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MyEagleNews.com STATE Wednesday, February 16, 2022 Madras High starts language class A9 Warm Springs tribes ¿JKWWRSUHVHUYH linguistic tradition By BRYCE DOLE The Bulletin MADRAS 4 Dallas Win- ishut sat hunched over a lap- top on a recent Thursday morning in a Madras High School computer room. Typ- ing one key at a time, he tried hard to remember the password he had made in the language of the Warm Springs Indians, Ichishkiin 4 a language at risk of being forgotten. <Maybe the computer can9t read it or something,= muttered the 61-year-old, one of three remaining Ichish- kiin instructors on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. Three students arrived, and he greeted them in the native language, speaking slowly. Behind Winishut was a ORQJSUROL¿FFDUHHURIWHDFK- ing Ichishkiin to countless Native American youths like his students, keeping the lan- guage alive despite the brutal punishment his parents and others faced for speaking it in boarding school decades ago. In front of him was the high VFKRRO¶V ¿UVW FODVV GHGLFDWHG solely to a tribal language. The class started Jan. 31, cre- ating a critical mode of pas- sage for a language imperiled by the recent deaths of elders who knew it best. <What I9ve always GUHDPHG VLQFH , ¿UVW VWDUWHG was getting speakers speak- ing the language,= said Win- ishut, a Madras High gradu- ate. <It9s a necessity. It9s built who we really are. If we lose that, we might as well be like everybody else and not have a reservation anymore.= The class has six students, all of whom come from Warm Springs. By semester9s end, Winishut hopes they will be able to speak short sen- tences. And he hopes his stu- dents will learn the culture and history of the language, preserving it for generations to come. The class marks another H൵RUW HGXFDWRUV DUH WDN- ing to help Native American VWXGHQWV ¿QG WKHLU YRLFH DW Madras High School, which has more enrolled Native American students than any other Oregon high school by IDU7KHVHH൵RUWVKDYHKHOSHG the school9s graduation rate for Native American students surge in recent years, from a dismal 39% in 2016 to 81% in 2018 to upwards of 95% in 2021, according to state data. On Thursday, students scribbled in their alpha- bet books. Among them was Aradonna Cochran, of Warm Springs. When she learned that the high school would have the course, she knew she wanted to take it. She wanted to understand tribal elders as they spoke at church, saying she <felt happy because they9d have my language.= Jim O’Connor/USGS The Collier Glacier on North Sister in 2021. C. Oregon glaciers nearly gone By MICHAEL KOHN The Bulletin Dean Guernsey/The Bulletin Dallas Winishut teaches Ichishkiin, a native language of the Warm Springs tribes, on Feb. 7, 2022, at Madras High School. Submitted Photo Jeferson County School District board chair Laurie Danzuka, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, speaks to students at Bridges Career and Technical High School in October. Language preserves culture The Ichishkiin class comes at a critical juncture for the Warm Springs tribes. The pandemic, which has disproportionately hospital- ized and killed Native Amer- icans, has cut short the lives of Warm Springs commu- QLW\PHPEHUVÀXHQWLQLQGLJ- enous languages. The tribes9 elder population has been hit especially hard, placing its traditions and culture at risk. Winishut said that of the six linguists who taught all three of the tribes9 lan- guages when he started in the 1990s, only one remains. Laurie Danzuka, the Jefferson County School District board chair who is a member of the Con- federated Tribes of Warm Springs, said the tribal community has lost three fluent language speak- ers since the pandemic started. <Most of our culture is oral history,= Danzuka said. <When we lose a lan- guage teacher or a culture keeper, we lose everything that goes along with that. None of that is recorded or set down.= Danzuka said that makes the class at Madras High even more important. <Now more than ever, through the pandemic, our culture and our traditions (are) really dependent on our language,= she said. <If our kids don9t understand that, they9re not going to be able to fully grasp our tra- ditions, our cultures, as we go forward.= History of language Winishut also plans to teach his students about the history of the tribes9 lan- guages 4 a history marked by a tragedy that looms in the memories of local tribal members whose fami- lies attended Warm Springs Agency Boarding School. Indigenous boarding schools were established across the U.S. starting in the 17th century. They operated by forcibly removing Native children from their fami- lies and culture in an attempt to assimilate them into the white, Christian man9s soci- ety. Strict English-only pol- icies meant that children caught speaking their native language at school were beaten and even locked away in rooms or attics for days without food or water. Thou- sands of those children, from schools across the United States, Canada and Oregon died. When Winishut9s parents were caught speaking Ichish- NLLQVFKRROVWD൵ZRXOGZDVK their mouths out with soap and force them to do ardu- ous chores, keeping them at the school and away from their homes over weekends, he said. Fearing punishment at the school, two of Danzu- ND¶V DXQWV ÀXHQW ODQJXDJH speakers who recently died, would meet in secret, prac- ticing their language so they wouldn9t forget. Butch David, a Warm Springs community liaison who works at Madras High School and coaches multiple sports there, said his dad also had the <Indian whipped out of him= in boarding school. David recalled that his dad never taught his family their native language. He doesn9t know precisely why, but assumes his father didn9t want them to face what he had. David said, <He didn9t want to force that on us.