Smoke Signals
March 1991
page 4
Community News
Oregon Together(cont)
adolescence; friends who use drugs; favorable attitudes
toward drug use; and early first use of drugs all indicate
that one is at risk of becoming chemically dependant.
The Oregon TOGETHER! Board is dedicated to
Alcohol and Drug AwarenessEducation and Preven
tion in order to reduce the use and abuse of alcohol and
drugs among youth in the Grand Ronde and Willamina
communities. The board will be conducting an assess
ment of the Grand Ronde and Willamina communities
to rate risk factors in the area. The assessment will
include taking surveys and collecting data in the Grand
Ronde and Willamina areas.
Your cooperation is of great importance in order to
complete the assessment. The survey will consist of
questions related to attitudes of community members
related to the use and abuse of alcohol and drugs. This
survey should be given in an non-threatening manner
and names of persons surveyed will remain anonymous.
If you have any questions or would like to know how to
be a member of the Oregon TOGETHER! Board,
please contact Camille Van Vleet or Greg Archuleta at
879-5211.
Bill Proposes Indian
Memorial At
Custer Battlefield
Rep. Ron Marlenee of Montana introduced a bill
January 31 to establish a memorial at Custer Battlefield
in honor of the Tribes who fought in the battle of the
Little Bighorn. The bill, H.R. 770, was referred to the
House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. Similar
bills are also expected from Rep. Pat Williams of
Montana and Rep. Ben Campbell of Colorado, but
controversy is expected over whether the name should
be changed to Little Bighorn National Monument.
Marlenee, a conservative Republican, supports the
Indian memorial but opposes a name change. Williams,
a Democrat, supports both an Indian memorial and a
name change.
Courtesy of Mark Phillips Washington D.C. Update
Journalists To Meet In Denver
Denver, Colo. (NANS)- The Seventh Annual Native
American Journalists Association (NAJA) Conference
will be held March 13-16, 1991, at Denver's Landmark
Inn.
The newly announced location reflects a change in
plans for the 200 member organization. The 1991
conference originally was planned for Edmonton,
Alberta, but Native journalists there who had offered to
host the gathering said staff and financial shortages
forced them to abandon their plans.
This year's conference theme, "Computers, cassettes,
cameras; Covering Native News from all angles," is
intended to reflect the organization's increased focus on
broadcast journalism and its new name. Until members
voted last March to change its name, NAJA was known
as the Native American Press Association.
The 1991 conference, like the one held in 1988, will
coincide with the Denver March Pow-Wow, one of the
first and largest such events of next year's Pow-Wow
season.
II -4
You are invited
to share a traditional
wedding of:
JOSEPH PALMER
BRISBOIS
and
JEANETTE JEAN CASE
son of
Daniel and Joann Brisbois
daughter of
Clifford W. Case, Sr.
and
Vernita Arleen Norwest
To be held at
Stuart Grenfell Park
Sheridan, Oregon
on
Saturday, the sixteenth of March
nineteen hundred and ninety-one
at
two o'clock in the afternoon
When a man and woman
begin to understand,
they will learn to
love as a child loves
and when their love
is understood there will
be everlasting peace.
To have joy
one must share it.
Happiness is becoming whole.
In loving memory of Erin Case
Preserving Owl Carries
Unknown Price
ByAlanGustafson
The Statesman Journal
Protecting the northern spotted owl and preserving the
Pacific Northwest's diminishing supply of centuries-old
forests will cost thousands of timber workers their jobs.
However, the precise economic costs of protecting the
threatened bird are as cloudy as the region's misty
forests.
Government scientists and university researchers churn
out conflicting studies, but actual job losses will depend
on how sweeping the final owl-protection plan turns out
to be.
It probably will be months, possibly years, before that
plan is completed, much less implemented.
On Nov. 22, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan directed
a special team to write a recovery plan for the spotted
owl, which was declared a threatened species July 23 by
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
A final recovery plan, taking into account both scien
tific evidence and economic effects of protecting the owl,
is tentatively scheduled to be issued to Lujan by June
1992.
During the past year, an enormous amount of public
attention was focused on the spotted owl controversy.
From the halls of Congress to tne cover of Time
magazine, the bird was the riveting symbol in the clash
about the fate of the Northwest's timberlands.
About 3,000 pairs of owls are thought to exist in
Oregon, Washington and Northern California, primarily
in lush, biologically diverse stands of old-growth forests.
Environmentalists contend that decades of overcutting
in Northwest forests have placed the bird on the path to
extinction.
To save the owl, logging must be banned on about 3
million acres of federal timberlands currently open to
cutting, according to a report compiled by Forest Service
biologist Jack Ward Thomas and a panel of government
scientists. The Forest Service estimates that Oregon and
Washington stand to lose 28,000 jobs by the end of the
decade if the Thomas report is heeded. However,
university researchers from Oregon, Washington and
California project potential job losses at more than
40,000. Other studies done by the timber industry have
forecast even higher job losses.
Reflecting increased environmental concerns, Congress
recently signaled its desire to sharply reduce Northwest
timber harvests.
Shortly before adjourning in late October, Congress
approved a spending bill that authorizes the Forest
Service to sell 3.2 billion board feet of timber in the
national forests of Oregon and Washington in the 1991
fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. The same bill permits
the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 750
million board feet.
Those timber sale goals fall far below the 3.85 billion
and 900 million amounts Congress authorized for 1990.
Meanwhile, federal foresters are required to consult
with the Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure that none of
the planned timber sales would put the owl at risk.
Even at reduced levels, the current timber sale pro
grams are expected to trigger a flurry of court challenges
from environmentalists, who argue that more dramatic
cutbacks are needed to save the owl and the region's
old-growth forests.