Post by Okwes on Dec 19, 2006 12:46:06 GMT -5
The land remembers Author wrote book so grandchildren would know history
Published: November 18. 2006 5:00AM PST
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What does a tribal elder look like?
In this case he's short with dark, close-cropped hair, appears a full
decade younger than his 76 years and he's wearing red sneakers, the kind
that a teenage basketball player might blow several months' allowance
on. I recognized him by the copy of his book, "When the River Ran
Wild!," on the table in front of him.
George W. Aguilar Sr. is working on his second cup of coffee in a booth
at the Deschutes Crossing Restaurant and is talking about a bear he saw
out in the woods the day before. Aguilar is soft- spoken, with that
off-beat cadence that suggests an ancient language coursing through his
veins.
"I about ran over it," he says, "a black bear."
"Not a grizzly?" I ask, smiling.
"No, I think they're gone."
He knows they're gone because he's out there most days thinning timber
stands on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. Experience tells him
they're gone, just like big pieces of his native culture.
Gone the way of the grizzly.
Wisdom of the past
But Aguilar, who lives on the reservation, is intent on revitalizing the
wisdom of his past.
"My first memory in life is seeing my grandfather on his deathbed," says
Aguilar.
Following the death of his father and mother, Aguilar was raised by his
grandmother in Wolford Canyon, a remote valley southwest of the town of
Warm Springs. In his book, Aguilar describes returning home years later.
"In a recent visit to Wolford Canyon, where I was brought up, there was
only silence," he writes. "The memories remain, but the echoes of the
canyon are calm. No children play in the springwater pools. No
sweathouse fires heat the rocks. No deer hides are soaking. No buckskin
tanning. No gardens. No wheat or hay growing. The fields are now teeming
with juniper trees where the golden heads of wheat once swayed to the
whispers of the wind."
Aguilar wrote "When the River Ran Wild!" for his grandchildren.
"They were taking the Chinookan language in school," he says. "I
thought, to complete their appreciation of their culture, they should
learn the history of the Chinookan people ... I had no idea this would
evolve into such a thing."
Aguilar is descended from Wasco Indians, who lived along the Columbia
River before they were relocated to the reservation along with the
Paiute and Warm Springs bands. The Wasco bands on the Columbia were the
easternmost group of Chinook-speaking Indians.
Aguilar's book - part history, part memoir and part something else
entirely - has been critically heralded and is a nominee for the Oregon
Book Award. Aguilar is in great demand for literary readings and talks.
It started as a lot of information bursting at the seams, a manuscript
in need of some skillful editing.
"I gave the manuscript to (noted poet and author) Jarold Ramsey," says
Aguilar. "It was a jumbled up mess, if that. He was really enthused with
it. He wanted to edit it. He did a terrific job. I had no idea how to
write. I had academic shortcomings. I was reluctant to show it to
anyone."
Aguilar attended the Warm Springs Indian boarding school and the Chemawa
boarding school before dropping out in eighth grade.
Ramsey, who edited the book along with Marianne Keddington-Lang of the
Oregon Historical Society, saw the potential early on.
"It was a jumbled up mess," Ramsey agreed. "But it was obvious that
there was real promise in it. I had not known George. I was teaching in
a program sponsored by the National Book Foundation at Warm Springs
School. There was this gentleman there looking at me very sternly.
Afterward, we talked about my writing and I picked up on what he was
trying to do, to preserve the traditions of the Kiksht-speaking
Chinookan people. The book is his, every word in it. I did help him with
matters of syntax and grammar and matters of documentation."
Grounded in the oral tradition, Aguilar found the project challenging,
both in organizing the large amount of information he'd dug up and in
getting it down on paper.
"He still calls paragraphs white man's boxes," says Ramsey.
When Ramsey initially saw Aguilar's first draft, "he had already done a
lot of first-rate scholarship. He made himself an expert. He's a natural
scholar. And he's ruthless in the way he runs things down."
"When the River Ran Wild!" began as a book about Indian names and how
they were passed along over time. He spent countless hours tracking down
information through the Tribal Statistics Department and the Bureau of
Indian Affairs Realty Department, where he gathered every allotment
number on the reservation, culled from the 1886 census, and the Indian
names and tribal affiliations that went with them.