= But Winishut9s mother didn9t forget Ichishkiin. After growing up in a fos- ter home, Winishut said he reconnected with his mother in the 1970s and she taught him the language, alongside his four brothers and two sisters. In the late 1990s, Win- ishut taught a short indig- enous language class at Madras High. For that course, held once a week for 20 minutes, he taught three GL൵HUHQWODQJXDJHV+HVDLG <We were real limited.= Now, Winishut teaches just Ichishkiin at Madras High. The class meets four days a week for more than four hours total. 8Get them to speak9 Every morning, Winishut wakes up in his home around 6 a.m. before driving to the high school. And every morn- ing, he stops to pray, both for the good students and the bad. Soon he9ll retire, but he said he isn9t sure when. Sitting in his classroom, :LQLVKXWUHÀHFWHGRQWKHODQ- guage speakers who have recently died. One of them was Arl- ita Rhoan, the lead lan- guage instructor at the Warm Springs Culture & Her- itage Language Depart- ment. Rhoan co-authored the Northwest Indian Lan- guage Institute9s language benchmarks, providing guid- ance and testimonies on Sen- ate bills including one that endorsed elders as teachers in the state of Oregon. She died from COVID-19 last year. About a year before she died, Winishut stood at her bedside as she lay ill in the hospital. She leaned toward him and repeated what she had said to him so many times before: <She was tell- ing me, 8Get them to speak. Get them to speak.9= BEND 4 A succession of heat waves last summer that caused heat-related deaths, dried up crops and depleted snowpack may have also accel- erated the disappearance of Central Oregon glaciers. Five glaciers that were already in danger of melting out may have thinned to the point where they no longer qualify as glaciers, according to Anders Carlson, president of the Oregon Glacier Institute. The glaciers are part of a group of 13 glaciers that remain in the Central Oregon Cascades. Glaciers play an import- ant role in Central Oregon9s ecology, providing late-season snowmelt that keeps streams DQGULYHUVÀRZLQJ\HDUURXQG EHQH¿WLQJ ¿VK DQG ZLOGOLIH Glaciers also help keep for- ests cool and moist, helping to UHGXFHWKHWKUHDWRIZLOG¿UH Late season melt is also important for farmers who GHSHQGRQFRQVLVWHQWUXQR൵IRU their crops. Carlson said global warming and the loss of the glaciers will have dire conse- quences for Central Oregon9s agricultural communities. <If one wants to farm and ranch like the 1950s, one needs the atmosphere of the 1950s,= said Carlson. <That atmo- sphere will sustain glaciers and the waters that sustain econo- mies of Central Oregon.= Snow surveys conducted LQ WKH V LGHQWL¿HG glaciers in the Central Ore- gon Cascades. Precisely how many remain after last sum- mer9s heat wave is unclear and more research next summer is needed, said Carlson. <Almost three-fourths of Central Oregon9s glaciers could be stagnant or gone,= he said. The loss of ice from Cen- tral Oregon glaciers is not a recent phenomenon. Photo- graphic evidence shows that Collier Glacier on North Sister KDG DOUHDG\ UHWUHDWHG VLJQL¿- cantly between the 1920s and the 1950s. New photos show that the glacier retreat has continued unabated in recent years. Jim O9Connor, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist who visited the glacier last year, said the ice waning and the lake that once stood at the snout of the glacier are completely gone. <It is sad in many ways,= said O9Connor. <Last year was the driest I have ever seen it up there going back to 1991.= The weather conditions depleting the glaciers have been record-setting. Last year was the hottest on record in Oregon, with an average temperature of 67.7 degrees, according to Larry O9Neill, an associate profes- sor at Oregon State University9s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. Average temperatures in the 1900s were 5.5 degrees cooler than the sum- mer of 2021, he said. The warming temperatures are depleting glaciers elsewhere in the state too. Andrew Foun- tain, a professor of geography and geology at Portland State University, says all the glaciers in the Wallowas are now gone. The last remaining glacier, Benson Glacier, named after an early Oregon governor, has withered away in recent years. All that remains are some patches of ice less than the size RIDIRRWEDOO¿HOGVDLG)RXQWDLQ The climate situation isn9t much better this winter either. Despite a series of powerful winter storms in late December DQGHDUO\-DQXDU\ZKLFKEULHÀ\ sent Central Oregon snowpack well above average, snowpack is below average again. Snowpack has fallen to 96% of normal in the Upper Deschutes and Crooked River basin, according to data com- piled by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Precipi- tation for this water year is just 92% of normal. O9Neill worries that if the snowfall doesn9t pick up DQG WKH UHJLRQ ¿QLVKHV WKH year with average numbers, this summer9s water supply issues will be worse than in 2021, accelerating a multiyear drought. From a historical vantage point, the drought has been one for the ages. <Many of the drought indi- cators suggest the last two years have cumulatively been the worst drought for Central Oregon in recorded history,= said O9Neill. <That9s going back to 1895.= Carlson and other researchers are already plan- ning visits to the glaciers next summer for further evalua- tion. In particular, Carlson is most concerned about the fate of three glaciers on South Sis- ter (North Skinner, Skinner, and Carver). Two glaciers on Broken Top (Crook and Bend) are also at risk. <Some of them still have ice left, but they are just stag- nant,= said Carlson. <The car- cass of the glacier is melting away on the landscape.=