Closed Captions Audio Described

Lou Pitt Jr., Director of Government Affairs and Planning at Warm Springs, discusses Wasco and Warm Springs tribal territories, culture, and governance from pre-contact times through the present. He addresses the Doctrine of Discovery, the 1855 treaty, traditional land management, village locations along the Columbia River, and contemporary tribal sovereignty and land control.

Transcript

0:07 Well, good afternoon, everyone and welcome to the Tent of many voices. The Tent of many voices is part of the core of Discovery Two traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit. This is a national traveling exhibit. It's a multi-agency Federal exhibit with the National Park Service being the lead agency.
0:32 This exhibit has been traveling since January of 2003 and continues to travel through October of 2006 during the four years of the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. What we do here in the Tent of many Voices is we invite in a wide variety of presenters to share both different aspects of that Lewis and Clark expedition
0:56 and also to talk about the culture and history of these various American Indian nations that have been living here for thousands of years before the arrival of Lewis and Clark.
1:09 And this afternoon we have with us, Lou Pitt Junior who is director um uh I lost the title Government Affairs and Planning at the Warm Springs reservation. We know about four times. I still can't get it quite right. Director of Government Affairs and Planning at the Warm Springs reservation. He is was
1:33 Wasco on his father's side from the area. So we got the area from here down on the coast covered with that. His mother is from up river. She has culture and history, historical connections to a lot of the Columbia River basin. He's gonna talk about treating perspectives from the time of Jefferson. Jefferson to the modern era. Let's give him a warm welcome here to the Tent of many voices.
2:05 Uh Hello,
2:09 my Indian name is yellow. My mother gave me, um that uh does have a meaning it, that means I'm learning my lesson.
2:22 And uh so my parents are both gone. So I'm glad they're, I'm sure they're happy that I am learning my lesson. Um
2:33 I am uh my dad's people for the Wala Cascade people. He is enrolled in the Yakama Indian Nations, the contemporary nation that's located north of here. And his people were mainly located in a place called Cascade Logs. There were a whole lot of people or Cascades
2:56 and my mother's people were more of the warm springs people up river up towards the Saliva area. The uh where the Indian Nations edges were, you know, kind of move back and forth. But it was approximately about five go from here. You add on seven miles. It would be about uh 12 miles up and all the way up to sto um
3:20 is the boundary kind of an overlapping boundary. And the Wasco folks there on the other side went further up to a place called NG. And uh so you had these two totally different speaking folks right next to each other. Lewis and Clark when they were coming down river, uh were warned by their two
3:43 chiefs from the best. First about the rascals around the corner. And that's some of my folks.
3:52 So they said that they didn't want to come down with Lewis and Clark because they planned on killing them. They were a totally different people and they didn't understand the language of those Wasco people cause the kitsch language totally different than the II Scheme or the South African language, two very different cultures right next to each other.
4:14 But again, there was a lot of mix if you sat through a number of the presentations, Mr. George Aguilar did a tremendously wonderful job about talking about his family. They need just a wonderful blessing to have George. That's one of the premises that you, you really have to know who you are in Indian country. And one of the main clashes we have in America is
4:37 you look forward, you have dreams. It's what you're going to do. What education as the great equalizer will do for you. And that's good today we have that. It's wonderful for us, but a lot now for us as Indian people, it always will be is who our blood is and where it's from, where our blood is, where from.
4:58 And that dictates a lot about who we're gonna be and work within the tribe. I really resented that when I was growing up,
5:07 but I have seen the wiser of it as I've gotten old is that I've got a, basically, I've got a position within a tribe that is exactly just aligned with my being and my blood. Mr. Paul Kane was one of the, uh, artists that, uh, roamed around out here in the, in the west and, uh, did a depiction of wasco life down river from here.
5:29 That's when life was good fishing and hunting all day. The wife stayed home, or wives stayed home and took care of the kids and took care of the home, took care of the fish and got the fish ready for winter. Basically very two different roles within the family. Um
5:48 I guess what I want to do is try to jog your thinking about some of the things that we have as a country that we need to look towards this building over here is called the Discovery Center. Discovery. What is that? The Doctrine of Discovery is a very terrible doctrine that
6:10 ancient times used to take over lands like this. And we as a people that were here first didn't own it. We just occupied it didn't even he treat us as human beings. The good Christians, the Catholics in those days with God on their side saw fit that they were gonna take care
6:32 of the world and civilize the world through what God's orders were to them. So Columbus, they can keys the doors. We're all a part of this terrible legacy that uh uh I think as a country part of my speech is gonna say, how do we go beyond? I think some of the wrongs that we've done. My job is I tell people in my job,
6:57 let's go ahead. You can go ahead and feel guilty about the things that you have done. But my job today is I wanna criticize you and make you feel guilty about decisions you make about us today. And so that's why I'm out here trying to educate everyone about what is an Indian country looking for. What do we really want?