But "When the River Ran Wild!" is far from a boring recitation of facts.
"It's hard to categorize," says Aguilar. "It's memoir, it's history,
it's a how-to manual. How to tan a hide. It's a dietary book. It's
old-time customs. One reviewer says it's almost a spiritual document
because it revives the culture."
Traditions
Names are a launching point because they are crucial to the tradition.
"The giving of the white man's names shattered the civilization of the
American Indian, specifically the lower and coastal Chinookans," Aguilar
told the Oregon Historical Quarterly in a 2005 interview.
The 1871 Grant Peace Policy promoted assimilation of Indians by quashing
native customs and language, according to Aguilar.
Aguilar was born Feb. 22, 1930 in The Dalles to Estanislau Aguilar, who
was from the Philippines, and Evelyn Polk, a Wasco Indian of the
Chinookan nation. His father drowned in the spring of 1931 in a fishing
accident on the Columbia River; his mother died shortly after. It was
then the young Aguilar moved to remote Wolford Canyon to live with his
grandparents.
Aguilar has served in the U.S. Army and has worked as a field laborer,
timber faller, carpenter, auto mechanic, blackjack dealer, construction
manager for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and tribal
fisherman.
He recalls the latter occupation - fisherman at Celilo Falls before it
was wiped out by The Dalles Dam in the mid-1950s.
"I participated in some of the fisheries," he says. "To me, it was
adventurous. (And) it was a social gathering."
Aguilar speaks of the drinking and the gambling that went on there, as
well as the serious harvest of salmon.
"To the sports fisherman, steelhead is the prince," says Aguilar. "(But)
steelhead was a sort of undesired species to us. We were after chinook
and 'blueback,' or sockeye."
This day, Aguilar stands by the Deschutes River near the Warm Springs
Bridge pointing out plants and their various uses. And he tells me where
the steelhead lay up before ascending monkeyike Creek.
"I am reminded of the stories of the bountiful salmon runs that once
existed on the Wimal, the Columbia River," Aguilar writes in "When the
River Ran Wild!" "The deafening and echoing roar of Celilo Falls has
long been silenced. Fishing stations at the dangerous Cascade Falls, the
Spearfish area of the Wishxam, and the untamed, thrashing, wild
boulder-spitting of Coyote's Fishing Place (Five Mile Rapids) has been
drowned forever. The soul of the Columbia River is languishing from the
dead and chemically polluted waters caused by modern technology and the
salmon-murdering dams. Canneries in the late 1800s dumped offal into the
pristine wild river that Lewis and Clark described in 1805 and 1806.
Westerly winds respond by kicking up whitecaps in an attempt to breathe
life into the easygoing and lifeless water, but to no avail."
It's clear Aguilar has done his homework. But his passion for his people
and their history often bubbles to the surface.
"When he comes in to chat or ask for something in the archives, he just
has so much knowledge," says Carol Leone, executive director of the The
Museum at Warm Springs. "It's a gift. We just kind of all stop what
we're doing and listen."
Rosalind Sampson, the museum's education coordinator and a tribal
member, also values Aguilar's periodic visits.
"He's someone who's still with us today," she says. "He's passing on
that information. I'm sure that people in the outside world would ask
for a fee. He doesn't. I see him as a real asset."
Some more conservative tribal members have bristled at Aguilar's
inclusion of medicinal and ceremonial traditions in the book for all to
see.
"There's a lot of information that hasn't been shared before," noted
tribal member Myra Johnson. "We had kept a lot of these things to
ourselves. But we need to teach our people first, before other people
learn it."
Aguilar says any criticism he's heard, runs off his back.
"I'm a modernized Indian," he says, smiling.
But some things, such as a description of the Chinookan war dance,
didn't make it into the book.
"My aunt thought it was a scandalous act to portray how it is done," he
says. "I'm probably the only one who knows how it's done. It isn't in
there."
But many customs and beliefs of the Kiksht-speaking Eastern Chinookan
people are. A legion of readers and Aguilar's extended family appreciate
that.
"I get into some of his legends and stories," says his grandson Joseph
Aguilar, 23. "It's pretty interesting. He mainly wrote the book for our
family. I'm proud of him."
