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This Website is Dedicated to Alvin Alexander Cheyne January 10, 1921 - June 17, 2005 |
Today’s groundwater, tomorrow’s challenge
If we
let the salmon die, we will be next
By Bill Quaempts
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation
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American Indians fish at |
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Quaempts |
Catching
my first salmon on the
As I pondered what he was getting at, he said, "You must fight for
that fish because he can't fight for himself. If we let the salmon die
off, we will be next."
Those words have stuck in my heart since. That is how close we tribal
people who have lived here for more than a thousand generations are to
the salmon. Our creation stories link us with the salmon and other
animals that have provided for us these many centuries past.
Our ancestors knew in the early 1800s there were other people to the
east that eventually would make their way to our area. When Lewis and
Clark showed up, we looked at them as someone else with whom to trade.
Tribal members soon realized there were many more pioneers than they
imagined.
The summer of 1855 was a troubling time for the tribes. Not
understanding the strangers' language and trying to interpret what was
being proposed to them at the treaty council in the
The main provision our tribal chiefs wanted in the treaty was to secure
our right to hunt, fish and gather foods and medicine throughout the
region as we had done historically. Along with those rights, they wanted
to make sure those resources were protected so we could continue our
ways. So the tribes at the Walla Walla treaty grounds ceded millions of
acres of land in the Pacific Northwest to the United States and agreed
to reside on the reservations reserved by those tribal chiefs in the
treaty negotiations with Stevens and Palmer, and made sure we still had
that right to hunt, fish, dig roots and pick berries over our accustomed
lands.
Water, or "choosh" in our language, has always been the most
sacred of those resources the signers wanted to protect. In our first
foods ceremonies, dinners and other cultural events, drinking water
always starts the ceremony. Next we honor the other foods in a certain
order: Salmon, deer and elk, roots then berries. We finish with prayer
songs, and then drink the most precious resource, water, the giver of
life, again.
My involvement with tribal government these past years has made me
realize what my uncle meant years ago when he asked me to fight for that
salmon. Fighting in the political arena for those resources, especially
water, is so important for the continuation of our way of life.
I can't sit back and watch our salmon disappear or let our water become
so polluted we have to treat it to drink. As my elder and mentor, Louie
Dick, says frequently, "Cool, clean, clear water is what all of us
need to survive." How true.
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Bill Quaempts represents the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla
Indian Reservation on the
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Source: http://www.eastoregonian.info/main.asp?SectionID=13&Sub
SectionID=48&ArticleID=70931&TM=657.897