4 APRIL 1,2008
Smoke Signals
Native Names workshop hopes to bring lost,
or nearDy lost, Indian history bade to life
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By Ron Karten
Smoke Signals staff writer
The Confederated Tribes of Grand
Ronde hosted Tribes from across
Oregon and Washington on Wednes
day, March 12, to collect Native place
names from across the Northwest.
By their example, they hope to en
courage Tribes from across the coun
try and aboriginals from around the
world to also participate in the project
by submitting Native place names.
In 2005, the U.S. Geological Sur
vey awarded the Coeur d'Alene Tribe
a grant to jumpstart what it called
"The Native Names Project."
And Coeur d'Alene
Geographic Informa
tion Systems Manager
Frank Roberts helped
open the Grand Ronde
workshop.
The workshop en
couraged participa
tion by providing an
interactive Web site for
the information, and
showing the system
being used to catalogue
all the information.
The workshop also de
scribed the process for changing
names that abqriginal Native Amer
icans consider offensive.
Currently, for example, more than
80 place names in Oregon use the
word "squaw," according to Volker
Mell, the Grand Ronde Tribe's GIS
coordinator.
The project is particularly benefi
cial for aboriginal culture experts.
In Grand Ronde, it is the Cultural
Resources Department. As Cul
tural Protection Coordinator, Tribal
member Eirik Thorsgard oversees
identification and stewardship of
oral traditions, archeological sites
and gathering areas.
"Place names tie all three to
gether," Thorsgard said. "It also
benefits the language program here
to use original languages in regards
to specific locations.
"It showed us how to organize the
data, and that there's a national
effort on behalf of some Tribes to
it
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share this information."
"One of the most important things
about this project is preserving the
individual stories and pronuncia
tions of the places," says the project
description on a federal GIS Web site
"On many reservations across the
United States it is the unfortunate
truth that only a handful of the
people know the Native geographic
names. The goal of this project is
to collect these place names before
they disappear forever."
"With the help of this conference,"
said Tribal Cultural Re
sources Manager David
Lewis, "we are able to plug
into another effort going
on. They're actually doing
a lot of the work for us,
and we will be able to fill
in any questions."
A number of Tribes
are creating their own
place names maps, Lew
is said. "We're not ahead
of the game, but we're
with the beginning Tribes
on the project," he said.
To see how far the project has
progressed, find the U.S. Geological
Survey's national map at http:na
tionalmap.gov and from there, go to
"Viewer," go to "Geographic Names,"
and click on both "Native Names"
check boxes.
You won't find much yet, Mell
said, because to date only six Tribes
are participating.
"We should be able to put points
and layers of information on Google
maps that have our history, and
give a whole new depth to Google,"
Lewis said.
The map also has the capability
to add additional information, Mell
said.
"You can have an audio for pro
nunciation, and you can put videos
in there, too," he said.
"It looks like a real positive thing
for our area," Lewis added. "To self
define our own territory and land.
It's an important part of our sover-
Photo by Evan Schneider of the Oregon Historical Society
Tribal Elder Don Day, left, and Tribal Cultural Resources Manager David
Lewis examine a U.S. Geological Survey site that allows Tribes to input Native
geographic names on a map of the country. A workshop held in Grand Ronde
on March 1 2 sought to collect Native place names from across the Northwest.
eignty. For the last 150 years or so,
the Tribes have been basically told
what their relationship is with the
government, but seldom have the
Tribes been able to self-define their
traditional homelands."
The Coeur d'Alene Tribe, with its
grant, "have done the legwork on how
this data is organized," Lewis said.
The Grand Ronde Tribe has an
other level of work to do.
"We've got to get all of the names
written down in one place first, and
then figure out what we can share
with the public," Thorsgard said.
Excluded from public dissemination,
for the protection of the sites, will be
information about villages, burials or
traditional Native spiritual places.
In trying to compile all of the
data for every geographic location
including the Willamette Valley,
Columbia River, Umpqua Basin
and Rogue Valley Tribal cultural
departments have their hands full,
Thorsgard said.
"Each area has its own problems,"
he said. "Along the Columbia River,
sites may have as many as five lan
guages." Names could be Clackamas, Mult
nomah, Chinuk Wawa, English,
languages once used by plateau
Tribes and even the language for the
Kalapuyans, all extinct except for a
few fragments here and there.
"Sometimes," Thorsgard said, "there
may be many, many more languages
than those we know. And then we
have to try to figure out how to put
all this information on a map.
"We have place names that we
can't pin down because somebody
recorded, say, a Kalapuya Elder
speaking about a place but (an
thropologists and others) never
asked specifically where it was. It is
important to note that the only sur
viving language is Chinuk Wawa.
The other languages are gone. They
don't exist anymore."
"We probably should have started
our part five to eight years ago,"
Thorsgard said, "but the depart
ment hasn't had the resources to do
it until now." B
Easter egg hunt at Tribal housing
Photos by Michelle Alaimo
Children take off to grab Easter eggs during the Easter Egg Hunt at family housing on
Saturday, March 22. Right, Tribal member Joshua Roberts, 1 0, opens a plastic egg to see if
there's candy or a ticket inside after he filled a basket with eggs. Finding an egg with a ticket
inside meant the Easter egg hunter received an additional prize.
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