Published: November 18. 2006 5:00AM PST
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What does a tribal elder look like?
In this case he's short with dark, close-cropped hair, appears a full
decade younger than his 76 years and he's wearing red sneakers, the kind
that a teenage basketball player might blow several months' allowance
on. I recognized him by the copy of his book, "When the River Ran
Wild!," on the table in front of him.
George W. Aguilar Sr. is working on his second cup of coffee in a booth
at the Deschutes Crossing Restaurant and is talking about a bear he saw
out in the woods the day before. Aguilar is soft- spoken, with that
off-beat cadence that suggests an ancient language coursing through his
veins.
"I about ran over it," he says, "a black bear."
"Not a grizzly?" I ask, smiling.
"No, I think they're gone."
He knows they're gone because he's out there most days thinning timber
stands on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. Experience tells him
they're gone, just like big pieces of his native culture.
Gone the way of the grizzly.
Wisdom of the past
But Aguilar, who lives on the reservation, is intent on revitalizing the
wisdom of his past.
"My first memory in life is seeing my grandfather on his deathbed," says
Aguilar.
Following the death of his father and mother, Aguilar was raised by his
grandmother in Wolford Canyon, a remote valley southwest of the town of
Warm Springs. In his book, Aguilar describes returning home years later.
"In a recent visit to Wolford Canyon, where I was brought up, there was
only silence," he writes. "The memories remain, but the echoes of the
canyon are calm. No children play in the springwater pools. No
sweathouse fires heat the rocks. No deer hides are soaking. No buckskin
tanning. No gardens. No wheat or hay growing. The fields are now teeming
with juniper trees where the golden heads of wheat once swayed to the
whispers of the wind."
Aguilar wrote "When the River Ran Wild!" for his grandchildren.
"They were taking the Chinookan language in school," he says. "I
thought, to complete their appreciation of their culture, they should
learn the history of the Chinookan people ... I had no idea this would
evolve into such a thing."
Aguilar is descended from Wasco Indians, who lived along the Columbia
River before they were relocated to the reservation along with the
Paiute and Warm Springs bands. The Wasco bands on the Columbia were the
easternmost group of Chinook-speaking Indians.
Aguilar's book - part history, part memoir and part something else
entirely - has been critically heralded and is a nominee for the Oregon
Book Award. Aguilar is in great demand for literary readings and talks.
It started as a lot of information bursting at the seams, a manuscript
in need of some skillful editing.
"I gave the manuscript to (noted poet and author) Jarold Ramsey," says
Aguilar. "It was a jumbled up mess, if that. He was really enthused with
it. He wanted to edit it. He did a terrific job. I had no idea how to
write. I had academic shortcomings. I was reluctant to show it to
anyone."
Aguilar attended the Warm Springs Indian boarding school and the Chemawa
boarding school before dropping out in eighth grade.
Ramsey, who edited the book along with Marianne Keddington-Lang of the
Oregon Historical Society, saw the potential early on.
"It was a jumbled up mess," Ramsey agreed. "But it was obvious that
there was real promise in it. I had not known George. I was teaching in
a program sponsored by the National Book Foundation at Warm Springs
School. There was this gentleman there looking at me very sternly.
Afterward, we talked about my writing and I picked up on what he was
trying to do, to preserve the traditions of the Kiksht-speaking
Chinookan people. The book is his, every word in it. I did help him with
matters of syntax and grammar and matters of documentation."
Grounded in the oral tradition, Aguilar found the project challenging,
both in organizing the large amount of information he'd dug up and in
getting it down on paper.
"He still calls paragraphs white man's boxes," says Ramsey.
When Ramsey initially saw Aguilar's first draft, "he had already done a
lot of first-rate scholarship. He made himself an expert. He's a natural
scholar. And he's ruthless in the way he runs things down."
"When the River Ran Wild!" began as a book about Indian names and how
they were passed along over time. He spent countless hours tracking down
information through the Tribal Statistics Department and the Bureau of
Indian Affairs Realty Department, where he gathered every allotment
number on the reservation, culled from the 1886 census, and the Indian
names and tribal affiliations that went with them.
