Essay about the process of research.
My 2009 dissertation Termination of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde: Community, Politics, Identity was completed at the Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon after about six years of work. For the first few years I was studying tribal history and finding sources of where to find records. I was writing drafts of subjects and … [Read more…]
For years now few new details about our allotments at the Grand Ronde tribe have come to light. Our allotment system, created for all tribes in the United States Under the Dawes Allotment in Severalty Act of 1887, rolled out over the course of two years. The tribal people at the reservation were already living … [Read more…]
This past year I have spent a fair amount of time researching subjects at Willamette University and Willamette Heritage Center. At the university their collections are very good for the local area and politics. Their Chemawa records are beyond most other archives in the area, especially their yearbook collection and photographs. I have contributed to … [Read more…]
Updated 4/16/2020 Loren Bommelyn wrote to tell me that there were some corrections needed to the Chronology. I welcomed this because this is the Tolowa’s history and not mine. He provided a detailed and Linguistically corrected series of edits to numerous of the events and corrected a few things about the essay. Loren also responds … [Read more…]
Tribal traditions, languages, ethnography are integral to research on the cultures of tribes. These are part the libraries of tribal knowledge that are somewhat preserves and lost over the past 200 or more years. Elders have stated that whenever an elder passes, a library is gone. This is especially true for people how are carriers … [Read more…]