OCTOBER 1, 2005
Smoke Signals 9
Seasonal A heard of elk gather and feed in an open field in Tillamook County. This heard can be seen throughout Tillamook in different places.
come, and in Polk County, where
most Tribal members lived, it was
about 63 percent of overall Oregon
household income. In addition,
Tribal members suffered consider
ably higher rates of unemployment
and less formal education than the
general population. Also, 60 per
cent of Tribal households reported
unresolved vision problems and 50
percent reported unresolved dental
problems.
For a long time following the
1850s treaties when the 26
Tribes that became the Confeder
ated Tribes of the Grand Ronde
ceded their lands to the federal gov
ernment, Tribal members continued
to hunt, fish and gather resources
for subsistence and cultural ceremo
nies on and off the Reservation.
laughed as he recalled, "He and
(Tribal member) Clint Langley
taught me a lot."
All through the years up to Ter
mination, Tom and dozens, hun
dreds, probably thousands of other
Tribal members either bought state
tags or simply used their Tribal
identification cards to continue to
hunt and fish across the Tribe's
ceded lands.
"For me personally," said Tribal
member Greg Archuleta, who first
led the program to implement the
terms of the hunting and fishing
consent decree, "our family had an
cestral fishing sites at Oregon City.
It would have been nice to be able
to continue fishing there. To keep
the ancestral sites going.
"We have a lot of Tribal families
that came from Oregon City and
Cascade Locks and all along the
Hood) to the coast, and from
McMinnville and Grand Ronde on
the south to Forest Grove and
Tillamook on the north. It repre
sents a very small part of the lands
the Tribes of today's Grand Ronde
Confederation ceded to the federal
government in the 1850s, that ex
tend from the Columbia River on
the north to California on the
south; and from the coast to the
Cascade Range at east and west.
The Trask never was sufficient
for Tribal hunting and fishing
needs, and not only because it
leaves out so many ancestral home
lands. Over the years, the unit has
long been over hunted and de
pleted. The state has frequently
changed the rules and the seasons
without consulting the Tribe. And
because it is nearby Oregon's ma
jor metropolitan areas, it is always
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Yesterday Tradtional fishing at Celilo Falls in the 1 950s. The area has since been submerged by Columbia River Dams.
three years ago, in part because so
many younger hunters from the
city hunted from their trucks. "If
you want to be a hunter, you park
your rig at the gate and go and get
it," he said.
"I saw a guy with a couch in the
back of his truck," said Langley.
Overcrowding got so bad in the
1990s, said Kelly Dirksen, Fish and
Wildlife Coordinator for the Tribe,
that the state imposed additional
bag and season limits.
In 1999, said Herman
Biederback, who oversees the Trask
Unit for the state Department of
Fish & Wildlife, the state divided
the five-week deer season in two,
stuck the elk season more or less in
between, and changed the rules to
limit some older deer bags for
younger deer with the idea that the
older ones do the mating and maybe
would result in more does... and to
day all those rules have reverted to
the 1998 versions.
If all that sounds too complicated
for people to understand, it probably
is, but according to Biederback, the
idea of it all was to reduce the pres
sure on the Trask and Wilson Units
in this area. All it did was drive
hunters and those who police them
crazy, and the nuisance of it kept
hunters away.
The agreement also left out
salmon and steelhead, upland game
birds and waterfowl, and when it
came to cultural harvests, the Tribe
was left high and dry. Whether for
funerals or pow-wows or any of the
seasonal events that Indians have
long made their own by hunting for
fresh foods, today, the Tribe is ex
pected to use frozen food.
Tribal Elder Leon "Chips" Tom
recalls his initiation to hunting
around 1940 when his uncle, Tribal
member Mike Voutrin, who has
since passed on, asked if he wanted
to go hunting across Rock Creek.
He shot a forked horn buck and
asked Chips how much he could
carry.
"I said, 'Whatever you can put in
my pack sack.' So he packed it up
and put it on my shoulders and I
went over backwards." Tom
Columbia and Willamette and
Salmon and Nestucca Rivers, the
Rogue River, all in our traditional
lands. None are allowed to fish
there now (with Tribal licenses)."
In fact, Tribal licenses agreed to
in the 1986 Consent Decree allowed
Tribal members to hunt and fish
only in the Trask Game unit with
little more than 1,000 square miles
of big game habitat.
The Trask runs east and west from
the Cascades Range (with Mt.
overrun by non-Indian hunters.
Because of the crowds, "I never
go out the first weekend," said
Tribal hunter Bryan Langley. Lan
gley hunts with a bow more than
with a rifle, and said, "One reason
I don't like to go rifle hunting is so
many people are out there."
Chips Tom"used to fish the
Nestucca area religiously in the 60s
and 70s, but it got to the point
where it was just too crowded."
Tom, who is 77, stopped hunting
The list of injustices meted
out in the hunting and fish
ing consent decree is long
and will be considered in a
future installment. We also
plan an installment to talk
about traditional methods of
hunting and how they have
changed over the years.
And finally, Smoke Signals
will take a look at the Tribe's
current effort to revisit this
issue with the state and fed
eral authorities. It promises
to be a long process.
In the meantime, we invite
Tribal members with ex
periences and opinions re
garding traditional hunt
ing and fishing rights, and
any of these subjects to
contact Smoke Signals with
their stories.