to Port- land State University to be closer to family. Her goal for the coming year is to develop a competitive application to medical school, with OHSU be- ing her likely first choice. Besides the school work, part of her ap- plication will now also include her job as a Pharmacy Technician at Walgreens. Following this career path— through college, medical school and residency—Kaliyah will be the first member of the Confederated Tribes to become a Medical Doctor. The Confederated Tribes and Indian Health Services are seeing great succes in administering Covid-19 vac- cines. IHS reports that 1,700 community members have received the vaccine. Of these, 811 have had their sec- ond dose. Now the Johnson & Johnson vacccine is arriving, and the numbers will con- tinue to climb. The vaccine program must account, at least in part, for the recent decline in positive covid tests on the reservation. ( S e e page 4 for vaccine clinic details.)