7:23 Life was good. Look at this. Is that what's wrong with this picture is that uh any India is not going to build their village right on a wild river like the Columbia, the river goes up, it goes down, it floods, it, it drops down. That village in a normal year would probably be washed out. But as a uh Paul, what's his name? Uh John Nick
7:46 did a drawing of this but it does show uh the plank houses. We had a difference of structures of grass houses. Uh We had the uh villages up above that were made out of two leaves down below here. We had structures, those who Clark said, hey, this is one of the, this is the first structure of house structure
8:08 that fit his definition because it was square uh what a house was. And um since he, since they left Illinois, so again, a lot of cultural bias in that statement. And uh so these were some of the plant houses, plant houses were built from here down. Some of them were subterranean houses that were built, uh depended on the chief.
8:32 Um we worried about the, the continued pushing into this area by our uh natural enemies. If you want to call them, that is uh the Shoshones, the banners, the Paiutes that you have to really be fortified and you want me to live on this side of the river. So in this area, most of our villages were over there.
8:55 This area right here is the Wasco area. The villages of the uh the CLU is up there. Uh was the uh uh twin, the Klas uh the whats up and there was actually two Wasco, there's a Wasco fishing area, I guess you had, when you say the word, you have to say it in the same sentence with,
9:19 with the fish right after it. And then you knew it was the upper fishing side of Wasco. And then on the other side, again, a number of other villages. Um And I'll show you here where we have villages up and down the river. And again, there is a number of villages up river, there's a famous white wake up. Um It was a village and it's one of the most famous archaeology sites because
9:44 there was so much information gained out of that site. 1855 the US army on their way out of town did two things. They destroyed the houses here because they didn't want people, the Indians to use them as fortifications against them in case the war broke out. And we joined in and then they destroyed, wake them up. This literally razed it right to the ground.
10:10 And we never rebuilt there because it just was uh kind of disheartening that they would do something almost just for fun. So a lot of conflict going on at the time. Here's a number another one of our differences. We had the, the great chief Elvis, he the chief of the orang streets. Now remember this is Wasco country. His people are up around the corner.
10:32 They have different tribes up there with different names. His tribes are the Kango, the Hawa right there in Clio. There was a pow wow this weekend and um the Halloween pow out something to have fun with and then teach the kids is the real point. And then the dock foo people and then more inland were the uh the Thai people
10:57 for the Wasco folks. Uh the contemporary name is called the Das Wasco and then you have the Dog River or the River Wasco's and then the people. So again, totally people. We I had one of my coworkers came in and told me, oh, they darn Wasco. She's complaining about the Wasco's today, about them being independent of each other.
11:20 They only group up whenever they aren't. We feel like it, it's mainly money and, uh, they're just, uh, elter skelter and I hated to tell her. But, yeah, that's kind of the way Wascos are all the time. And the Warm Springs folks are, they love to group up more, they're, they're more tribal than we. The, the Stan River was I got a mix of both. So I'm not quite sure who I am.
11:46 You have, um, a cycle of life here, our year again, like the chief, the standing right here says the new year starts on the, uh, the, the, uh, longest night, shortest day. And, uh, we have ceremonies throughout the year to thank the creator for the gifts that the creator has given us. And, uh, think about water,
12:11 the fish. Let's see, water. Choose the fish is, uh, uh, what is fish moos mosu? Yeah. Uh, deer, Yash, roots kit and uh, berries. We would, those are not river languages and it goes back to water. And that was are the ceremonies that we have done
12:36 since I was a baby boy. The same way carried over. And we thank the creator for the gifts. We say thank the creator for the first fish, the first kill in somebody's life. We celebrate somebody's wonderful life that they lived through. The burials that last ceremonies for four days.
