S moke S ignals
MAY 1, 2017
15
Drones can gather vital information
DRONE continued
from front page
April 19, meeting.
The drone, which is now regis-
tered with the FAA, was purchased
for about $1,200 by the Cultural
Resources Department and will
be flown only by Drake and will
be housed in the Tribe’s Cultural
Resources Department.
The DJI Phantom 4 Quadcopter
drone will be used for Natural
Resources Department projects,
as well as the Cultural Resources
program.
Mell said he got the idea of using
a drone for information gathering
that could be useful to the Tribe
many years ago when the technolo-
gy was first being introduced to the
private market. He said the cost of
drones in the early days of the tech-
nology were as much as $80,000
and over the years the price has
decreased to about $20,000.
Even when the drones were in
the $20,000 range, Mell said he
knew they were out of the Tribe’s
price range.
Mell said he was attending a
conference of the North West Trib-
al GIS User Group in the state of
Washington when he heard more
about how Tribes were using drones
for information gathering on their
lands and in their usual and accus-
tomed areas.
Mell said the people at those
meetings had gone from laughing
at the thought of ever being able to
afford drones to seeing it actually
working. Mell said they were shown
what the drone could do.
“I was really impressed,” Mell
said. “We looked at what we need-
ed. Alex and I researched it. We
researched different software op-
Photo by Michelle Alaimo
Alex Drake puts the propellers on the drone as he prepares for a flight on
Friday, April 21.
tions and different drone options
and different applications that the
Tribe would have.
“We figured out by doing our re-
search that even with these little
hobby drones it can deliver the
same imagery that we are looking
for.”
Cultural Resources Department
Manager David Harrelson said he
loves that the Tribe is using a drone
to gather vital information.
“I get excited about the drone,”
Harrelson said. “Whether it’s fly-
ing timber stands or being able
to take localized digital elevation
modeling and much better map-
ping so that the detail will exist
from this drone or whether it’s
looking at vegetation patterns or
it’s looking at elevation models,
I’m excited to see how the drone
can be used.”
Harrelson said he is happy to
receive support from Mell, Drake
and the GIS program.
“The drone being used by GIS is
a really good fit because GIS is one
of our support programs here at
the Tribe that supports numerous
departments,” Harrelson said. “You
have this shared investment in a
drone that can be utilized for sur-
vey activity. When we buy these re-
sources that are able to be utilized
by multiple programs they have the
ability to pay for themselves rather
quickly.”
Drake said he is as excited as
Harrelson to get started and he has
had his remote drone pilot’s license
since October 2016. Private remote
drone pilot’s licenses only became
available in August 2016.
“It makes me feel good that I can
help out and provide maps for cul-
ture,” Drake said. “I’ll be providing
them with maps and we can also do
3-D models.”
Drake said the first test flight will
occur over the Governance Center
building. He said he will fly a test
pattern using an app downloaded
on to Drake’s cell phone.
“Drone Deploy” is a free app
Drake and Mell downloaded that
will take over the flight once it is
in position.
“We’re going to test it out here
at the Governance building and
we’re going to make a map of the
Governance building to see what
the software can do,” Drake said.
“The way I set up the mission in the
mission planner it basically tells
the drone to fly this grid pattern
and take pictures every so often to
overlap the photos.”
All the people involved in the
drone flight project want local
Tribal members to know that they
are only gathering information for
mapping purposes and all images
captured are straight down aerial
photographs.
“When we are taking images, the
camera is always pointing directly
down,” Mell said. “The images that
we are getting won’t show any faces
of people. We’re not interested in
that. All the pictures are straight
down and we stitch them together.
This is for mapping. It will make
life easier.”
Mell said he is proud of Drake for
stepping up, getting his license and
wanting to learn.
“He is the pilot in command now,”
Mell said. “Whenever we fly for the
Tribe and everything that we fly
will go through him.”
Drake said he wants to get start-
ed as soon as possible and put what
he learned to work for the Tribe.
He also said he wanted to thank
Mell for believing he was the right
person to become the Tribe’s first
officially FAA-licensed remote
drone pilot.
“I’m excited about it, too,” Drake
said. “Right now we’re just getting
our feet wet. There are so many
possibilities that will arise from
this.”
Harrelson said he loves the idea
of using new technology to help
understand the ancient past.
“A part of self-determination is
taking who we are and imprinting
who we are upon the environment
and the new experiences that come
forward,” Harrelson said. “That is
what is going to preserve us as a
people into the future.
“We have the ability to use the
drone to document cultural signif-
icance for cultural understanding
of place and that is significant. It is
through our lens and the way that
we look at the world so that’s what
we’re doing – we’re indigenizing
technology.” 
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