OPINION READER’S FORUM
Founded in 1906
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2021
A4
EDITOR’S DESK
The spirit of the holidays is alive and well in our community
Anyone who wonders if the local com-
munity is a giving place needs to look no
further than the recent Community Fellow-
ship Dinner at Hermiston High School.
The event, which can trace its roots
back to the 1980s, was once again opera-
tional this Thanksgiving, and the people
who made it possible through donations or
through giving their time deserve a great
deal of praise.
The event has persisted through the coro-
navirus pandemic, and its resilience is a tes-
tament to the volunteers who fl ock to help.
In 2020, the dinner furnished more
than 1,000 meals for Thanksgiving and for
Christmas and this year 1,000 pounds of
turkey were used.
The dinner should be — and really is —
a prototype of how a community can come
together to help. The key, of course, are the
donations and volunteers. This year dona-
tions helped fuel the event, but it is the vol-
unteers, ordinary people who just want
to lend a hand, that should resonate for
residents.
The donations this year included $9,000
from the Subaru Corporation and funds
from other concerned individuals. The
funds mean the event can plan as any left-
over money is ploughed back into future
dinners.
As a society, we spend a lot of time
assessing problems and then fi nding solu-
tions. Those problems — for better or worse
— tend to be the focus. Yet the community
dinner event shows what is possible when a
group of people get together and decide to
make a diff erence.
That’s not always an easy thing to accom-
PETERSON’S POINTS
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Hooray for a new brand
of athletes in Umatilla
I
n “Rocky IV,” Rocky Balboa
looked upon his
future opponent, the
U.S.S.R.’s Ivan Drago,
and thought of him as
a machine. Though the
Soviet powerhouse would
later prove himself to be a
mere mortal, his strength
and will gave others the
Erick
impression he was some- Peterson
thing beyond human. I
think many people like sports for this
reason; it gives us an opportunity to
see people transcend into something
higher.
Standing at the fi nish line of the
fi rst of hopefully many Thanksgiv-
ing Day 5K runs in Hermiston, last
Thursday, I got to witness such tran-
scendence, which reminded me of
the awesomeness of athletics. The
fi rst few athletes to complete the race
were a marvel. It was almost fright-
ening, seeing them pass me. Hearing
their feet stomp the ground, seeing the
focused determination in their eyes,
they seemed like something other than
human. One Drago after another fl ew
past, and if I had taken a step in their
way, I would have been annihilated
like the ill-fated Apollo Creed.
“If he dies, he dies,” Drago said of
Creed immediately after their match.
I bring all of this up to praise the
strength of a group of Umatilla High
School kids, including my stepson
Quin McClenahen, who will soon be
plish. We are all busy. We all have other pri-
orities. But when we decide to take a little
time to shift the focus to hep out each other
out good things happen.
Volunteering is, indeed, an important
piece of a healthy community. The reward
isn’t a monetary one but one of accomplish-
ment and the sense that helping our fellow
residents makes a real diff erence.
The people who organized, volunteered,
and donated to make the dinner possible
should be lauded. They helped the commu-
nity and that is a high honor.
able to call themselves participants in
a new sport at their school. The teen-
agers appeared in front of a recent
Umatilla School Board meeting
and advocated for their sport, called
esports, a.k.a electronic sports.
Esports refers to competitive
video game playing. Playing individ-
ually or in teams, esport participants
have gained an increasing amount of
legitimacy. Their events are now a
billion-dollar industry, and even the
International Olympic Committee has
taken notice. We may see esports in
the Olympics in 2028.
As a 46-year-old, I am somewhat
new to this, and I have struggled to
keep an open mind. As a child, I fi rst
played video games in a neighborhood
arcade. When my family traveled to
bigger towns, I got to play machines
in pizza restaurants and grocery stores.
It was not until I got my fi rst home
consoles that my playing took off . In
Atari 2600 games against my sister,
I battled her to be the Frogs N’ Flies
champion. Later, we would go head-
to-head in games on the Nintendo
Entertainment System and the Super
Nintendo.
My life, for much of my childhood,
revolved around gaming. I read gam-
ing magazines, and I discussed gam-
ing with friends. By the time I was
starting to notice competitive gam-
ing, though, I had already lost inter-
est. I stopped being a gamer toward
the end of high school, about the time
I stopped reading comic books. It was
just too childish, I thought.
Now that I look at what gam-
ing means to people, I am jealous. I
see the passion of the young Uma-
tilla High School students, and I wish
my own past love of gaming had been
acknowledged and legitimized. Maybe
then, I would not have felt guilty for
my interest, and I may have even pur-
sued it into adulthood.