12:56 I always wondered how does this work? And my dad died in a real terrible way. And if it wasn't for the Indian ways, I don't think I would have made it. It was really wonderful and it really was a therapy to me. I went through there, the elders talk and they teach and it was really a wonderful proceeding and a lot of it in our own languages. So throughout the year, we lived our lives
13:21 and remember one of the things that our people did very much. Again, another cultural clash with Americans were we shared properties, we shared lands, we took care of land for the benefit of the community. And then, you know, some things we started trading. If we took care of our home village first, then we could start thinking about those around us that helped us protect our integrity,
13:45 both militarily, economically, socially and culturally. And um so what you folks inter inter intervention invented to us was the idea that one person could own something and that their benefit could be just for them. And then also
14:07 that it could be squared up, chopped up and sold into little pieces for us that belong to the whole tribe that belonged to the whole group. And we took care of the again. But like let's say the roots areas, we took care of those for the benefit of the tribes. Some folks say it was waste. Um all of the uh American uh new colonial type of
14:31 country looked at our lands and our management of lands as wasteful. John Locke said is that uh we need to do it in a modern more technology way multiply the production 10 times 100 times, 1000 times. And uh so here we were, is that better or worse? We have,
14:56 we have cultural areas that have been productive and helped us for thousands and thousands of years and think about the dust bowl. It wasn't too long in the dust bowl. The greatest grasslands in the world were turned into dust.
15:13 George Washington, here's a very great example of where America was back in George Washington's time. George Washington said the gradual extension of our settlements will have certainly cause the savage as the wolf to retire. Both being beast of prey though they differ in shape part of the misspelling.
15:38 We were not agrarian. We weren't farmers, we weren't people that squared up the land. Most of us, some tribes there, we weren't people that wrote things down. We weren't people that taught things uh over, you know, in kind of the way that, uh was symbolized. People understood, we hunted, we were nomads and uh we were beasts.
16:03 And as the wolf, George Washington saying the wolf does survive very well in some areas, but only because the wolf has a lot of cunning and because there's areas for the wolf. Well, the Indians gonna have to do the same type of thing. Very hard statement to be made. But that's nevertheless, with those colonies that were gonna become States and the dream
16:29 and later the, the real myth builder, the real storyteller to Thomas Jefferson is going to be talking about the, the lands that aren't in the United States yet as a garden, a wonderful garden.
16:45 And, uh, oh, I didn't, I forgot to put the quote up here uh in the same era to leave them in possession of their country was to leave a country, uh leave the country in wilderness, wilderness again, equated to wild evil, a waste.
17:05 The doctrine of discovery is loud and clear. Discoverers have the ultimate Dominion over ending lands. This court case is a part of a a a three-part thing that Indian law you have to study. I'm not a lawyer, I'm a lady on that, but the ultimate Dominion, how could they? I can't understand the tremendous leap of uh looking at us as being
17:30 uh owners of the land for thousands of years to just become again subordinate to these powers. In this case, it would be uh I think the first case was like with England and then it actually became the United States. Uh the they have ultimate Dominion over us, our people in Rome on this land free for thousands of years. How can somebody say we didn't own it?
17:53 The creator gave us these lands. Did we have title yes, we controlled these areas here. If and when you came down river, like those who collected, they had to pay their toll to get through our country. They had to pay our people to get some help. When we traded, they had to pay our price. They didn't like it because modern Indians, they just, uh you know, these, these folks asked for real
18:17 high prices. Who do they think they are? We were used to trading with these real hard-nosed down river Indians and those other folks and then north and south, the tremendous uh uh mark here of trade, economic trade happening right in here, both east and west, north and south.
18:39 This is uh
18:42 George had this picture up uh a Wasco fella. Uh I have to look it up but Wasco fella we talked about the foreheads of the Wasco people, uh very proud people. Uh Our folks were rounded up and in 1855 is uh Phil Sheri
19:07 uh had a skirmish with our folks and we had nine folks that Phil Sheri executed down river at Cascade Locks. Che Che was one of them and some of our relatives. Uh There's a wonderful book that uh my relative Chuck Williams does um on the bridge of the Gods Mountain of Fire, Chuck's relative and he's a wonderful person. And uh he doesn't look like an India.
19:31 I remember when I first met him that we argued around about it until he knew people that I knew his family and,
19:39 and included them in a number of stories that I've heard too.