But "When the River Ran Wild!" is far from a boring recitation of facts.
"It's hard to categorize," says Aguilar. "It's memoir, it's history,
it's a how-to manual. How to tan a hide. It's a dietary book. It's
old-time customs. One reviewer says it's almost a spiritual document
because it revives the culture."
Traditions
Names are a launching point because they are crucial to the tradition.
"The giving of the white man's names shattered the civilization of the
American Indian, specifically the lower and coastal Chinookans," Aguilar
told the Oregon Historical Quarterly in a 2005 interview.
The 1871 Grant Peace Policy promoted assimilation of Indians by quashing
native customs and language, according to Aguilar.
Aguilar was born Feb. 22, 1930 in The Dalles to Estanislau Aguilar, who
was from the Philippines, and Evelyn Polk, a Wasco Indian of the
Chinookan nation. His father drowned in the spring of 1931 in a fishing
accident on the Columbia River; his mother died shortly after. It was
then the young Aguilar moved to remote Wolford Canyon to live with his
grandparents.
Aguilar has served in the U.S. Army and has worked as a field laborer,
timber faller, carpenter, auto mechanic, blackjack dealer, construction
manager for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and tribal
fisherman.
He recalls the latter occupation - fisherman at Celilo Falls before it
was wiped out by The Dalles Dam in the mid-1950s.
"I participated in some of the fisheries," he says. "To me, it was
adventurous. (And) it was a social gathering."
Aguilar speaks of the drinking and the gambling that went on there, as
well as the serious harvest of salmon.
"To the sports fisherman, steelhead is the prince," says Aguilar. "(But)
steelhead was a sort of undesired species to us. We were after chinook
and 'blueback,' or sockeye."
This day, Aguilar stands by the Deschutes River near the Warm Springs
Bridge pointing out plants and their various uses. And he tells me where
the steelhead lay up before ascending monkeyike Creek.
"I am reminded of the stories of the bountiful salmon runs that once
existed on the Wimal, the Columbia River," Aguilar writes in "When the
River Ran Wild!" "The deafening and echoing roar of Celilo Falls has
long been silenced. Fishing stations at the dangerous Cascade Falls, the
Spearfish area of the Wishxam, and the untamed, thrashing, wild
boulder-spitting of Coyote's Fishing Place (Five Mile Rapids) has been
drowned forever. The soul of the Columbia River is languishing from the
dead and chemically polluted waters caused by modern technology and the
salmon-murdering dams. Canneries in the late 1800s dumped offal into the
pristine wild river that Lewis and Clark described in 1805 and 1806.
Westerly winds respond by kicking up whitecaps in an attempt to breathe
life into the easygoing and lifeless water, but to no avail."
It's clear Aguilar has done his homework. But his passion for his people
and their history often bubbles to the surface.
"When he comes in to chat or ask for something in the archives, he just
has so much knowledge," says Carol Leone, executive director of the The
Museum at Warm Springs. "It's a gift. We just kind of all stop what
we're doing and listen."
Rosalind Sampson, the museum's education coordinator and a tribal
member, also values Aguilar's periodic visits.
"He's someone who's still with us today," she says. "He's passing on
that information. I'm sure that people in the outside world would ask
for a fee. He doesn't. I see him as a real asset."
Some more conservative tribal members have bristled at Aguilar's
inclusion of medicinal and ceremonial traditions in the book for all to
see.
"There's a lot of information that hasn't been shared before," noted
tribal member Myra Johnson. "We had kept a lot of these things to
ourselves. But we need to teach our people first, before other people
learn it."
Aguilar says any criticism he's heard, runs off his back.
"I'm a modernized Indian," he says, smiling.
But some things, such as a description of the Chinookan war dance,
didn't make it into the book.
"My aunt thought it was a scandalous act to portray how it is done," he
says. "I'm probably the only one who knows how it's done. It isn't in
there."
But many customs and beliefs of the Kiksht-speaking Eastern Chinookan
people are. A legion of readers and Aguilar's extended family appreciate
that.
"I get into some of his legends and stories," says his grandson Joseph
Aguilar, 23. "It's pretty interesting. He mainly wrote the book for our
family. I'm proud of him."