STATE
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
A9
Who is Chuck Sams?
His tribe and history put
him into context
with proper oversight and use, we
will begin to make ourselves whole
again.”
He also was appointed to vari-
ous committees and commissions
throughout the tribes, city and state.
One of his most recent appointments
before joining the Northwest Power
and Conservation Council was a spot
on the state’s Racial Justice Council.
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
MISSION — In an announcement
setting a date for the confi rmation
hearing for President Joe Biden’s
nominee for National Park Service
director, the Senate Committee on
Energy and Natural
Resources referred
to him as Charles F.
Sams III.
But to the people
he’s worked with
over several decades
in Oregon and on the
Chuck
Umatilla Indian Res-
Sams
ervation, he’s just
Chuck.
On Tuesday, Oct. 19, Sams was
scheduled to begin his public quest to
convince at least 50 senators to con-
fi rm him to the U.S. Department of
Interior position. If the Senate obliges,
Sams will become the fi rst American
Indian to hold the job in the service’s
105-year history.
While Sams, an enrolled mem-
ber of the Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation, built his
local reputation as a leader in tribal
government, he will be managing
an agency that operates on a much
larger scale. The CTUIR encom-
passes three tribes, a 172,000-acre
reservation, more than 3,000 mem-
bers and as recently as 2018 employed
nearly 1,800 people. In comparison, a
20,000-person workforce staff s the
park service, which spans 423 loca-
tions and 85 million acres.
But to those who grew up and
worked with Sams on the reservation,
his appointment to a top position in a
presidential administration came as
no surprise.
Sams climbs the ladder
CTUIR
Education
Director
Modesta Minthorn is only a few years
older than Sams and remembers him
as a young man. While his youth may
not have presaged a future in a presi-
dential administration, Minthorn said
he was known for being smart and
having leadership qualities.
As an adult, Sams started working
A historic appointment
Kathy Aney/East Oregonian fi le photo
Chuck Sams, then the communications director for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, gives
local high school students some insight on tribal history and beliefs in 2018. Sams now is President Joe Biden’s nominee
to direct the National Park Service.
for tribal government before leaving
to start a new career in environmental
nonprofi ts. His resume includes stints
at the Earth Conservation Corps, the
Community Energy Project and The
Trust for Public Land. When news
broke that Sams had been nominated
for the National Park Service position,
the latter sent out a statement celebrat-
ing his achievement.
After Sams decided to return
home in 2012, it was Deb Croswell
who made the decision to hire him
as the tribes’ communications direc-
tor. Croswell had known Sams long
enough that both had worked in a
tribal recreation program together as
teens.
The deputy executive director at
the time, Croswell said Sams had the
necessary qualities to be the public
voice of the tribes.
“He’s a good communicator, he’s
very articulate, very insightful (and)
thoughtful,” she said. “He’s a good
supervisor, he’s a good manager of
people and really cares about peo-
ple and their needs and wants to help
people learn and grow and do their
jobs well. So those are all things that
contributed to him being a good com-
munications director for the tribes.”
Those qualities seem to help Sams
climb the ladder of tribal government,
eventually earning him a promotion to
deputy executive director after Cros-
well moved over to Cayuse Holdings,
a tribal enterprise, and two stints as
interim executive director.
As a colleague, his former peers
described Sams as being collaborative
and well-prepared. As a supervisor,
CTUIR Finance Director Paul Rabb
was clear about his expectations while
remaining fun and approachable.
“He wasn’t this dictator of a boss,”
he said.
Rabb, who succeeded Sams tem-
porarily as the interim executive
director, said Sams would’ve been
in-line for the permanent position if
he had stayed.
But in a March interview, Sams
said he told the CTUIR Board of
Trustees he was looking at other
opportunities and wasn’t interested in
staying on long-term.
By then, Gov. Kate Brown had
already appointed him to the North-
west Power and Conservation Coun-
cil and wrote a letter to Biden rec-
ommending Sams for a much bigger
position.
The tribal spokesman
When “racial incidents” roiled
local schools, students from Pendle-
ton, Echo and Nixyaawii Commu-
nity School joined several other East-
ern Oregon schools in taking a trip
to the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute,
where Sams was one of the featured
speakers.
He spoke about the law that
required American Indians to notify
state government of their presence if
they were traveling through Salem, a
law that wasn’t struck from the books
until the early 2000s. He explained the
diff erence between Western and tribal
values. The former holds that a per-
son has unlimited wants and limited
resources while the latter holds that a
person has limited wants and unlim-
ited resources.
As the communications director
and later as interim executive direc-
tor, Sams was often tasked with being
the public face of the tribes and the
region. Sams was on-hand when the
CTUIR and several other Northwest
tribes buried The Ancient One, 9,000-
year old remains that were the sub-
ject of 20 years of scientifi c study and
legal challenges.
When Pendleton’s sister city, Min-
amisoma, Japan, wanted to welcome
Pendleton students back to the city
after a 2011 earthquake and nuclear
disaster, Sams was a part of the 2014
contingent the city sent to ensure it
was safe.
When the tribes started a land buy-
back program, Sams wrote an editorial
explaining how the Dawes Allotment
Act of 1887 led the reservation to be
subdivided and sold to white settlers.
“It seems strange that we have to
buy back our own land,” he wrote in
2014. “We did not create this prob-
lem. Our ancestors signed the Treaty
of 1855 in good faith, convinced that
exclusive use meant the land was ours
forever. Though it is true we were
dealt a poor hand by history, we can
make a new start. We now have a
chance to restore our land base, and
When the National Park Service
commissioned an article from histo-
rian Mark David Spence, he wanted
to start the run-up to the establish-
ment of the national park system
at 30,000 years ago when the land
belonged to America’s indigenous
peoples.
Spence, author of “Dispossessing
the Wilderness: Indian Removal and
the Making of the National Parks,”
said the federal government used a
mechanism similar to the one that
subdivided the Umatilla Indian Res-
ervation on land they intended to use
for national parks such as Yellow-
stone, which intersects with ceded
lands that belonged to the Crow, Sho-
shone-Bannock and Blackfeet tribes.
Those policies continue to rever-
berate today. While the government
will open federal land to tribes to
exercise their treaty rights, Spence
said national parks remain off -lim-
its to to tribes looking to engage in
the traditional hunting, fi shing and
gathering activities that have defi ned
their people for generations. While he
thinks communication has improved
between Indian Country and the park
service, Spence said Sams has an
opportunity to push it further because
of his own lived experiences.
“There is an undercurrent or maybe
even overcurrent right now, where …
a broader public is more amenable to
seeing native peoples as managers of
their own lands, as opposed to props
in a national park,” he said.
Back home, several of Sams’ for-
mer colleagues described the feeling
of pride that one of their own is now
in position to become the next park
director.
“It’s one of those things that we’re
going to talk about for generations,”
Minthorn said. “I can see (myself),
talking to grandkids, telling them,
‘Be more like that guy.’”
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