19:44 Uh Virginia Miller, she was a, the son or the daughter of a Chief Chenoweth who was murdered and she had her own version of her was executed. She had her own version of what happened in that uh Phil Sheridan encounter where our folks were. Uh There's another side to every story. He, he I
20:07 he is upriver uh tribal person of Walla Walla that uh pretty much uh had a, I think a lot of uh when it came to war time to achieve that war warrior function that he in essence was like a consultant. He advised tribes about how to win victories. A consultant. Can you understand that? That's amazing. But he was very good at the war.
20:32 Uh Kayak, kayak was the guy that got us into trouble down here at Cascade Lock. He was a war chief. One of the Yakima's probably most notable folks in the Winston Church hill of our uh Yakima people at the time. Uh a a genius in leadership, uh understood Indians, very well understood the Peter tribal politics.
20:55 This is your typical down river uh view down in this area. But the plank house was made out of cedar. Cedar is a has got this qualities is that if you get a log is that uh you can basically, the log would be split in boards and not all would do that is that uh, so cedar will, will slip into boards and is waterproof.
21:18 We didn't design our here to be totally waterproof. But remember what Lewis and Clark wind about down when they're on the coast, the rain, it never quits. And so welcome to the Oregon. Still the same way. We have the canoes with the different designs. The Chooka design here, a little fancier bow, those ornaments on there as they went down where we needed a bigger
21:42 uh bigger canoe. And they got fancier too because uh they also were a demonstration of wealth, canoes uh went up and down the river as they were traded. And there was one canoe that with some debate uh may not come because of this trading interchange from Canada. And uh so it, it gradually because it was such a unique canoe and so well done
22:07 is that uh the person uh uh did some good trading with Lewis and Clark and Lewis and Clark was a very uh real happy to get this really ornamental canoe and it was a good deal on, on their part,
22:21 the tremendous change of the place, the wild river as uh um George Aguilar talked about it uh for years served us very well. The river was just astonished and I'm 57 years old that I was just able as a young person to see what Clio looked like,
22:43 but it was, it wasn't just the fault it was a tremendous loss of this, this so unique, this narrowing channel where all of the Columbia River would basically focus into about a 50 yard pool or ga a tunnel almost. And the whole river went through there. And of course, the Indians were, I'm sure on the side making bets whether Lewis and Clark were gonna make it
23:07 to the other side because they never tried that because they saw people that would die and they did make it through. And so somebody had to pay up.
23:18 I just wanna talk about places. These are modern archaeology kind of result statements about where the the villages were all through the Cascade Locks area. And this is a shameless advertisement too for our casino location. Are there cascade people at the Bonneville Dam area. You bet your own scientists tell us that too.
23:43 Our stories say that you bet here we are. There were uh villages all over area and remember too, Lewis and Clark um spent a lot of time only on the river. They didn't know about the other nations. There were some tribes on the Washington side up the look at that river that they just didn't think it was a good thing to hang out all the time down the river. So they had
24:06 a large population of people that were away from the river about five or six miles, but that's close enough where they could access the river and come back and forth. Um Again, the river was very wild in those areas and uh tremendously uh productive place. Uh most of the villages were on the north side, but pretty much the same place, very rough to get around and had to go up. You have to go
24:31 on the bottom, but you couldn't go through the middle there. It's way too dangerous. Wonderful and exciting wild place up river, coming back up river, you can see where the Dells is, is uh the Dells today is right here. Banville Dam. Uh Dells Dam right there. See, Lila, here
24:54 is right on top. I've got those marked because I'm arguing around with the uh remaining hopefully a civil way with the Discovery Center about changing their name to maybe a, a more appropriate name of the villages that were in this area. So again, take a look, see if that is that all of them
25:16 for purposes. We have villages, friendly village is right there. That's where there was some clark dropped into the. Uh It's also a place called Bugs Beach or Windsurfers. I got involved. That's my job today. I go out there and I make sure listen, folks is that your recreation is wonderful. It's all that. But you're not gonna destroy these cultural resources. They're cultural resources to you,
25:39 but they're sacred resources to me. You better take it easy. So I was able to bluff them long enough to get tribal support to come in. And help. And we have, have a strip that goes right down the middle of the site where they can go and access their fish of their, their windsurfing sites. I do the same thing down at another place called Spring Creek where we control the windsurfers
26:01 to be more consistent in line with the, the uh the fishermen not getting the way of our fishermen. We have um Mama Lo islands. Lewis and Clark talked about uh the, I don't even know how to say it. Some seal. See, they are islands of the dead. Mama Lo means islands of the dead. There's another one right there. Uh uh Those are places where the Wasco
26:26 people murder their folks. The last thing those folks wanted was to be put in the ground. They got put in the vaults and that was one of the last things according to uh Mr. Williams has spoken said, talks about uh Chief Cheow, which was very concerned about uh being put into the ground that, that scared me more than getting shot. He wanted to be out on the open ground.