Perhaps I would have even had
the courage of the UHS students who
delivered a presentation in front of
their school board. Those youngsters
showed a lot of courage as they advo-
cated for a sport that some other peo-
ple might disparage. And to their
credit, the school board approved the
eff orts of the young gamers.
A UHS team will soon be com-
peting in esports. In the near future,
we will have the opportunity to wit-
ness these kids as they display the
fortitude shown by athletes in other
sports. We will see the eye of the tiger
in their eyes. And, as Rocky looked
upon a murderous Drago, we will be
wondering if these young athletes are
machines.
In reality, though, they will be ath-
letes who are playing machines. And
I could not be prouder of them than I
am right now.
———
Erick Peterson is the editor and
senior reporter for the Hermiston
Herald.
What can I do about climate change?
We know the answers. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Buy local.
We are told we are personally responsible for stopping cli-
mate change. But lots of slogans and most of the empha-
sis on person responsibility as the way to address climate
change come from a campaign by large corporations that are
major polluters. Yes, we need to monitor and manage our
personal carbon footprint but that is not nearly enough. We
need to get governments and corporations to quickly stop
supporting fossil fuels if we are to reduce enough in time.
We need to vote for climate activist candidates for public
offi ce. Government leaders set the policies that lead to a liv-
able world. By ourselves we can’t end subsidies for the coal
industry. We can’t improve the electric grid to eff ectively
use renewable sources. We need public offi cials who will
lead us to do these things together.
We need to sign up, speak up for climate action. Many
groups work to stop climate change and mitigate the eff ects
of the change. By joining one or more organizations, you
get counted, and politicians and large corporations care
about those counts.
We need to speak up at all levels; with our friends, with
the readers of the local newspaper, with our state and federal
leaders. (Politicians and corporations count letters, too.) We
need to speak up when it is uncomfortable to do so. Under-
stand the issues, but don’t wait for perfect knowledge.
We need to share with those who are suff ering now
from climate change. Share with people whose homes were
destroyed by wildfi res or hurricanes. Share with people
whose wells have been contaminated by rising sea waters or
whose crops were reduced or destroyed by drought.
If not now, when? We are told that turning from burn-
ing fossil fuels would hurt people and cost too much money.
There are immediate wins for everyone from reducing
air pollution from burning fossil fuels. It’s estimated that
350,000 Americans die every year from air pollution alone.
The public health benefi ts of cleaner air would pay for the
costs of getting off fossil fuels. There would be transition
impacts for people whose livelihood is tied to fossil fuel
industries; those need to be addressed by short-term gov-
ernment programs. But in the not so very long run, the envi-
ronmental benefi t yields economic benefi ts too. The dam-
age from climate change and the costs of the transition away
from carbon only get bigger the longer we wait.
Lindsay Winsor
Milton-Freewater
COLUMN
From here to anywhere: Rethinking the Whitman lie
B
laine Harden’s book
plaining that if schools dis-
“Murder at the Mis-
cuss racism some nonmi-
nority children might
sion: A Frontier
Killing, Its Legacy of
feel “discomfort,” I
Lies, and the Taking
think of my own stu-
of the American West”
dent and the impact
is dedicated to “The
of that fi eld trip on
Tribes of the Colum-
his grade school
bia Plateau,” but it
years.
tells a story important
Harden’s book
Bette
for every American,
probes the mis-
especially those of us Husted
sionary story to its
who live in the Northwest.
uncomfortable roots. We
A student in the fi rst class locals know the story of
I taught at Blue Mountain
Marcus and Narcissa Whit-
Community College wrote
man — or think we do
about the impact of the
— and why some Cayuse
Whitman Mission story on
men attacked and killed the
his own life. On the school
Whitmans after 197 people
bus ride home from the tra-
who had taken the doctor’s
ditional fourth grade fi eld
medicine died (about half of
trip to the monument, he got their tribe at that time) and
in a fi ght with a non-Native
after it was clear that they
classmate who taunted him
were threatened with loss
about his Cayuse heritage.
of their own land. We know
Now the story told to vis- about the trial in Oregon
itors at the Whitman Mon-
City, the fi ve warriors who
ument has been modifi ed,
were hung; sacrifi ced, one
but when I hear people com- of them explained, to save
Printed on
recycled
newsprint
VOLUME 114 • NUMBER 47
Andrew Cutler | Publisher • acutler@eomediagroup.com • 541-278-2673
Erick Peterson | Editor • epeterson@eomediagroup.com • 541-564-4536
Audra Workman | Multi-Media consultant • aworkman@eastoregonian.com • 541-564-4538
Tammy Malgesini | Community Editor • community@eastoregonian.com • 541-564-4532
Sam Person | Page Designer • sperson@eomediagroup.com
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their people.
