Refreshing Conversation

Too often these days our world, or community, is horribly divided and divisive. And not just by the actions of the present administration, but it seems everything and anything can be political and divisive. Is this the effect of social media, where people have written many lies and divisive statements, and they are taken seriously by half the population? Or is this the natural progression of our society, we have evolved and changed so much that we are deviating away from one another in large social groups, now seemingly unable to listen to or talk with one another? Whatever the reason (s) there are days when we experience reversals of this trend, when everyone is on the same wavelength, and we can have true and refreshing conversations.

For years, at least two decades, there has been animosity between the Warm Springs tribe and Grand Ronde tribe about fishing rights at Willamette Falls. Warm Springs people, and other aligned tribes, Umatilla, Yakima, Siletz and Cowlitz and Sometime Nez Perce all are claiming a right to fish for salmon and Lamprey at Willamette Falls. There are good reason they might claim this right. Many of their people are related to the original people who lived at the falls, the Clackamas and Clowewalla, and their immediate kin the Cascades people. Traditionally, people with close kinships, generally only separated by one or two generations, had rights through their family ties to fish at the falls during the Spring run in May each year. These same tribes have rights to fish at other locations on the Columbia as well, from Cascade rapids, to Celilo, to fishing platforms up the Columbia and Deschutes and other rivers.  The building of the Dams on the Columbia in the 20th century destroyed many fisheries. So, once the fisheries were destroyed, many people at the reservations changed their traditional fishery to Willamette Falls. The original tribes at Willamette Falls, previously mentioned, had been removed to Grand Ronde, and when Grand Ronde was restored as a tribe and reservation in the 1980s, the tribe began reasserting their rights in the homelands – including Willamette Falls. But the coalition of tribes, somewhat led by the Warm Springs claims, have issued opinions that suggest that Grand Ronde does not have a claim at the falls, and we are “expanding our territory” by making such a claim. This public denial of Grand Ronde claims, is likely an attempt to get revenge on the Grand Ronde tribe for their opposition to The Warm Springs Casino proposal to build a Casino at Cascade Locks, in an area that would have technically fallen into the ceded Lands of the Grand Ronde tribe. Grand Ronde was successful blocking this project and this forced Warm Springs to place their casino on the edge of their reservation, about an hour and half from Portland. Now that Grand Ronde is asserting greater rights at Willamette Falls, Warm Springs et al. has employed their relationships with PG&E to take over the Grand Ronde fishing area, a platform built at the falls, and would condemn and disallow fishing there. This case is still in court today.

But yesterday I had a great conversation about the long feud between Warm Springs and Grand Ronde. I was speaking with a Warm Springs elder, a self-described activist and member of a large and influential family. I won’t mention her name out of respect for our conversation and because I did not ask permission to use her name. She was very open and honest and honored me by noting that we were on Kalapuya land, and she was a guest here. She said the feud is a truly horrible thing, and spoke openly about how the tribes should go back to our traditional ways and have an open dialogue and decide together on a consensus direction for the two tribes. We spoke about how Warm Springs supported the restoration of Grand Ronde and how there are many families and kinships between the two tribes, and that now people at Warm Springs seems solidly set against Grand Ronde. That the casino fight was poorly planned, and that the political rollover effect into fishing politics is also bad for both tribes because that is what the federal government wants, the tribes always fighting with each other and not uniting as one against federal policies which continue to colonize us. And that the U.S. court system is not a good substitute for traditional Tribal diplomacy and negotiation: because we will never solve the problem until both tribes decide to sit down and hash out everything fairly and equally.  She was very clear that Warm Springs people should not be denying Grand Ronde people their birthright and vice versa. When I brought up a conversation I had with Warm Springs lawyers a decade ago she agreed that they never should have suggested we could not claim the Falls as our traditional lands, it being in the middle of the Willamette Valley Treaty ceded land claims, and that is a symptom of our colonized government systems. This all really began when the Tribes accepted the Indian Reorganization Act (1934?) in the 1930s. This has been exactly my opinion, and I have written of this several times in the past decade. The longer we fight with our fellow tribes, the less power we have overall. We bleed money into law firms and political campaigns, millions of dollars, and only create endless arguments based on colonial systems of governance.  The arguments bleed into other issues, and I have seen the results in decisions and public statements by all tribes in the region for the past 15 or more years. But this conversation also told me I was on the right track, that my thinking was not out of line, I am not alone, and that there are people out there that understand how deeply we all are colonized and assimilated and can imagine a way forward if we were to return to our traditional ways of intertribal diplomacy.

This could have been a divisive conversation. I have been involved in several over the years, Facebook communities are full of native groups and I have seen and addressed statements about Grand Ronde and our claims to fishing. I probably should not have. Sometimes they end in flames, sometimes people just stop posting. Some of these social media groups are strictly for people in my tribe, and yet I must fight back the urge to correct large errors in history, weekly. I think part of the problem, is the fact that few people really know the true history of the Tribes in the area. That even Native people, a good number of them, do not know the history of their tribe beyond a few basic details. Many/most of our people went through generations of assimilation, so it’s not hard to imagine why they would not know their history. They seem to have heard some history from elders, grandparents, perhaps tribal leaders, etc., but even they have not gotten into the details of what exactly happened during treaties, during removal, and on the reservation. And they really do not know the histories of the neighboring tribes. Because of this, much of the conversation about Tribal fishing rights is fueled by misinformation and supposition. And it does not stop there, in different ways the whole debate about tribal fishing rights and which tribes have what claims is being reported in the media. The reporting is only partially accurate according to the histories. Journalists are not historians and clearly not knowledgeable about neither Tribal history nor federal Indian laws. I have worked with several journalists on stories and even documentaries, and they normally need a sit-down and some background education before they can even begin to tell the story, The best journalists know this and accept my help with editing before they publish their pieces.

This is a general problem in society. For every generation alive today, some 99% of the people know little or nothing about Tribal history in the US. Our school systems have not taught it, and it’s irregularly offered at college, so unless people study Tribal history independently or pick up several books, they will never learn the truth. The public conversation, really regulated by media articles, then relies on the ignorance in society. People just do not know the laws, do not know key periods in Native history, even details from their own region, and so they have no basis for an opinion about which tribe has legitimate right in any area. Similarly, our judges and lawyers, BIA staff, and state employees, federal employees all generally to the tune of about 99% know little or nothing about Tribal history or law. I know this because I regularly offer DEI and history presentations to staff of various institutions, and this is what I have come to understand from the questions and responses in the sessions.

So, yes, it is refreshing to be able to have a real conversation with someone intimately connected with the same issues I am, and some of the same history, from a neighboring tribe, who does not parrot the animosity from their politicians.