26:51 So Indian country, the Glasgow Win Club. Whats up. Uh What else is there? Uh These have a couple of real heavy duty names that uh that's the problem. How do we get some of these names because they're so difficult to say. Well, that's one of those things as a country we need to think about is that uh the real truth. The real,
27:16 I think there's some things that are so wonderful there that we have to just learn things to be easy. I think that's part of uh part of our problem. Life is too easy for us on some front. So here's the other Wasco, there's a Wasco right there and there's a Wasco up river which would be right about there. That's where that loco is. That's the fishing Wasco and all along there where those narrows were that uh
27:40 one made a lot of money off of the other folks is that uh there are villages along there because again, wonderful productive fishing site. Here's uh a modern, again view of archaeologists. I am gonna be talking probably somewhere down the river. I got a kick out of a large swings, the person that was here, it was all downriver to him when he was here. I don't know who
28:04 that was down river. This was down river and I got a kick out of one of those guys been lost. His uh These are, these are all kitsch speakers here. They're all the people that speak the language of the fells. That's where we are. Now, the cat cla plain speak would speak the same language, the kids club, uh the
28:30 Cat classics. We didn't get along with those folks all the time because you know who does? You know, you get along with your in-laws, you get along with your brother and your sister not all the time, but same language, same type of houses, a lot of same customs, a lot of same religions is that again, later in time when the the US government and their wisdom song, putting us
28:54 move over here and move this bunch over there. That reservation this over here to that reservation. Most of these folks came over here to Orang Springs. Some of them went over to yak, some of them went over to the uh clete and the Grand Rhone reservation. The chief the other day talked about two brothers, one enrolled in Yaka, one enrolled in Orange Springs and they were the same family.
29:20 So that's part of our challenge as to how do we work with folks now that our new reality is, is uh we get, we get more done with uh us working as a confederacy, more of a corporate approach. One time there was a skull that was found in the Dells. They were doing a sewer system right down just like they like this right down the middle of the street and they, boom, they hit something and they dug around it.
29:44 It was a native American skull because it had beans and buckskins along with it somehow or another. It ended up in Yakima the skull. So our archaeologist, he's Louie Louie, he calls me up and says we're gonna sue them. They violate 282 federal laws and about three state laws, we're not gonna sue our relatives, we invoke traditional law. I call them up to say, hey uncle,
30:09 um, hey uncle, uh I think uh we better complete the work on my brother and we need to bring them back on home here. We have the Bucks skins and we have the toys and our chief wants to, uh, you meet as soon as we can. Uh, what time have we got next week? Wednesday. We did too and uh,
30:30 we got it together under tribal traditional law and took care of that person. Buckskins and everything that's back. I don't know if you folks knew me back when I would drive up and down the river with, uh, my car full of tooling mats and buckskins and make sure this would happen to be ready. Both tracks, the orange streets and the wasco needed both of those. So we, the Indian law,
30:54 like some folks are talking about Indian law being dead Indian ways traditional to all what they call it. Upstreet. The Wasco is call it T me stumped, tidy,
31:04 stumped. Wow. Uh That's one of the easier Wasow words is that it's the authority that the, the land has towards us. The land has authority. Our way, we have authority to land, the land has authority over us. Uh You're gonna be, if you're gonna be one of those Lewis and Clark groupies and you're gonna go down river.
31:28 Is that, uh, there's some of the tribes down here, I'm working with uh the Hale Plats gentleman by the name of uh Dick B. These are his two tribes is that there, there's the killer books. They come up till the books these days to Allan, all the words that you hear. Y hills, all very much, very many American words. Um No, Mo the Mola
31:51 people pushed over here for, for a while until we got the numbers and we pushed them back. Does that give them rights over here? Well, we only know for sure, give them some relatives over there.
32:05 Here's another modern depiction again of another person. Look at that language group right there all the way to the coast, the Thai people, the T IO the docks coasts, the wires, the was coast again, the three tribe that they forget the uh dog river was coast. The Famas again, relatives, which is uh but again, how do we work this out?
