Indians Of Oregon Research Articles

“We should have held this in a circle”: White ignorance and answerability in outdoor education

This critical ethnography highlights an ongoing research partnership between two Indigenous studies scholars and their effort to prepare outdoor educators to support Indigenous students more effectively in their programs. After a listening session at the Oregon Indian Education Association annual conference where Indigenous educators and community members urged the Oregon State University Outdoor School 1 program to address how outdoor education reproduced stereotypes of Indigenous peoples and appropriated Indigenous knowledge systems, the authors developed and implemented a series of professional development workshops for outdoor educators in various regions throughout Oregon. The workshops sought to prepare outdoor educators to more effectively support Indigenous students in their classrooms and schools. This article documents the ways outdoor educators embraced or evaded those concepts and commitments and offers recommendations for outdoor education programs and professional development.

Indian Baskets of Northern California and Oregon by Ralph Shanks and Lisa Woo Shanks, editors

291 Reviews with cataloging Indigenous cultures on the other, compartmentalized the inherent flaws in the very program she carried out. She understood, for example, that Nez Perce allotments were not well suited for productive agriculture and would not provide the income for the allottees to pay taxes on their lands. Loyal to the system she helped envision, she advocated for minor changes and believed that “if it failed, the Indians themselves, still mired in the commitments to traditional ways of living and thinking, would bear the blame” (p. 305). The strength of Dividing the Reservation is the level of detail Tonkovich provides on Fletcher’s ideas and actions on allotment. The letters present Fletcher’s (mis)understanding of indigenous people’s viewpoints in striking and revealing ways. In Tonkovich’s 2012 work, Allotment Plot: Alice C. Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, and Nez Perce Survivance, she convincingly argues that the Nez Perce maintained their sovereignty through an adept understanding of allotment policy and cunning negotiation. Thus, combining her works together shows the individual agency of Indigenous and government actors during this period. Dividing the Reservation will interest researchers of the allotment period generally and Nez Perce reservation specifically. An accessible sourcebook, it will also serve teachers introducing their students to primary sources and the revelatory qualities found in analyzing personal correspondence. DAVID-PAUL B. HEDBERG Portland, Oregon INDIAN BASKETS OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA AND OREGON by Ralph Shanks and Lisa Woo Shanks, editors University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2015. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. 152 pages. $39.95, cloth. Indian Baskets of Northern California and Oregon is volume three in a series that includes Indian Baskets of Central California (2006) and California Indian Baskets (2010), the latter of which is a description of Native basketry traditions in the Golden State’s southern half. Like the previous titles, Indian Baskets of Northern California and Oregon presents an in-depth analysis of regional Native basketry. The text provides exhaustive commentary about the materials, techniques, and basket forms related to the creative expressions of a wide range of Indigenous people groups. The book is a boon for an array of audiences: basket artists, collectors and students of Native and craft arts, and regional historians among them. It is also a useful reference tool for libraries and museums. The degree of textual density, however, may prove off-putting for casual readers. In his introduction, Ralph Shanks pays homage to his mentor, the late Lawrence Dawson of the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dawson’s work is cited throughout the text, and he was undoubtedly a diligent and thoughtful researcher. Shanks cites the elder scholar’s study of regional twined basketry and his finding that the technique was shared by West Coast tribes, Bering Sea and Asian groups, and Japan’s Ainu people. Readers are told that Dawson “believed that the first baskets brought into North America were just two types of twined baskets,” and he concludes that “after its humble beginnings in Asia, twined basketry flowered in California and Oregon” (p. 6). Throughout the text, Shanks returns to that theory, and suggests that diverse Native weavers learned basket-making techniques as they migrated south through Oregon and into California. His assertions about the origins of Native North American peoples — consistently stated as facts — are surprising and unsettling in a text that often acknowledges cooperationandcollaborationwithNativebasket makers. If one embraces Shanks’s ideology, no credence can be given to Native peoples’ perspectives on their own origins. Readers whose interest may be limited to Oregon-made baskets will be disappointed in the treatment this text gives to the state’s Native basketry. Although it provides exhaustive discussion of baskets made by diverse Northern Cali- 292 OHQ vol. 118, no. 2 fornia people groups, Oregon basketry traditions — apart from those in the southwestern corner of the state and the Klamath and Modoc — are treated only in passing. Given the extended discussion of basket traditions that appeared elsewhere , the twining traditions of Wasco/Wishxam weavers, and the work of Native basket makers from the Willamette Valley and the central and northern Oregon Coast are all given short shrift. The Nez Perce and...

