'First Oregonians' shares Native peoples' losses, recovery

November 25, 2007

ELINOR LANGER

The Oregonian

"Long ago," according to a Klamath legend, "Gmukampc the Creator walked across the Earth" making "the lakes, the forests, the . . . animals, the winged ones, and many other living things," including the first people.

"Some of the people lived and fished at Chiloquin where the river branches into two. . . . Over the years, [these] people began to forget the Creator's teachings; they became greedy. Building their dams higher and higher, they caught every fish traveling up the river [until] the people . . . upstream began to starve.

"Gmukampc . . . saw this. . . . As the people wailed . . . their vast piles of fish were turned to stone. Then, aiming his wrath at the people of the village, the Creator turned to stone all the fishermen and all the people processing fish along the riverbanks."

This Klamath teaching -- cited in "The First Oregonians," an expanded edition of a classic but out-of-print collection of essays about the state's Native Americans -- is one of only around 1,000, out of a probable 1 million such regional treasures, saved from oblivion by the common purpose of a teller and a listener somewhere along the line. The other 999,000 are gone -- like most of the roughly 200,000 people who generated them, the 60 to 70 languages in which they were spoken and the 200 or so separate communities guided by them.

Yet "The First Oregonians" is not only a record of loss: It is a report of recovery. As final as the decimation of the Native population once appeared, it was not the end of the story. In nine detailed chapters, supplemented by eight more general discussions, members of Oregon's nine federally recognized tribes and writers chosen by them recount the persistence of their people through wars, relocations, re-relocations and a succession of brutal and inconsistent federal policies, up to their current situation, in which, with a modicum of stability and resources now at their disposal, their culture has become, again, a sustaining force.

There are the Burns Paiute, 334 of them, with an active role in forest management in southeastern Oregon .

The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw are slowly reassembling tribal land and providing services such as medical and dental care to their 900 members.

The Coquille Tribe's cultural preservation work, including an annual conference called Changing Landscapes, has been honored by, among other places, Harvard University .

The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians, without a reservation, has used business and cultural activities to help preserve a sense of tribal identity for more than 150 years.

The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde has an immersion program in Chinook Wawa that has enabled a number of tribal members to fulfill their college requirements with that language.

The Klamath Tribes, also without a reservation, are a vital voice in land and water management in the Klamath region.

The Confederated Tribes of Siletz's ceremonial dance house, dedicated in 1996, was the first such traditional house built since they were burned by the local Indian agent in the 1870s.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation brought salmon back into the Umatilla Basin decades after extinction by a dam in 1914.

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs' stewardship of the precious Kah-Nee-Ta hot springs , once lost to them, has opened these waters and the surrounding areas to Natives and non-Natives alike.

Triumphs of survival, all -- and survival that makes the state of Oregon a richer place. Behind the controversial casinos, in many cases a major source of the funding on which these tribal recoveries rest, lie generations of committed men and women cherishing the cultures preserved for them by their ancestors and determined to preserve them for their descendants.

As for the later Oregonians: We should try to remember the complex whole of which these thriving remnants are only a small part. As the reissue of this valuable anthology makes plain, those days when a different story could be heard by every creek-side -- that was diversity.

Event: Contributors discuss "The First Oregonians" at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Powell's City of Books , 1005 W. Burnside St .

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