32:28 Well, we got to talk to it but they have to know who they are down river. We know who we are and look at this 13 different bands of lions in the state of Oregon. How many people know that? Um We worked with a uh repatriation with the uh h and tribal folks at Lake A down here and by Lakeview there was
32:50 AAA burial that uh happened and then when they were trying to make things better for uh bucks, they unearthed this burial and I heard about it. Uh And I was coming down the elevator, the door open, there's a great big tall, uh, state historical preservation. Louie we didn't mean to do it. We didn't mean to do it. And who, who, who, what, what didn't you mean to do? We issued a permit for them down here but they didn't follow the permit. He said,
33:15 and so how did we go about doing that? Look at our reservation is way up here. Well, we have three tribes or streets, Wasco and Pau and the pilot folks haven't really broken themselves specifically about who the blood is on our reservation. They uh chose to try to work with you, their relatives down here. And one of our guides says, wait a minute, a council. We have 11 member council.
33:40 They took a gonna take a vote on this, but I don't think they have any rights. One of our people says, because they didn't sign the treaty down here in 1855. But the new tool that we have to help our own tribal folks is the tribal constitution said every tribal member will have an equal opportunity to the economic and all the services of the tribe. So all of our
34:04 high folks could access our attorney, they could access me. They wanted to use me to help, put a solution to this. And so we were able to get money to help protect the place. We are able to get the authority to help protect the place, you know, violators were cornered and taken care of. And that place I think today is being protected.
34:25 Way out of our area here, way out of this. Well, we don't care if we want to take care of business. We have to take care of business as in you, not as a kind of contemporary. Corporations
34:39 take a look at this. This, these are the lands that we gave to the United States. 10 million acres of large springs on roughly our reservation is roughly from that and to there is about 70 miles to the river. We have 650,000 acre reservation for Cascade Locks to 44 Blue Mountains, uh Little Creek and the
35:04 C river. 10 million acres we gave to the United States. The United States didn't give us anything. We gave up title to the United States in return for treaty rights treaty, right to fish. You hunt, you gather roots, we gather bets and pasture our stocks and it's a contract. Anything you don't give up
35:25 in negotiations you still have. So our way of life we preserve, well, count that 10 million acres plus the 12 million that the AA gave the, the, the eight or 9 million that the heat gave and the uh about 40 million acres at the first place at one time that first were very good to Lewis and Clark. Did that make any difference? Not at all.
35:48 They were in the way they were directly in the way gold was discovered. The reservation got smaller and smaller and smaller. Uh, Chief Joseph of land down here, I think they were a battle to protect that. Still happening. Uh So let's first people again, one way to tell how people are doing in Indian country is how much land do you have on your reservation that's under tribal control or ownership?
36:12 About 15% about 60% about 50% under tribal ownership or control. 99%. Yeah,
36:26 I, I hurt my shoulder that myself on the back and, well,
36:31 but again, we have different rights all through this area that we gave to the United States. And even outside of the unusual and accustom, we fish at LA Falls. Uh, Oregon City, we go down and, uh, uh, Tony Park's country over there and hey, Tony and, uh, uh, Tony has come back to us with the evidence of our people being there. Our folks still go there
36:55 and, uh, down here in Eugene, the same type of thing folks traded in. It's a fishing state, tremendous roots in this area, great hunting over here. And, uh, we have to partner with the Yatil us and we share certain areas and we go pick be up here in a place called Trout Lake. And, um, so how much have we given? I remember I was mad at somebody from Hood River that says,
37:21 well, on this economic venture, Cascade Locks what do we get out of this? From the Indians? And said, well, what perspective do you want to put it in? If you put it in the big one, everything you got in the way of land and water you got from us. So let's start there. Ok. So
37:37 this is what the reservation looks like. We have 650,000 acres given to us by the US government and said, no, no, no, no. We reserve exclusive title of that. If anybody gave it to us. In our opinion, our belief system says the creator gave that to us. We formalize that of legal structure and trust language and such with the US government because we weren't quite sure what was gonna happen.
38:02 We have roughly uh 70,000 acres of land that we put into wilder steps. All of our Bulgarian zones are protected because that's a great investment into the future. We're not sure how those systems work. So why mess with them? And we have uh uh 300,000 forest acres of forest with about 270,000. That's commercial.
38:26 We have a thing that uh on our reservation that I push is uh Governor Kitzhaber in the state of Oregon was bragging about the restoration of the uh Grand Grand Valley and river system and they out see it down here to restore them because they're not even broken. Our slogan is why they break it in the first place we take care of our reservation. We're very proud of it.