Enigma as a Literary Device in Native American Folklore: Jarold Ramsey’s Analysis of Two Clackamas Chinook Tales

This paper discusses Jarold Ramsey's classic article, The Wife Who Goes Out Like a Man, Comes Back as a Hero: The Art of Two Oregon Indian Narratives. It analyzes Ramsey's arguments against the backdrop of Alan Dundes's work in Native American folklore as well as more recent controversies in this field. Some scholars, such as Dundes, have attempted to vindicate Native American folklore against Eurocentric criticism by fitting it into Western literary molds. Ramsey, on the other hand, brings to light the distinctive aesthetic qualities of two tales from the Pacific Northwest by recognizing the ways in which these narratives often stray from the literary expectations of Western readers. In this respect, Ramsey's approach is preferable to that of Dundes, and it provides a model for the careful, aesthetically oriented analysis of the idiosyncratic features of indi- vidual folklore traditions.

Multilayered Loyalties: Oregon Indian Women as Citizens of the Land, Their Tribal Nations, and the United States

Because of the complex legal relationships between the U.S. government and sovereign Indian tribes, “citizenship” has multiple meanings for Native Americans who feel bound to their tribes, their ancestral land, and the United States. In order to protect their legal and historical rights to all three, Native Americans have advocated through the legislative system, and women have often taken the lead. Kay Reid describes the efforts of tribal leaders such as Delores Pigsley, Kathryn Harrison, N. Kathryn “Kat” Brigham, and many others in the tribal restoration process and the protection of tribal land and resources. Reid is a main contributor to the Institute for Tribal Government (PSU) “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” oral history project, and she uses excerpts from her interviews to illustrate the dedicated contributions Native American women have made to their intertwined communities.

Multilayered Loyalties: Oregon Indian Women as Citizens of the Land, Their Tribal Nations, and the United States

Multilayered Loyalties: Oregon Indian Women as Citizens of the Land, Their Tribal Nations, and the United States

The people are dancing again: the history of the Siletz tribe of western Oregon

The history of the Siletz is in many ways the history of all Indian tribes in America: a story of heartache, perseverance, survival, and revival. It began in a resource-rich homeland thousands of years ago and today finds a vibrant, modern community with a deeply held commitment to tradition. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians-twenty-seven tribes speaking at least ten languages-were brought together on the Oregon Coast through treaties with the federal government in 1853-55. For decades after, the Siletz people lost many traditional customs, saw their languages almost wiped out, and experienced poverty, killing diseases, and humiliation. Again and again, the federal government took great chunks of the magnificent, timber-rich tribal homeland, a reservation of 1.1 million acres reaching a full 100 miles north to south on the Oregon Coast. By 1956, the tribe had been terminated under the Western Oregon Indian Termination Act, selling off the remaining land, cutting off federal health and education benefits, and denying tribal status. Poverty worsened, and the sense of cultural loss deepened. The Siletz people refused to give in. In 1977, after years of work and appeals to Congress, they became the second tribe in the nation to have its federal status, its treaty rights, and its sovereignty restored. Hand-in-glove with this federal recognition of the tribe has come a recovery of some land--several hundred acres near Siletz and 9,000 acres of forest--and a profound cultural revival. This remarkable account, written by one of the nation's most respected experts in tribal law and history, is rich in Indian voices and grounded in extensive research that includes oral tradition and personal interviews. It is a book that not only provides a deep and beautifully written account of the history of the Siletz, but reaches beyond region and tribe to tell a story that will inform the way all of us think about the past. Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/user/UWashingtonPress#p/u/1/NEtAIGxp6pc

Oregon Indians: voices from two centuries

From first encounters in the late eighteenth century to modern tribal economies, this rich documentary history charts the major trends shaping the lives of Oregon Indians and how those Indians perceived their changing world.

