20
S moke S ignals
JULY 1, 2015
Tribal flags will fly in three district buildings
FLAG continued
from front page
The Tribe’s flag will now hang
next to the U.S. and Oregon flags at
the district’s schools for its approxi-
mately 30 percent Native American
student population to see.
The revision to the district’s flag
policy came after a June 17 meeting
held in Grand Ronde between Trib-
al Council, retiring Superintendent
Gus Forster and School Board
Chairman Craig Johnson and Vice
Chair Clinton Coblentz.
“This is important to have gotten
this far,” said Leno, who was joined
at the meeting by fellow Tribal
Council members Toby McClary,
Tonya Gleason-Shepek and Jon A.
George.
The issue of the Tribal flag was
presented as policy INDB – flag
displays and salutes – under deci-
sion items.
“You have two policies before you.
One is the original policy and the
second policy kind of reflects the
discussion that we had with Tribal
Council out there,” said Forster.
“We came back and changed the
original policy and put some ad-
ditional language in there. So you
have two policies before you and
basically you have three different
choices – you can vote down the
policy, you can adopt the policy
that was originally in your packet
or you can adopt the policy that
was handed out tonight with the
additional language.”
The board moved to accept the re-
vised policy with the additional lan-
guage and it passed unanimously.
The next item was consideration
of the original request made by
Grand Ronde Tribal member An-
gela Fasana, who is a Willamina
High School graduate and parent of
a current Willamina student.
Fasana’s original request was
inspired by her visit to Pendleton,
where she saw the Umatilla Trib-
Photo by Michelle Alaimo
Willamina School Board Chairman Craig Johnson looks over the proposed
policy concerning hanging flags other than the Oregon and U.S. flags in the
school gym during a board meeting on Tuesday, June 23. The board approved
the policy and a request to hang a Grand Ronde Tribal flag in the gym.
al flag hanging in the high school
gym. She sent an e-mail to Forster,
requesting that the school district
hang the Grand Ronde Tribal flag
since about a third of district stu-
dents identify as Native American.
Forster placed it on the School
Board’s April agenda, but it was
pulled from the “action item” list
by Johnson, who suggested the
Tribe pay $25,000 to hang the flag
for five years.
At a tense May School Board
meeting attended by more than
100 people, Tribal and community
members were allotted slightly
more than 40 minutes to testify
regarding Fasana’s request. No one
spoke in opposition to hanging the
Tribal flag, but the School Board
did not comment or take action on
the proposal.
The ensuing controversy prompt-
ed Fasana, who had been the Tribal
liaison to the School Board for
eight years, to mount a last-minute
write-in campaign for School Board
that received more than 40 votes in
the May 19 election.
Johnson said before the board
voted on the Tribal request that
he wanted to thank Tribal Council
members for hosting the meeting he
attended in Grand Ronde.
“I want to thank the Tribal Coun-
cil and Steve Bobb for having us
come out there and have a roundta-
ble, and try and kind of talk about
things,” said Johnson. “We got some
things figured out and now we can
move forward, and I just wanted to
thank all of you.”
The board then moved to accept
Fasana’s request and passed it
unanimously.
Board member Dan Heidt, in his
last meeting on the School Board,
said he was concerned that Fasana
was not a sovereign nation and that
the policy’s new language stated
that the request must come from a
sovereign nation.
“No offense to Angela, but she
isn’t a sovereign nation,” said
Heidt.
Johnson said the request “maybe
should have been reworded a bit – it
is actually coming from the Tribe.”
Leno, who is also Fasana’s father,
said the request was now officially
coming from the Grand Ronde Tribe
based on discussions between Tribal
Council and School Board members.
The board voted again and ap-
proved the request, now officially
from the Tribe, to hang the Grand
Ronde flag in the school gymnasium.
After the meeting, Forster said
he was glad this issue was over,
but that it didn’t distract him
from concentrating on classrooms
issues.
“It really didn’t bother me a bit,”
said Forster. “People kept asking
me what my opinion was on the
whole thing and I really don’t have
an opinion because it’s basically a
board issue. When we have some-
thing like this that in my opinion
does not directly impact the class-
room – I don’t spend a lot of time
with those things. My role is to
support what goes on in the class-
room. This was kind of an interest-
ing issue to deal with because I’ve
never had to deal with it in my 38
years of education. And so it was an
interesting one to go through and
develop that policy.”
Forster, who retired on June 30,
said the board was intent on devel-
oping a policy before voting on the
Tribal flag request.
“There was a lot of miscommu-
nication on both sides because the
board’s intent was to develop a
policy all along,” said Forster. “The
board did their job, which is what
they were going to do all along.
They did a good job of that.”
Forster said the Willamina School
District currently has three gyms
on campus and that a Grand Ronde
Tribal flag will be displayed in each
building. n
USDA Distribution
Honors and recognition
~Siletz~
July 1: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
July 2: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
July 3: HOLIDAY
July 6: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
July 7: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
~Salem~
Photo by Brent Merrill
Education Committee members David DeHart, right, and Tracey
Moreland offer congratulations to high school graduate Kayla Grijalva
as fellow high school graduates Jonathan Baker and Miguel Alvarado-
Anderson look on at the Tribe’s annual Graduation Celebration held
on Friday, June 19, in the Tribal gym. Ninety-six Tribal students from
kindergarten through college were honored for their educational
accomplishments at the annual celebration.
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