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ENROLLMENT
REPORT
Dear Fellow Tribal Members and Friends,
Happy New Year!! The enrollment office has a part
time assistant, Michael Childers. Michael will be
assisting myself and Greg Archuleta in issuing I.D. cards
and tribal fishinghunting licenses. She will also be
taking phone messages and entering information into
the enrollment data base. Welcome Michael!!!
Our current tribal membership now totals 2,404.
Congratulations to all of our new members! When I
mail applicants their roll numbers, I also include an
information sheet that lists the tribal programs and staff.
If you would like a copy, please let me know.
Many of our tribal programs and consultants have been
requesting statistics for future planning. The enrollment
data base has made it possible for me to provide
accurate statistics in a timely manner, but your help is
more important. Without the current information that
is received on your update forms, the data base is
useless. Please continue the excellent cooperation in
completing and returning the update forms.
The Enrollment Committee has recently reviewed the
1954 "base" or termination roll to designate tribal
members who are believed to be deceased. Documenta
tion must be provided to remove a deceased member
from the roll. I will have a list of possibly deceased
members published in the February issue of "Smoke
Signals". If you see a name on the list that you know is
is not deceased, please let me know. Any copies of
death certificates, mortuary records, or newspaper
obituary noticies will be welcome. After the list has
been published, there will be a waiting period of two
months for any corrections. After this period, the
deceased members will be removed from the official
roll. Your help will be greatly appreciated.
If you need any information about your enrollment
status, just write or call me. I can verify your roll
number or assist you in completing your enrollment
application. Any one who wishes to enroll in the Grand
Ronde Tribe must request an application. The enroll
ment application must be completed and returned to me
with your birth certificate. The tribal photo I.D. cards
are issued daily to members 11 years and older. Please
contact me or Michael in care of this office if you have
any questions.
Sincerely,
Margo George
Enrollment Director
UMATILLAS SEE FISH RETURN AFTER 70 YEAR WAIT
1989
HUNTING AND FISHING
STICKERS ARE NOW
AVAILABLE,
(if you are traveling from out
of town, please call ahead)
UMATILLA, Ore. (AP)- Few people remember the days
before irrigation dams killed the salmon runs on the
Umatilla River.
But the Umatilla Indians never forgot, and more than 70
years after the rivers water became the property of white
farmers, the Umatilla's are seeing salmon returning as a
result of a huge federal commitment to restore a part of the
circle of life.
"It's like a part of us returns, part of my body," said Louie
Dick Jr., vice chairman of the board of trustees for the
Umatilla Tribes. "Because that is part of my body, the
salmon, even though other people don't think of it that way.
The land is part of my body."
About 600 members of the Umatilla tribes still live on the
reservation just east of Pendleton, about 40 miles up the
Umatilla River from where it empties into the Columbia
River at the town of Umatilla.
The treaty that put them on the reservation in 1855 was
supposed to guarantee the right to gather traditional foods
in their usual and accustomed places, including the salmon
swimming up the Umatilla.
With so much water diverted for farms, there wasn't
enough left in the riverbed for the coho and chinook salmon
to swim through the broad shallow stretches and over 24-foot-tall
Three-Mile dam, named for it's distance from the
river's mouth, to spawn and die in the head-water and
tributaries.
Only the steelhead survived the dams, because they could
wait for the winter rains to raise the river and were better
at climbing the crude fish ladders.
For the Umatilla tribes, the loss of the salmon left a gap in
the circle of eight inseparable elements that make up life:
speech, food, religion, shelter, clothing, water, the land and
the person.
"When we talk of food, we talk of food that Creator, he lent
this to us."
"What you would call the amber waves of grain are not
really that important to an Indian background. I know the
farmer says irrigation is bread and gives food to the person.
To the Indian person,no."
It wasn't until the Northwest Power Planning Council was
formed by Congress in 1980 with a mandate to restore fish
runs wiped out by dams in the Columbia River system that
the Umatilla treaty began to have power.
Working with the Council, the Bonneville Power Admini
stration has spent $8 million on the Umatilla, and is
committed to a total of $ 25 million, said Jay Marcotte,
manager of the Umatilla basin project for BPA. The U.S.
Forest Service, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wild
life and the Umatilla Indians use the money to stop erosion
that smothers spawning beds, plant streamside trees and
brush to keep the water cool in summer, blast channels
through the shallow river stretches, and build new fish
ladders, traps and outtake screens on the dams. A new
hatchery is planned near the mouth of the river.
The work on the Umatilla reservation is a small part of the
$ 645 million the BPA spent between 1981 and 1987 to
improve fish runs in the Columbia Basin.
"This was the very first year we've gotten adult coho back
to the river," said Gary James, who manages the fisheries
program for the Umatilla Indians. "We've got a total of
about 1,500 coho back so far. The fall chinook we are
getting is the best run we've had, too. The total run of adults
and jacks is approaching 1,500 as well." ,
J
From Sho-Ban News'-