38:53 This is the 10 million acres we gave to the United States. I have marked that out myself. There's the county of Jefferson County. They have no authority on reservation. We have to work with 13 counties within the state of Oregon to protect our off reservation way of life. Go the other way around it. Again, here's the uh Cascades. The Bend is roughly right about there.
39:17 Um John Day, right about it right there. I guess it would be uh right in this area. We have a chairman, his name Sa Suppah. Well, I found an old document that had original spelling. It's so a Tsopp a soap and his people are from right in there and they, they mingled with the Umatilla. So um he's got a yak
39:40 in my life right now. So um he's got the bases covered in this area.
39:46 One point on the Louisiana purchase. This is some of that, not arrogance of uh not, you know, not Lewis and Clark, they have their own style of arrogance that according to uh Gilmore is that she felt like some of the uh Gilman uh Carolyn Gilman, she felt like some of that arrogance is being softened by the fact that they ever had an encounter to Indian folks all along the
40:11 way that they saw some things that were quite different, if not better. And that in a way that was peaceful and loving. And then Mr C were really quite uh kind of a bull in the China shop. They really didn't understand really a lot of the trading uh uh protocol that had to happen, especially when they came through here and they didn't have anything that we wanted when they came through here because we can get it all.
40:35 We already were trading with folks on the, you know, down at the Columbia River with the Chinese and with the other folks that came through the area that, that the Pacific Ocean was a highway of trading. People have come through there. Chinese um um Hawaiians, uh other folks coming into the area one point Louisiana purchase. Some people say that's the biggest real estate purchase that ever happened.
40:59 There wasn't one exchange of real estate in the Louisiana purchase. All it was was those big arrogant nations. The big boys club nation states were getting the pre-emptive right, the United States bought the pre-emptive right to then buy those lands from the rightful owners.
41:22 The many nations within the area took them 100 and some years either through war treaties or just simply taking the lands to then negotiate with the uh the land own. The same thing over here in Oregon is uh Oregon's territorial uh history is really something too. The first territorial court cases that I got on the name of George H Williams were,
41:45 it's amazing. I would never have believed this were slavery cases to free the black people. That was this guy black is, is Oregon. Was Oregon? Is it as a territory? Is, was it uh slaves to be free or not? There's a place called Rush B that was where black people would grew up to try to figure out the lay of the land,
42:08 how safe it was to either be free or not free because some places it wasn't to help people for a black person to be free. All there, Louisiana purchase. We had to buy the lands from the rightful owners after the purchase in 1803, Thomas Jefferson. This is kind of, I read about the um
42:31 Tony, you were talking about how many books have you read? I read about 15 books on Jefferson. I went to the Powell's bookstore. I figured there'd be a nice little section on Thomas Jefferson. No, they have three aisles on both sides, 12 ft high, three isles, nothing but Thomas Jefferson just. Wow. He wrote things down. He wrote these thoughts. He uh he had a debate with the Madison, the hand
42:56 some of those guys. And so this is a compilation again of uh
43:02 one of the uh writers I didn't bring it with me. But uh these writings, I believe that people are capable of self-government, I believe to decentralized small government units and a belief in the need for public deliberation and civic education through participation in politics. Is that a very so. Yeah. Yeah, it could be. Yeah. Some places it is. Some places we're falling far short
43:29 and I love this one. I got, we all have a little radical bloods. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing that's necessary in the political world that storms in the physical. And that was a statement that Thomas Jefferson and, you know, Matthews wrote about that and some of his more radical views of things. So Thomas Jefferson and remember what people said about Thomas Jackson. He never left
43:53 his home over there on the East Coast. He just stood over there, but he learned a lot and read a lot and uh he had a sense of feeling and he was a myth builder, a story builder that created a lot of dreams in our folks head about pushing West. The one of the guys has a story about what they talked about the Atlanta Valley.
44:16 They said the Atlanta Valley is such a productive place. That's where the pigs cook themselves.
44:27 Unfinished revolution. That's who we are. This is a part of that unfinished revolution. That's why I talk about greatness. Part of the challenge of us as Americans is needing to accept the diversity, not only of our country, but in country, we are a nation within a nation.
44:46 You can discriminate against me in two ways. One is, you don't like my color, my hair. My attitude. Uh That's too bad. You can't, you can't do anything with that or you can attack my form of government that I work with. So beware of high impact our tribal governments.
