Post by blackcrowheart on Oct 14, 2005 8:59:59 GMT -5
Sept. 22 -- Few people can tell
you where their world began, but the Ni-Mii-Puu can.
A big mound rises on a grassy slope above this Idaho town. Myth says the
mound covers the buried heart of a great monster that gobbled up all of the
animals in the world. Coyotes killed the monster, cut up his heart and, from
the blood, created the Ni-Mii-Puu, better known as the Nez Perce tribe.
The Heart of the Monster site lies just across U.S. 12 from the Lewis and
Clark Resort, an RV park with log cabins set back in the trees and a motel
office, gift shop and restaurant built to resemble a stockade. The
restaurant is the Sacajewea Café. The Lewis and Clark theme is ubiquitous in
this part of the country.
This morning, I check out of the resort, drive down the hill and cross the
bridge over the Clearwater River. A little farther downstream is a sprawling
sawmill built on the place where Lewis and Clark camped out for several
weeks in the spring of 1806 on their return trip to the United States.
Mountain passes were still blocked by snow, so the explorers had little
choice but to stay here in what they called their Long Camp and enjoy the
hospitality of the Nez Perce.
Now, as I drive into town, the Corps of Discovery II is situated at the city
park. I toured this traveling exhibit yesterday and heard yet again about
the meetings between Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery and the native
tribes who helped them on their trek to the ocean. Today, I have my own
meeting with the Indians.
I take a left at the tribal casino and pull up at the community hall where
the Nez Perce are sitting in council for three days. Inside on a basketball
court, chairs are lined up and an election is taking place. Any member of
the tribe who is 18 or older living on the reservation can take part in the
vote and the meeting. It is democracy in its purest form.
I find a seat on the bleachers and soon am talking to a big, handsome Indian
man with a long braid running down his back. He is Brooklyn Baptiste, a
member of the tribe's executive committee and a descendant of Twisted Hair,
the chief who welcomed and fed Lewis and Clark when they came out of the
mountains at Weippe Prairie.
David Horsey / P-I
Baptiste confirms what I have heard elsewhere: that the tribes along the
path of the expedition began with great skepticism, if not hostility, toward
the bicentennial event. After all, why celebrate the moment in history when
your ancestors' way of life began to unravel? But, when event organizers
assured the Indians they envisioned not a celebration but a commemoration,
many tribal members began to see an opportunity, a chance to tell their side
of the story.
"We can educate people," Baptiste tells me. "We don't have to kick over
tombstones. It's a window, not just for our country, but for the whole world
to see who contributed. Lewis and Clark couldn't have done it without us."
I ask Baptiste about his name and background. As with many American Indians,
it is a story of blending. The name Brooklyn came from a buddy of his
grandfather's who served with him in a tank regiment during World War II;
Baptiste comes from a French Canadian branch of the family tree. He is a
member of the Nez Perce tribe through his mother, but he is Umatilla by way
of his father. He tells me he's just been to the Pendleton Round-Up to visit
his Umatilla relations.
Small world -- I was there, too, at the start of my trip. The Round-Up is
the only rodeo in America that features Indians almost as prominently as
cowboys. The Indian horse relay -- young Indian men riding bareback and
switching mounts in midrace -- was more wild and exciting than the bull
riding in which cowboys mostly got dumped into the dirt about seven seconds
short of their full eight-second ride.
Behind the rodeo arena there was an Indian encampment where Brooklyn
Baptiste stayed. I had wandered through trying to find a woman named Roberta
Conner, better known as Bobbie. I finally located her teepee but she was in
Portland for the day. I left a note saying I hoped we would connect later.
When we finally did, it was at the $18.4 million Tamastslikt Cultural
Institute where she is director. The institute sits on a prairie just east
of Pendleton, a half mile past the tribal casino and just beyond the tribal
golf course. Inside is an impressive museum that presents the history of the
Confederated Tribes -- Umatilla, Walla Walla and Cayuse -- whose homeland
once covered most of southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon. In
1855, they were all moved away from the Columbia River, the spine of their
culture, and pushed together onto a reservation that, over time, kept
shrinking.
Bobbie Conner is a genial woman but she doesn't mince words. "The American
possession of the West meant dispossession of others," she told me.
Jefferson talked of the West as an empty canvas, but it required the
elimination of the people who already lived here to make it empty."
The Lewis and Clark expedition was the first incursion of the U.S.
government on the Columbia Plateau, she noted, "the first group of
emissaries from a young, ambitious country sent by a young, ambitious
president."
