E Coosh EEWA: The way it is
Page 4 Spilyay Tymoo April 6, 2022
Letters to the editor
Native jazz
performance
Julia Keefe is a Nez Perce
tribal member, and a nation-
ally acclaimed jazz vocalist,
actor and educator. She will
premier the Julia Keefe In-
digenous Big Band—an all-
Indigenous 16-piece big
band—on May 19 at the
Washington Center for the
Performing Arts in Olympia,
Washington.
Indigenous jazz musi-
cians, ensembles and big
bands have their place in the
contemporary jazz world, as
well as jazz history. There
were small ensembles and
big bands on reservations
across the U.S. in the first
half of the twentieth cen-
tury, and several indigenous
musicians who ascended to
celebrity with jazz as their
medium.
From time immemorial,
songs have been the vessels
for prayers and stories for
the Indigenous people of the
Americas. The goals of the
Julia Keefe Indigenous Big
Band are to celebrate and
continue that tradition, to
compose and perform new
music inspired by traditional
melodies, and to create a
community of life-minded
peoples from all back-
grounds to uplift the next
generation of Indigenous
jazz musicians. For more in-
formation see the website:
washingtoncenter.org/
event/julia-keefe-indig-
enous-big-band/
Spring fitness
Fitness classes are hap-
pening at the old elementary
school g ymnasium. On
Mondays there is Power
Lunch at 12:10 p.m., includ-
ing strength training, and
HIIT and cardio.
Tuesdays feature Power
Up at 6 a.m., strength and
cardio, and Yoga Strong at
12:10 p.m. Thursdays are
Power Lunch at 12:10 p.m.,
strength training, HIIT and
cardio. And Fridays are Yoga
Strong at 12:10 p.m.
W.S. Young Life
The Warm Springs Young
Life Club meets every Thurs-
day from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m.
at the modulars by the old
elementary school.
Young Life Club is a youth
ministry for sixth- through
twelfth grades.
At their regular gather-
ings, they are cooking fry
bread, Indian tacos, dump-
lings and more, every Thurs-
day in April.
For information contact
James Keo at 541-460-
2843; Urbana Manion at
541- 419-4821; or Earl
Simmons, 541-815-0992.
Rezfest 2022
Rezfest 2022 is coming
up in Warm Springs on Sat-
urday, May 7. The show
will feature Damage Over-
dose, of Warm Springs;
Guardians from Arizona;
and Bad Omen of Seattle.
More perfor mances
will be by Blue Flamez of
Warm Springs; and Eagle
Thunder, also of Warm
Springs. More will be an-
nounced.
Damage Overdose is
celebrating its Twenty-Fifth
Anniversary.
All ages are welcome.
The doors open at 6 p.m.
Tickets are $10, available
through:
brownpapertickets.com
Or through Damage
Overdose, or Chuck
Hudson.
Concessions will be
available, and donations are
welcome.
Come celebrate with
meal, hip hop and pow-wow
drum.
Tribal survey
The Confederated Tribes
conducted a community sur-
vey earlier this year.
The purpose of the sur-
vey was to help decide how
funding from the American
Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA,
funds will be spent.
One of the areas was
gauging interest in working
for the tribes, where 15.4
percent said yes, with 28.6
percent unsure, and an over-
whelming 40.7 percent say-
ing no.
Some of the reasons for
not wanting to work with
for the tribes is ‘extreme
low pay,’ inexperienced man-
agers and housing issues as
well as the Covid-19 vac-
cine mandate for workers
of the tribes.
In another section of the
sur vey there were many
different categories pre-
sented, among them, Pub-
lic Health and Wellness, Cul-
ture and Heritage, housing
and more.
Some other potential
ARPA funding priorities
mentioned were the ball
fields, increases to employ-
ees pay, and fixing water is-
sues, among others.
Some survey details are on
page 8 of this publication.
The next Spilyay submis-
sion deadline is Friday,
April 15.
Spilyay Tymoo
(Coyote News, Est. 1976)
Publisher Emeritus in Memorium: Sid Miller
Editor: Dave McMechan
Spilyay Tymoo is published bi-weekly by the
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Our of-
fices are located at 4174 Highway 3 in Warm
Springs.
Any written materials submitted to Spilyay Tymoo
should be addressed to:
Spilyay Tymoo, P.O. Box 489, Warm Springs, OR
97761.
Phone: 541-553-2210 or 541-771-7521
E-Mail: david.mcmechan@wstribes.org.
Annual Subscription rates: Within U.S.: $20.00
Visit thrift stores to
help with good causes
There are some great
local thrift stores offer-
ing a variety of discount
items, and training oppor-
tunities for young people,
helping with their educa-
tion.
The Possibilities Thrift
Store is in Madras by the
Dollar Tree on Highway
26, operated by the
Opportuniyt Foundation.
The Heart of Oregon
Corps Thrift Store is on
Fifth.
The motto of the Pos-
sibilities Thrift Store is
‘Empowering People of
Diverse Abilities.’
The store is one of the
programs of the Opportu-
nity Foundation of Central
Oregon, dedicated to help-
ing young people pursues
their education and work
careers. Young people of
Warm Springs have joined
the Opportunity Founda-
tion, earning school credits
and money, including at the
Thrift Store.
Possibilities Thrift Store
is open Tuesday through
Saturday. Hours are Tues-
days through Saturdays
from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Some items on sale at the store.
William Clements Jr. was working at the
Heart of Oregon Corps Thrift Store recently.
He started there last month.
D.McMechan/Spilyay
Columbia Fisheries: Working Together to Develop a Path Forward
by Deb Haaland
Secretary of the Interior
and Interior staff
The Columbia River and
its tributaries are the life
spring of the Pacific North-
west.