Oregon Indians: Voices from Two Centuries by Stephen Dow Beckham

Oregon Indians: Voices from Two Centuries by Stephen Dow Beckham

Pitch Woman and Other Stories: Oral Traditions of Coquelle Thompson, Upper Coquille Athabaskan Indian by William Seaburg, Elizabeth D. Jacobs

people but, as the authors point out, Chinook knew that these things took time. "He said his honest recollections,written down, eventually could overthrow the Huntington Treaty.People remember the acts and works of theirheroes, and tribal storytellers keep the issues alive and vibrant in the minds of old and young alike. In thisway, today's disappointments can become the triumphs of thenext generation" (p. 52). Another ofmy favoritechapters deals with "The Skeptic: Tom Yallup, Indian Scientist." Yallup had a knack foranalytical acuteness that called into question thewisdom of scientific knowledge concerning salmon and salmon population enhancement long before the scientific community began to question the statusquo. Traditional knowledge concerning salmon runshas the advantage of generations of observation and intimateexperience.Yallup instinctively knew thatdams were bad, fish lad ders and other conveyanceswould neverwork, andwestern European science did not have the solutions needed to save theColumbia River salmon. Yallup knew, for example, that fish counting at Bonneville Dam was inaccurate. As early as 1950,he questioned the ethics and reliabilityoffish counting.He pointed out that fish counters often could not tellthedifference between a steelhead and a coho, thatfish fell back andwere counted twice,thatfishcounters counted shadows, and that no accurate counts could bemade, especially since countswere not done at night. Fiftyyears later, the scientific community discovered these same flaws via the scientific method. Only now arewe begin ning to recognize the important contributions traditional ecological knowledge canmake to thewestern scientifictradition. Space does not allow me to discuss other chapters in thisbook. Each has its merits and each is an interestingstory in itself. As in any book, a few shortcomings exist. Although discussed in a chapter called "the traders," David Sohappy certainlydeserves a chapter of his own. He is legendary in thehistory of the Columbia River salmon controversy,especially in the legal arena. Each chapter has a state ment on Indian law stated as a "Rule of Law," which tounfamiliar readersmight be taken as an actual canon of Indian law instead of the sarcastic statementon legal interpretationthat itactually is.There are a fewminor errors of factand theoccasional flippant comments are sometimes annoying.Despite these shortcom ings,the work ishighly recommended forthose interested in Indian law,fishing rights,and the Columbia River and is awelcome addition to the numerous works on these subjects. Daniel L. Boxberger WesternWashington University,Bellingham PITCH WOMAN ANDOTHER STORIES: ORALTRADITIONS OF COQUELLE THOMPSON, UPPER COQUILLE ATHABASKAN INDIAN by William Seaburg collected byElizabethD. Jacobs University ofNebraska Press, Lincoln, 2007. Illustrations, photographs, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. 309 pages. $39.95 cloth. In this book,William Seaburg presents both history and biographies of previous ethno linguists inOregon, as well as how his own work intersectedwith that of Elizabeth Derr Jacobs during the 1970s. Seaburg begins with a biographical sketch of Coquelle Thompson and then offers a narrative interview with Jacobs,providing details of her life with Mel ville Jacobs.Seaburg thenbegins analyzing the work of the Jacobses and JohnPeabody Har rington,all ofwhom worked with Thompson. Thereafter is supplied a standard ethnological "cultural sketch"of theCoquille Indians, dis cussions of various styles of presenting oral histories, and an analysis of problems with recording medium ? including examples from the interactionsbetween Harrington and Jack Marr (p. 31).One story,"Pitch Woman," is completely analyzed, and thebulk of thebook 490 OHQ vol. 108, no. 3 contains presentations of forty-six other stories fromThompson and otherNative storytellers, some never before published. This scholarly work is well placed within the canon ofwork on Oregon Indians,Northwest Coast ethnohistory,and Native oral histories ingeneral. Seaburg employs an easy stylethat avoids heavy scholarly jargonwhile using lin guistic terms appropriately in some sections. One issue tonote immediately is that most of the sources of the "cultural sketch" are over seventy years old. In addition, there are no references to contemporary Coquille Native interpretations of theirown cultureand society. Therefore, the sketch presented is dubiously accurate in a way similar tomany early ethno logical narratives,which were writtenwithout regard to theperspectives of the Native peoples they sought to represent. This book will become an essential volume and reference work to add to any library, per sonal or public, ofNorthwest Coast Indigenous anthropology or ethnohistory Tribal scholars will appreciate its references to...

