Image provided by: The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Grand Ronde, OR
About Smoke signals. (Grand Ronde, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 2008)
8 NOVEMBER 15, 2008 Smoke Signals sera By Ron Karten Smoke Signals staff writer Early in the 1970s, the Road to Restoration be gan in Grand Ronde. Tribal Elder Margaret Provost, 78 today, was in her early 40s and working at Teledyne Wan Chang, the Albany rare metals company, in 1972. Her foreman, Bob Cannon, an Osage Indian from Oklahoma, and Thurman Banks, an Oglala Sioux from South Dakota, were involved in an association of urban Indians, which met in the LebanonAlbany area. They caught her attention with talk of Tribal Restoration. "Siletz was being restored," Mar garet recalls, "and in conversa tion, (Bob Cannon) asked why Grand Ronde wasn't doing any thing. I thought, 'Why not in Grand Ronde?" She joined the group with her daughter, Jackie Provost (now Many Hides), who is now also a Tribal Elder, but was in her 20s then. Margaret called Tribal Elder Leon "Chip" Tom, her brother Marvin Kimsey and Merle Holmes. Chip called his daughter, Patti Tom Martin. Marvin Kimsey called Dean Mercier. Dean called his daughter, Jackie Mercier Colton, who walked on in 2007. And so the foundation of Tribal Restoration began one phone call and one Tribal member at a time. "My Dad got a call from Marga ret," says Tribal Elder Patti Tom Martin, 59, "and he said, 'She's got ' an idea that we could get restored. I don't get home from work in time. I want you to go down there.' I said, 'I don't remember her,' but he said, 'Don't worry, they're your family. You're OK.' So I went down there. "Margaret Provost and Mar vin Kimsey were there and they started talking about Restoration. I thought, 'Oh, my God, can that really happen? Can that really be?' 1 So I leave there absolutely on fire that that could happen. That's what started it for us." "We talked to different groups," Margaret says. "Then, we talked to Joe Lane (Siletz). He encouraged us to go ahead and do this, and in troduced us to different programs they were conducting - Manpower and the CETA (Federal Compre hensive Employment and Training Act) program. lie got us started in some of those programs, and also got us offices in Salem and Albany to work from. "We got some Tribal members work and into school, and it got us around to other Tribes to make contacts." Patti Tom Martin recalls one piece of Lane's advice, i le told them to meet monthly and establish the record of an ongoing nonprofit. Mark Mercier "People wanted to believe," Patti says, "but I think it was hard to believe that something like that, something that momentous, could possibly happen for us." But when monthly meetings be gan in Grand Ronde in 1975, more and more people got involved, Patti says. "We knew we were on the road to doing something," Margaret remembers. After Termination in 1954, the Tribal land base that was origi nally 69,100 acres was whittled down again, eventually reduced to the 2.5-acre cemetery and a 24-by-24-foot shack. That little green shack served many purposes for the Tribe when nothing else was available, and still today, though it has long since been replaced, it holds the memories of a lnbe. Some Tribes, says Tribal Elder Mark Mercier, 56, pre ferred Ter mination. He served on Tribal Council for 15 years starting in 1984, just after Restoration, and for 12 years of that time as chairman. Some Tribes were happy to have the government out of their busi ness, he says. But in Grand Ronde, Mark and others just saw Termina tion as a way for the government to shirk its treaty obligations. "When we got terminated," says Tribal Elder Chip Tom, "deep down, I never, to me, I wasn't going to be terminated. How can they take your identity away from you?" Chip Tom's family started in Grand Ronde but joined the federal relocation program for a few years starting in 1955. "It took our family away from our community of Grand Ronde," says Patti Tom Martin. "Not all families participated in the relocation program. Some of the families around here had land, so they stayed. We went to Colorado with the relocation program and it was a devastating time for our family. I think it actually broke our family apart. "There was nothing for us there," Patti says. "If it wasn't for our grandpar ents, we probably would not have got back home. But Indians always get home." The government's idea with the relocation pro gram, according to Tribal h ' I V o i Y i Kathleen Tom, Leon 'Chip' Tom, Patti Tom Martin Elder and Tribal Council mem ber Kathleen Tom, 55, was, "If we assimilate them out into the other cultures, pretty soon they'll intermarry and intermarry and intermarry and pretty soon there won't be an Indian culture, and we won't have any trust responsibility to them." "Termination for me meant that we were no longer the visible ones," says Tribal Chairwoman Cheryle A. Kennedy, 60. "We were invisible as far as the United States (was concerned), but because of that invisibility, we then had to work harder, to do more, to develop the talents, the skills, the abilities that we had. "And we needed to represent our family and our people; that we were the ones who would remember. We are the ones who would carry out all of the possibilities that were there for us as a people, as well as a fam ily, as well as an individual. "Those beliefs and strengths and acts of courage, I believe, were the momentum for Restoration." In 1973, Congress restored federal recognition of the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin. That was the first crack in the dam of Termina tion. In 1977, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz in western Oregon suc ceeded in its Restoration effort. In 1982, the Cow Creeks in south ern Oregon succeeded. The news of Restoration rumbled through Indian Country in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the Grand Ronde members were determined to make it happen. "It had to come from within our selves," says Kennedy, who was involved in the 1970s. She credits her grandmother, Pauline Cora Johnson, who was grandparent and parent to her. "I was raised in a strong cultural family," Kennedy says. "My grand mother made sure that we accepted who we were, that we were valued individuals, and that we had a lot to offer not only our family but the world. "By the time Termination came, I was a small child, and all those underlying beliefs and all of the nurturing was there to sustain us through Termination. "Looking at the United States as the most powerful nation in the world who made us invisible, our job was to overcome that adversity and to once again be the strong nation of people that we knew was See REMEMBRANCES continued on page 9 n r a i 1 . - I ' - r f 4 i Vi ' Shonn Leno Run Leno Reyn Leno
