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About Smoke signals. (Grand Ronde, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 15, 1999)
Smoke Signals Tri ba I Cou rt expa nds ru les 10 By Katharine English Tribal Court Chief Judge The Grand Ronde Tribe has re cently expanded the jurisdiction of its Tribal Court. For several months the Court, with assistance from the Tribe's Legal Department, has been studying various Court Rules of other Oregon tribes, Oregon Rules of the Court, Federal Rules of the Court, and evidence codes in an effort to de termine the rules under which the Grand Ronde Tribe could operate most thoroughly. In conjunction with legal staff, and having notified the Tribal Council, the Court hereby pro mulgates the rules below. Effective January 1, 1999, all cases filed in the Tribal Court of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand itonae community oi uregon snail be governed by rules and procedures as follows: 1 Effective to all cases filed on or nft.er .Tnniinrv 1 1 QQQ fhe P,nn. federated Tribes of the Grand Ronde hereby adopt, as the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Tribal Court Rules of Civil Procedure, the Rules of the U.S. District Court of the Dis trict of Oregon, and the Federal Rules of Evidence, as they currently exist, and as they may from time to time be amended, with the follow ing exceptions and provisos. . 2 The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde do not specifically adopt any rules which reference ad miralty and maritime claims, jury .trials, class actions, derivative ac tions, or masters. A "legal holiday" shall mean those days that are paid legal holidays for tribal employees as set forth in the personnel rules of the Tribe or as delineated by the Tribal Council. 3 Where the United States is named, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde shall be substituted, as appropriate. 4 The Tribal Court retains discre tion to modify the application of any rule in any particular case when it is impracticable or impossible to apply the rule as written or in the interests of justice. 5 The Tribal Court shall interpret the rules in a manner consistent with the Constitution and ordi nances of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and with the fair administration of justice. More Education Notes... J 1J , I cu. uummiuee acnoiarsmps now! seeking members Applications are being accepted for two openings on the Education Com mittee, which meets one evening a month with some weekend events. Two planning sessions a year are held one during the summer be fore school starts and one in Febru ary to keep on target. Education is very important to the committee at all levels. This is a hard working group which needs more help. For more information, contact Darlene Aaron at 876-5795. For a committee application, please con tact Lauri Smith at 879-2301. Intertribal Timber Council offers a Truman D. Picard Scholarship to students in a college natural re sources program. The deadline to apply is Feb. 1, 1999. For more information call: (503) '282-4296. The Oregon State Higher Education System schools have available the Diversity Building Scholarship appli cations, 1999-2000. If you plan to attend one of Oregon's eight colleges and universities, please contact the school and request a scholarship ap plication. The Diversity Building Scholarship is a tuition remission scholarship with awards ranging from . partial to full tuition fee waivers. Higher Education program students: DPlease remember to submit a copy of your class schedule at the beginning of each termsemester and a copy of your grade report at the conclusion of each termsemester. Failure to send these documents will result in a delay of mailing your award to the school. , DNow is the time to file your 1999-2000 Federal Financial Aid application. Continuing students are required to submit a copy of the application to the Tribal Education Higher Ed. Program by February 15, 1999. DIf you plan to enter, school Spring Term 1999, you need to submit a com pleted Tribal Program application to the Education Division by February 1, 1999. Deadline dates to apply for either Higher Education program fund ing or Adult Vocational Training program funding is as follows: Spring Term 1999: February 1,1999; Fall TermFall Semester 1999: July 1, 1999; Winter TermFall Semester 2000: November 1, 1999. These deadlines are established to allow time to process the application and compete a budget analysis with the school. It takes between 30 to 60 days to get a file together in order to determine eligibility. If you plan to attend school in the near future you are encouraged to file a Federal Finan cial Aid Application now by calling Marion Mercier at 1-800-422-0232. language rebirth Continued from page 4 Linguists use what Johnson calls an Americanist Phonetic al phabet while both Native Chi nook speakers and early non-Indian compilers of the language used intuition and English letters to write Chinook-Wawa. The problem with this latter method is that in Native Chinook there are at least 20 sounds which can not be clearly represented . with an English alphabet, John son says. "You can't pick up one of those old dictionaries and pronounce Chinook. They just don't have the letters," explains Johnson. "None . of those dictionaries represent Chinook as spoken by Indians." Johnson began researching the database and other resources. He soon devised the first ever Indian Chinook-Wawa alphabet by re-mapping Americanist Pho netic characters to accurately rep resent the unique pronunciations of spoken Chinook. - With the database and alpha bet in place and with the help of some special computer software, Johnson is already using an ab breviated lexicon of Chinook words as part of the curriculum for the Tribe's language class. He hopes that by fall the first fully edited Chinook-Wawa dictio nary compiled by and for Native Americans will be published. "We need a dictionary to facili tate learning the language," he says. "It's by no means done but (getting this far) was a huge hurtle." Theories on the propagation of Chinook-Wawa vary. While some believe it was spread by non-Indian traders, Johnson . says that some form of the lan guage was in widespread use long before they came. He notes Chinook's distinctly Indian sound system. He also argues that a common Northwest Indian language was essential because tribes with dif ferent languages and dialects in termarried, traded and occasion ally enslaved members of neigh- boring tribes. Fluency in multiple languages was common but the diversity of languages in the Northwest made it impossible to know them all. "It seems real obvious that a pid gin or creole language would be As far as I'm concerned, reviving Chinook-Wawa has so much more potential than reviving other languages" Tony Johnson Language Specialist needed," says Johnson who notes that Captain James Cook's 1778 voyage to Canada's west coast and Lewis and Clark's 1806 Oregon : trek both encountered tribes al ready using Chinook-Wawa. .; By the 19th century, western tribes from southern British Co lumbia to the Oregon-California border and as far east as the Rockies used Chinook-Wawa as a second language, Johnson says. He says remnants of the lan-' guage can be found as far north as Alaska where locals still use the Chinook word 'Chee Chako' for newcomer, to Northwestern U.S. place names such as 'Tumwater,' Washington and 'Ecola,' Oregon. Both are Chinook for "thumping water" and "whale" respectively. But he says tribes that moved to the Grand Ronde reservation in the mid 1800s "had a real op portunity with Chinook. "It was really well developed," says Johnson. "It was mostly a language used by adults but here it became one of the first lan guages of children. When a pid gin language does that, it evolves. It becomes a Creole." Johnson believes the Tribe's unique history with Chinook Wawa can help revive the lan guage to benefit more than just " Grand Ronde. "As far as I'm concerned, reviv ing Chinook-Wawa has so much more potential than reviving other languages," says Johnson ac knowledging that, "we all know we have other older languages." 'The work that we do can be ap plied to a lot of tribes who want to communicate with other tribes in an Indian language, and we should save them, but the work we are doing can allow tribes with different languages to once again communicate intertribally with an Indian language. This is what Chinook did in the past and what it can do in the future."