Bringing the Indian to the Book (review)

Bringing Indians to the Book. By Albert Furtwangler. (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2005. Pp. xii, 226. Illustrations. Paper, $22.50.)In the past 30 years, few subfields of American history have been as vibrant as Indian-American relations on the frontier. From the ethnohistorical efforts such as James Axtell's innovative The Invasion Within and Anthony F.C. Wallace's Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, a study of Indian revival movements, to Richard White's influential The Middle Ground, to the more recent work of Borderlands historians, scholars of American history have increasingly blurred the cultural divide that once seemed to separate the various frontier communities. Other scholars, focusing on the power of images both to reflect and shape American attitudes toward Indians, have drawn on insights from literary and discourse theory to investigate antebellum racial ideologies, and, in the process, have reshaped the way in which historians think about the frontier. The title of Albert Furtwangler's Bringing Indians to the Book might imply a connection to this important scholarship, yet his work remains only tangentially linked. Bringing Indians to the Book is based on a series of lectures given in the Emil and Kathleen Sick Lecture-Book series in Western History, a fact that may explain why it reads as four distinct essays, only loosely connected by their general focus on exploration and missionary work in Oregon.Chapter 1, On the Authority of William Clark, focuses on a single episode: the arrival in St. Louis in 1831 of a small group of Oregon Indians who requested that teachers be sent to their people. Furtwangler uses this episode to explore a variety of issues: the agency of Indians in seeking religious and educational instruction, the impact of the periodical press in relating the story to readership far from the frontier, the relative accuracy of the various accounts of the visit, and above all, the enduring authority of Clark among Native Americans. Furtwangler's analysis wanders from topic to topic and largely fails to capture the broader significance of this event, particularly the most important question: How did the story of Indians approaching white Americans to request spiritual and educational guidance figure in the context of missionary ideology? Here was an account of Native Americans actually uttering the Macedonian cry-come over and help us-and, placed in the broader context of missionary ideology examined by the late William Hutcheson (who does not even appear in the bibliography), such a call would have resonated powerfully among supporters of frontier missions. Yet despite quoting repeatedly from missionary accounts of the meeting in St. Louis and even castigating mission supporters for exaggeration, Furtwangler stops short of connecting this episode to the broader missionary context, turning instead to explore the far less vital issue of William Clark's significance as an authoritative figure for both Indians and white Americans.Furtwangler's second chapter compares the writing in the journals of Lewis and Clark to missionary writings penned in the same geographic area roughly three decades later. Furtwangler explores the different perceptions of relatively transient and secular-minded explorers on the one hand and somewhat more settled, religiously minded missionaries on the other, a project with interesting possibilities. …

