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STATE
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Madras High starts language class
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Warm Springs tribes
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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
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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
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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
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ing to help Native American
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Madras High School, which
has more enrolled Native
American students than any
other Oregon high school by
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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-
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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-
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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-
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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
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<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
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Glaciers also help keep for-
ests cool and moist, helping to
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Late season melt is also
important for farmers who
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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
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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
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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
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The climate situation isn9t
much better this winter either.
Despite a series of powerful
winter storms in late December
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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
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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.=