Some of us are aware of
the terrible price the Cayuse
had been paying and would
continue to pay for the deci-
sion of a few, the suff er-
ing infl icted by volunteers
and soldiers as they hunted
down anyone they could
fi nd. I’ll never forget the
poem Althea Huesties Wolf
read at First Draft describing
a grandmother’s memory
of children’s frozen bodies
hanging in brush where they
had been tossed.
But Harden’s research
taught me much about this
story that I hadn’t known.
Apparently there was so
much infi ghting among
these Calvinist missionar-
ies — Whitman and Spal-
ding and their supporters
— that the board decided
to end both missions. Whit-
man made an arduous solo
journey East to persuade
the board to reconsider, thus
saving his and Spalding’s
jobs.
However, the story taught
in history books for decades
was the one Spalding spent
his remaining years try-
ing to convince newspapers
and eventually Congress to
believe: that Whitman had
made that journey to save
America from the British.
Totally untrue, says
Harden — and inspired
mostly by Spalding’s intense
hatred of Catholics, against
whom the anti-immi-
grant feeling of his era was
directed. But popular “his-
tories” echoed this Manifest
Destiny version of what had
happened: Oliver W. Nix-
on’s book “How Whitman
Saved Oregon” was subti-
tled “A True Romance of
Patriotic Heroism, Chris-
tian Devotion, and Final
Martyrdom.”
Clearly, it was a history
told by the victors, and a
story with echoes of today’s
nativist views and fear of
the eff ects of truth. And
defi nitely a story of might
makes right: In 1848 an offi -
cial statement declared the
Cayuse land “forfeited by
them, and justly subject to
be occupied and held by
American citizens.”
Harden’s book, though,
ends on a happier note,
stressing not only survival
but the resurgence of the
contemporary Confeder-
ated Tribes of the Umatilla
Indian Reservation — stem-
ming from rights their lead-
ers preserved in the 1855
treaty and from an address
to Congress by President
Richard Nixon in the sum-
mer of 1970 “to create the
conditions for a new era in
which the Indian future is
determined by Indian acts
and Indian decisions.”
Harden focuses on the
work of tribal leaders whose
names we recognize — Wil-
liam and Antone Minthorn,
Les Minthorn, Bobbie Con-
ner, Judge Bill Johnson
— whose careful land use
planning and legal work pre-
pared the way for the recov-
ery of water and fi sh, for
Wildhorse Resort & Casino
and a working economy for
the Cayuse, Umatilla and
Walla Walla people.
What about Whitman
College, whose longest
serving president saved the
school from early bank-
ruptcy by spreading Spald-
ing’s patriotic lie? Daring to
trust students with the truth,
a 2017 exhibit asked them
to “think carefully about the
appropriateness of any mon-
ument to the Whitmans —
including the college itself.”
———
Bette Husted is a writer
and a student of tai chi and
the natural world. She lives
in Pendleton.
CORRECTIONS
length and for content.
It is the policy of the Hermiston Herald to correct errors as
soon as they are discovered. Incorrect information will be
corrected on Page 2A. Errors commited on the Opinion page
will be corrected on that page. Corrections also are noted in
the online versions of our stories.
Letters must be original and signed by the writer or writers.
Anonymous letters will not be printed. Writers should include
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Only the letter writer’s name and city of residence will be
published.
Please contact the editor at editor@hermistonherald.com
or call 541-278-2673 with issues about this policy or to report
errors.
OBITUARY POLICY
SUBMIT A LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The Hermiston Herald publishes paid obituaries; death
notices and information about services are published at no
charge. Obituaries can include small photos and, for veter-
ans, a fl ag symbol at no charge.
Letters Policy: Letters to the Editor is a forum for the
Hermiston Herald readers to express themselves on local,
state, national or world issues. Brevity is good, but longer
letters should be kept to 250 words.
No personal attacks; challenge the opinion, not the person.
The Hermiston Herald reserves the right to edit letters for
Obituaries and notices may be submitted online at herm-
istonherald.com/obituaryform, by email to obits@ hermis-
tonherald.com, placed via the funeral home or in person at
the Hermiston Herald or East Oregonian offi ces. For more
information, call 541-966-0818 or 800-522-0255, x221.