Unsurprisingly, Conner was not initially thrilled by the idea of throwing a
party in honor of Jefferson's men. But, as head of the cultural institute,
she soon began to see the bicentennial as an opportunity to be leveraged; a
chance to get the story told right, to remind the country of the solemn
obligations made when Indian lands were taken in exchange for a set of
treaty rights and to begin a national dialogue, not just about what happened
but what happens next.
It is too early for her to say if American Indian engagement with the
bicentennial has been a success, but certainly some good has come of it.
Indians are at the table when every bicentennial event is planned -- the
Corps of Discovery II exhibit is even being supervised by an American Indian
-- and the new connections made between scattered tribes can be used to
multiply Indian power in future battles.
There is one big thing Conner would like the rest of America to learn if
they are paying attention to the bicentennial. It is simply this: Indians
are still here -- not assimilated, not dying out. After struggling through a
long era of debility and dependence, Conner said, "We are finding a renewal
of our strength and independence. We have survived and we intend to be here
forever."
Back here in Kamiah, Allen Slickpoo has just been voted in as chairman of
the general council. He's a busy man but he gives me a few minutes of his
time.
Since the arrival of Lewis and Clark, the Nez Perce and the other tribes
have become "a betwixt and between people," he says, not part of mainstream
American society but not entirely comfortable in the confines of the
reservation. Still, there is resilience.
"We were not conquered," Slickpoo says with intensity. "We know where the
center of the Earth is, according to the teachings of our fathers, and we
never lost that."
The Nez Perce also are learning the ways of the modern world quite well.
That becomes clear when Rebecca Miles, the bright, young tribal chairwoman,
reports on the tribe's business. It's all about water rights, fish hatchery
management, challenges to tribal sovereignty, salmon recovery, wolf
management and lots of litigation -- lawsuits against developers, lawsuits
against the states and lawsuits in defense of despoiled nature. Those old
treaties in the hands of a new generation of smart, educated Native
Americans have become weapons as effective as arrows in defending the people
whose claim to this piece of the Earth predates Lewis and Clark by thousands
of years.
Coyote was once the trickster who outsmarted the Monster. Today, I think, he
s a lawyer.
David Horsey is a P-I editorial cartoonist and columnist and member of the
P-I Editorial Board. E-mail: davidhorsey@seattlepi.com
you where their world began, but the Ni-Mii-Puu can.
A big mound rises on a grassy slope above this Idaho town. Myth says the
mound covers the buried heart of a great monster that gobbled up all of the
animals in the world. Coyotes killed the monster, cut up his heart and, from
the blood, created the Ni-Mii-Puu, better known as the Nez Perce tribe.
The Heart of the Monster site lies just across U.S. 12 from the Lewis and
Clark Resort, an RV park with log cabins set back in the trees and a motel
office, gift shop and restaurant built to resemble a stockade. The
restaurant is the Sacajewea Café. The Lewis and Clark theme is ubiquitous in
this part of the country.
This morning, I check out of the resort, drive down the hill and cross the
bridge over the Clearwater River. A little farther downstream is a sprawling
sawmill built on the place where Lewis and Clark camped out for several
weeks in the spring of 1806 on their return trip to the United States.
Mountain passes were still blocked by snow, so the explorers had little
choice but to stay here in what they called their Long Camp and enjoy the
hospitality of the Nez Perce.
Now, as I drive into town, the Corps of Discovery II is situated at the city
park. I toured this traveling exhibit yesterday and heard yet again about
the meetings between Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery and the native
tribes who helped them on their trek to the ocean. Today, I have my own
meeting with the Indians.
I take a left at the tribal casino and pull up at the community hall where
the Nez Perce are sitting in council for three days. Inside on a basketball
court, chairs are lined up and an election is taking place. Any member of
the tribe who is 18 or older living on the reservation can take part in the
vote and the meeting. It is democracy in its purest form.
I find a seat on the bleachers and soon am talking to a big, handsome Indian
man with a long braid running down his back. He is Brooklyn Baptiste, a
member of the tribe's executive committee and a descendant of Twisted Hair,
the chief who welcomed and fed Lewis and Clark when they came out of the
mountains at Weippe Prairie.
David Horsey / P-I
Baptiste confirms what I have heard elsewhere: that the tribes along the
path of the expedition began with great skepticism, if not hostility, toward
the bicentennial event. After all, why celebrate the moment in history when
your ancestors' way of life began to unravel? But, when event organizers
assured the Indians they envisioned not a celebration but a commemoration,
many tribal members began to see an opportunity, a chance to tell their side
of the story.