Lelooska: the life of a Northwest Coast artist

Don Smith, or Lelooska, (1933-1996) was well-known in the Pacific Northwest as a Native American artist and storyteller. Of 'mixed-blood' Cherokee heritage, he was adopted as an adult by the prestigious Kwakiutl Sewid clan and had relationships with elders from a wide range of tribal backgrounds. Initially producing curio items for sale to tourists and regalia for Oregon Indians, he emerged in the late 1950s as one of a handful of artists who proved critical in the renaissance of Northwest Coast Indian art. He also developed into a supreme performer and educator, staging shows of dances, songs, and storytelling. During the peak years from the 1970s to the early 1990s, the family shows with Lelooska as the centerpiece attracted as many as 30,000 people annually.In this book, historian and family friend Chris Friday shares and annotates interviews that he conducted with Lelooska between 1993 and 1996. In the process, he develops a portrait that is large enough to embrace the contradictory elements of Lelooska's life. What, he asks, is Native identity? What is 'authenticity' in art? How are we to understand the concept of pan-Indianism? What are the politics of Indian tribal adoption? By engaging these questions and the contradictions that produce them, Friday honors Lelooska's complexity and constructs Lelooska's life as a prism for viewing the shifting and historically indeterminate nature of twentieth-century Indian identities. Chris Friday is professor of history and director of the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies at Western Washington University.

Community Mental Health and Family Issues in Sociohistorical Context

A review of the pertinent literature and interviews of key informants provided the basis for an exploration into the historical antecedents of some of the mental health and family issues of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw (CTCLUS) Indians of Oregon. This project was originally commissioned by the CTCLUS community to be a chapter in their Tribal Plan, explaining the historical context of this tribe in relation to national American Indian events. Key historical events that have impacted this community include boarding schools, termination, the Dawes Act, and racism. Key mental health issues that have followed these events include substance, abuse, domestic violence, and a lack of parenting skills.

Land of Many Hands: Women in the American West.

Come along, come along--don't be alarmed, /Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm.--popular 1852 camp song From 1840 to 1910, the western region of the United States was the stage for dramatic and often tumultuous encounters between people of diverse cultural backgrounds. This was a period of feverish development of western lands, often with tragic consequences for native peoples as homesteaders encroached upon ancient lands and cultures. American women--Hispanic, African-American, Asian, and European whites--played a prominent role in the migration out West. They raised families, plowed land and planted corn, panned for gold and cleared forests for new homes, opened schools and ran boardinghouses and saloons, became ranchers, missionaries, journalists, peddlers, and trail guides. Women helped to build communities and push the boundaries of the United States to the Pacific. They came west as homesteaders and teachers, artists and journalists, prostitutes and outlaws, physicians and activists, domestics and nursemaids, and a myriad of other occupations. And wherever they settled they left an indelible mark on the land and on the nation's destiny. In Land of Many Hands, author Harriet Sigerman uncovers the fascinating stories of women in the American West using primary sources and documents (many never before published). Among the women featured are: Sarah Winnemucca, spokeswoman for the Piutes; women's rights activist Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon; Narcissa Whitman, missionary to the Cayuse Indians of Oregon; Alice Fletcher, pioneer anthropologist, an advocate for the Omaha and Nez Perce Indians; Mary Elizabeth Blair, an African-American real estate agent; journalists Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard of San Francisco and Charlotte Spears Bass of Los Angeles; Mary Josephine Welch (Chicago Joe), proprietor of the Red Light Saloon in Helena, Montana; Mary E. Lease, orator for the populist party; and Mrs. E. J. Guerin (Mountain Charley), a trail guide who made her living disguised as a man.

An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon.

An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon.