The Columbia River Ba-
sin was also once among the
most productive aquatic eco-
systems in the world with an
estimated 7.5 to 16 million
adult salmon and steelhead
returning to Pacific North-
west tributaries each year,
providing food for over 130
wildlife species, including
orca, bears and wolves. The
salmon and steelhead sus-
tained the cultures and econo-
mies of tribal nations since
time immemorial, and in turn,
tribes successfully managed
these fisheries for millennia.
Today, the river provides
energy to communities and
business, irrigation water for
thousands of farms, trans-
portation services, recre-
ational opportunities, and vi-
tal habitat for fish and wild-
life species.
In March we convened a
nation-to-nation consultation
between our agencies and de-
partments and leaders and
representatives from the
tribes of the Columbia River
Basin.
We heard clearly the re-
quest for accountability for
actions by the U.S. Govern-
ment that have caused harm
to the ecology of the river,
its tributaries, and impor-
tantly, its first residents.
Since colonization of the
Pacific Northwest, numerous
tribal nations entered into
treaties with the United
States, ceding millions of
acres of their homelands in
exchange for and ac-
knowledgement of rights al-
ready held, including, criti-
cally, the right to fish in all
“usual and accustomed
places.”
This exchange was pre-
mised on a notion that the
salmon and steelhead re-
sources of the region were
“inexhaustible,” a premise that
subsequent human activities
in the basin proved false as
salmon and steelhead disap-
peared or significantly de-
clined at many tribal fishing
locations.
From the 1930s to the
1970s, the federal govern-
ment constructed a series of
14 multi-purpose dams in the
basin to address a myriad of
economic challenges, and,
additionally, more than 100
non-federal dams were con-
structed.
Communities across the
Northwest have come to rely
on these dams for flood risk
management, water supply,
irrigation, navigation, and rec-
reation and importantly: reli-
able and affordable electric-
ity.
The dams also altered free-
flowing rivers, affected juve-
nile fish as they migrate out
to sea, impeded adult fish re-
turning to spawn, inundated
tribal fishing areas and sacred
sites, and forever displaced
people from their homes. In
the 1990s, 13 of the Colum-
bia River Basin’s salmon
populations required the pro-
tection of the Endangered
Species Act to survive. We
have been working to stem
the decline ever since.
The federal government
has spent several billion dol-
lars, in partnership with tribes,
states, and non-governmental
organizations, on efforts that
contribute to fish recovery.
These efforts include
modifying the operation and
configuration of the federal
dams to improve passage con-
ditions for fish, investing in
hatchery facilities to produce
and supplement tribal and
non-tribal fisheries and im-
proving fish habitat, changing
flow augmentation releases
from some projects to coun-
teract warmer water, and im-
planting programs to trans-
port juvenile fish downstream
by barge and truck.
States have also funded
recovery programs, pur-
chased, protected, and re-
stored fish and wildlife habi-
tat; and overseen numerous
habitat improvement mea-
sures. Tribes are also imple-
menting their own compre-
hensive recovery plans that
integrate indigenous and
western science to heal the
ecosystem through innova-
tive projects.
Despite hard work, inge-
nuity, great expense, and
commitment across all lev-
els of federal, state, tribal
and local governments and
a wide range of stakehold-
ers, many fish populations in
the Columbia River Basin—
salmon, steelhead, and oth-
ers— have not recovered,
some continue to decline,
and many areas remain in-
accessible to them.
We heard a specific ex-
ample of a fishery where
there has been no measur-
able improvement, about the
ongoing and acute harm ex-
perienced by tribes in
blocked areas where salmon
and steelhead no longer ex-
ist, and about the deep and
emotional experience of see-
ing fish return again.
For the tribes, their past,
present, and future is inex-
tricably linked to the contin-
ued existence of salmon and
the health of the rivers that
support them, which is why
the tribes experience pro-
found consequences from
the dwindling salmon runs.
As the Affiliated Tribes
of Northwest Indians and
the National Congress of
American Indians explained
in resolutions passed last
year, the basin faces not only
an environmental crisis, but
an environmental justice cri-
sis too.
The tribal leaders wel-
comed the dialogue, and they
made clear that they want
more than words. They
brought ideas to the table
and they want action.
We heard calls to support
breaching the four dams on
the lower Snake River to re-
store a more natural flow,
also about the need to re-
place the services provided
by those dams, and recogni-
tion that such a step would
require Congressional action.
This approach has been
supported by Idaho Con-
gressman Mike Simpson, and
is being evaluated by Wash-
ington Senator Patty Murray
in collaboration with Wash-
ington Governor Jay Inslee.
We heard a request to
fully fund fish and wildlife
restoration and to vest in
tribes and states a stronger
role in managing those
funds.
Relatedly, we heard a con-
sistent theme that the current
fish mitigation funding is mis-
matched with the burdens
experienced by tribes: It is
too little in light of the scale
of the harms and the extent
of restoration needed, and
the locations and species ben-
efitted are not in proportion
to the impacts.
We heard a request to sup-
port reintroduction of
salmon in areas that histori-
cally yielded abundant popu-
lations, but are fully blocked
by dams lacking fish passage:
the Upper Columbia and
Upper Snake.
We heard that the exper-
tise and sovereignty of the
tribes should be recognized
in federal agency processes
and actions that might affect
the basin. We agree.
Respecting the sover-
eignty of tribal nations and
their knowledge and exper-
tise is a priority for this ad-
ministration.
As we reflect on what we
heard, we know that any
long-term solution must ac-
count for the varied and cru-
cial services provided by the
dams, as well as the people,
communities, and industries
who rely upon them.
We cannot continue busi-
ness as usual. Doing the right
thing for salmon, tribal na-
tions, and communities can
bring us together. It is time
for effective, creative solu-
tions.