"We can educate people," Baptiste tells me. "We don't have to kick over
tombstones. It's a window, not just for our country, but for the whole world
to see who contributed. Lewis and Clark couldn't have done it without us."
I ask Baptiste about his name and background. As with many American Indians,
it is a story of blending. The name Brooklyn came from a buddy of his
grandfather's who served with him in a tank regiment during World War II;
Baptiste comes from a French Canadian branch of the family tree. He is a
member of the Nez Perce tribe through his mother, but he is Umatilla by way
of his father. He tells me he's just been to the Pendleton Round-Up to visit
his Umatilla relations.
Small world -- I was there, too, at the start of my trip. The Round-Up is
the only rodeo in America that features Indians almost as prominently as
cowboys. The Indian horse relay -- young Indian men riding bareback and
switching mounts in midrace -- was more wild and exciting than the bull
riding in which cowboys mostly got dumped into the dirt about seven seconds
short of their full eight-second ride.
Behind the rodeo arena there was an Indian encampment where Brooklyn
Baptiste stayed. I had wandered through trying to find a woman named Roberta
Conner, better known as Bobbie. I finally located her teepee but she was in
Portland for the day. I left a note saying I hoped we would connect later.
When we finally did, it was at the $18.4 million Tamastslikt Cultural
Institute where she is director. The institute sits on a prairie just east
of Pendleton, a half mile past the tribal casino and just beyond the tribal
golf course. Inside is an impressive museum that presents the history of the
Confederated Tribes -- Umatilla, Walla Walla and Cayuse -- whose homeland
once covered most of southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon. In
1855, they were all moved away from the Columbia River, the spine of their
culture, and pushed together onto a reservation that, over time, kept
shrinking.
Bobbie Conner is a genial woman but she doesn't mince words. "The American
possession of the West meant dispossession of others," she told me.
Jefferson talked of the West as an empty canvas, but it required the
elimination of the people who already lived here to make it empty."
The Lewis and Clark expedition was the first incursion of the U.S.
government on the Columbia Plateau, she noted, "the first group of
emissaries from a young, ambitious country sent by a young, ambitious
president."
Unsurprisingly, Conner was not initially thrilled by the idea of throwing a
party in honor of Jefferson's men. But, as head of the cultural institute,
she soon began to see the bicentennial as an opportunity to be leveraged; a
chance to get the story told right, to remind the country of the solemn
obligations made when Indian lands were taken in exchange for a set of
treaty rights and to begin a national dialogue, not just about what happened
but what happens next.
It is too early for her to say if American Indian engagement with the
bicentennial has been a success, but certainly some good has come of it.
Indians are at the table when every bicentennial event is planned -- the
Corps of Discovery II exhibit is even being supervised by an American Indian
-- and the new connections made between scattered tribes can be used to
multiply Indian power in future battles.
There is one big thing Conner would like the rest of America to learn if
they are paying attention to the bicentennial. It is simply this: Indians
are still here -- not assimilated, not dying out. After struggling through a
long era of debility and dependence, Conner said, "We are finding a renewal
of our strength and independence. We have survived and we intend to be here
forever."
Back here in Kamiah, Allen Slickpoo has just been voted in as chairman of
the general council. He's a busy man but he gives me a few minutes of his
time.
Since the arrival of Lewis and Clark, the Nez Perce and the other tribes
have become "a betwixt and between people," he says, not part of mainstream
American society but not entirely comfortable in the confines of the
reservation. Still, there is resilience.
"We were not conquered," Slickpoo says with intensity. "We know where the
center of the Earth is, according to the teachings of our fathers, and we
never lost that."
The Nez Perce also are learning the ways of the modern world quite well.
That becomes clear when Rebecca Miles, the bright, young tribal chairwoman,
reports on the tribe's business. It's all about water rights, fish hatchery
management, challenges to tribal sovereignty, salmon recovery, wolf
management and lots of litigation -- lawsuits against developers, lawsuits
against the states and lawsuits in defense of despoiled nature. Those old
treaties in the hands of a new generation of smart, educated Native
Americans have become weapons as effective as arrows in defending the people
whose claim to this piece of the Earth predates Lewis and Clark by thousands
of years.
Coyote was once the trickster who outsmarted the Monster. Today, I think, he
s a lawyer.
David Horsey is a P-I editorial cartoonist and columnist and member of the
P-I Editorial Board. E-mail: davidhorsey@seattlepi.com