Bernard Malamud's Rediscovery of Women: The Impact of Virginia Woolf

Don't go in the rain, Willie, not in the rain. You will catch cold, the doctor will come, you will get pneumonia (Dubin's 68-69). Dubin walking in Venice thinks of death and his mother, an association that recurs throughout Malamud's fiction. He has just begun new biography of D. H. Lawrence after thinking very seriously of writing one instead of Virginia Woolf, whose intelligent imagination and fragile self had drawn him (12). One concludes after reading Dubin's Lives that, despite Quentin Bell's head start, the biographer should have stuck with his original choice. Exuberantly egotistical, Dubin, like many of Malamud's male protagonists, proves incapable of dealing with, much less loving, women.(1) Influenced, no doubt, by Bennington College undergraduates whom he had been teaching for more than two decades, as well as by his daughter, Malamud became increasingly sensitive the problem. Sometime during the five and half years of writing Dubin's Lives he decided devote an entire course Virginia Woolf. He did so in 1979, the year that novel appeared. More than any other novelist, she was filling void in his own experience. Just as Woolf regretted her lack of genuine contact with working-class men and women, so Malamud expressed at this time sense of separation from woman's mind that severely affected his ability draw female characters. Three of his last four published stories, Alma Redeemed, In Kew Gardens, and A Wig (all in The People and Uncollected Stories), attempt penetrate the minds of particular women. Wishing to know things he felt excluded from by virtue of gender and experience, according frequent summer colleague, Richard Elman, Malamud often questioned his students about their personal lives. At party he was apt, unflirtatiously, ask married woman how it felt be having an affair. Elman also recalls his comment that he admired the Russians but had learned more from Virginia Woolf. Let me suggest that in teaching this Woolf course Malamud intended more than preparation for In Kew Gardens, the experimental which synthesizes her life and work. As with Alma Redeemed, which, similarly, synthesizes the biography of Gustav Mahler's wife Alma, Malamud, looking beyond People, was on the verge of something radically new. If the two stories are not particularly accomplished, they reflect method inspired directly, I will argue, by exposure Virginia Woolf.(2) Applying the theory he termed autobiographical essence the lives of two creative women, Malamud seemed poised write, despite one denial, his own portrait of lady.(3) Although he did not consider the two works good enough for book, he was interested in how readers responded his new method. Testing the waters, in 1984 he submitted Alma Redeemed Commentary and few months later In Kew Gardens Partisan Review.(4) Both published stories resemble the unfinished sketches that Virginia Woolf wrote in planning for something more ambitious, one of which, Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street, Malamud assigned in his course. In Kew Gardens and Alma Redeemed compress into few pages the autobiographies of two talented women, one herself famous, the other married famous man. Malamud's 1983 notes written during sabbatical year at Stanford describe his intention: Start with scene in one life, explicate that as fiction, then go into the biographical element and develop further. You come out, or should, with an invention forward as story, limited but carrying the meaning of the life as short story (People xiv-xv). The biographical method merges with an earlier definition of the short as a way of indicating the complexity of life in few pages, producing the surprise and effect of profound knowledge in short time, condensation that he likens the effect of both drama and poem (Lasher 67). Whether it was baseball, Russian history, or Oregon Indian life, Malamud carefully researched the background for each novel. …

An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon

(1993). An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 17-18.

An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon

An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon

An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon

An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon

An arrow in the earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon

An arrow in the earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon

Infant Mortality on an Oregon Indian Reservation Is Almost Three Times Higher than the Overall U.S. Rate

The infant mortality rate on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon was 2.6 times higher than that of the overall US rate almost all of the excess mortality attributable to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The postneonatal mortality rate was 5 times that of the US rate in the 1980s. 21 rather than the expected 2 infants died of SIDS. A population of 3200 on the reservation is made up of the Warm Springs Wasco and Piaute Indian tribes. Their economic situation is relatively good but their health indicators are poor. Infant mortality due to infection congenital defects and other or unknown causes has declined precipitously since 1960. While the cause of SIDS is unknown factors associated with crib deaths in epidemiologic studies include low socioeconomic status young maternal age substance abuse smoking anemia prematurity low birth weight male infant and cold weather. The Warm Springs community has adopted postpartum visits to check home safety a child-abuse prevention program a health promotion office improved infant death surveillance and health awareness promotion.