45:07 Here's the doubts.
45:09 1884. There's, uh, let me see if I can get back here. There's the Mill Creek, our treaty was signed right in here. Treaty of 1855. Wow. What place? Uh, uh, three lot. Right there. Wasco was right here. The village uh Picasso was right there. Uh What's up? So I don't know if it's on here. I think it's right here.
45:34 Oh, it's right here right here. What's up? It's right by the Super. There's a fisheries plan right there where K su became a millionaire.
45:43 Where are we going the next 200 years? This says it more than I can say. This is the chairman on the east coast who says a casino is not a statement of who we are, but only it means to get us where we want to be. We have tried poverty for 200 years. So we decided to try something else. It's not a wonderful shape. All
46:08 we've had enough of your problem. You're gonna try something else. So I really appreciate uh I'm not sure, you know, if I, I kept the threads going, I have a lot of problem with the, I think the legal ris that have been created by our attorneys in the United States pertaining to native Americans. And uh that's something we need to look at down the road to become better.
46:32 Uh Lewis and Clark encounter various cultures and what I think more impacted by those cultures they ran into than they did. Otherwise, changes came later, tremendous changes came later, free flowing river into pools with the trash fish, warm water, fish, incredible lands, uh Huckleberry fields and root areas turned into anything but productive for our way of life,
46:56 tremendous change. And we're in it together to see if Seattle said, you know, we need to work together. And again, that unfinished experiment that uh the Great Thomas Jefferson talked about, that's where we are now. And so please just the next 200 years. I'm sure some of us are gonna be around that 200 years. But uh the idea is, is that, you know, the legacies that we need,
47:19 we need to start thinking about today. So that's all I have and I sure appreciate it. I'm not sure if we have time for questions or not.
47:39 Yeah, we have time for a couple couple of questions. If anyone has some questions for Louie, please raise your hand. I'll bring the microphone around so we can hear it. I'm not sure why uh the land is being back in the United States. That was the reason for that being back to 80% of land. Uh why we give land to the United States to be
48:04 back to the United States. Yes. Well, it wasn't that too. It was two United States never owned in the first place. So it was, and it's number one step, they acknowledge that it was the deal that was struck. And as uh people talk about democracy and grapevine, we heard of the tremendous interactions that were happening, that were real brutal towards the Indians.
48:27 And we heard about the numbers that were happening. So the, the West was changing, the tremendous influx, presuming that American dream, the garden. And so we saw things were changing our own people, our own folks that were future seers saw a tremendous change and we made the best deal we could and uh a treaty we, we negotiated and still our challenges to try to get the United States to live up to it.
48:50 That's where the plan was given to the count of getting you folks as a state citizen, county citizens to live up to that deal too. So, is this the best deal we could cut? That was where they're at.
49:05 I think we probably have time for one more question for Louie.
49:11 I was just curious uh when you show up the band and how much of the land is in the reservation, the tribes of New York s lawns. What happened in the other reservations? And ro
49:27 well, one of the things was the luck of the draw is where were the easiest passages to get to the garden? And some of those tribes that were in the way where we are lucky Montes. Uh That h is that basically gold uh was what really split them up? We were in L A. Uh Unitil is again to ride along the Oregon trail. The Arias made war. The
49:51 AAS have some of the best agricultural lands in the Pacific Northwest Orang Springs. We're over there. We got one of the biggest enemies of agrarian societies was trees. Trees are in a way. We got stuck with this 300,000 acres of these darn trees. They're big ugly trees. You can't get rid of them. Uh So in a way, you know, we were,
50:14 some people say we were lucky. Uh I think our elders at that time were thinking and trying to make some good educated guesses about what's gonna happen down the road all along the way since then too. We've had great leadership that have really tried to do the best for us and maximum and some people sold out. We couldn't use this, the short term benefit from getting lands,
50:36 the money that comes in immediately for leases or renting or sales. And so they couldn't resist that. We, we, our, our, our leadership was so powerful. They didn't want to see us do that. They got enough control. They even told at one time the superintendent about what this allotment had called the gods that didn't get up here is
50:59 uh uh that Uh he, we got the superintendent, his traditional government to actually find money in DC and buy the land and keep it in tribal ownership. Wonderful leadership. So that answer. Ok. Thank you. All right. Thank you all for joining us here.
51:26 And we will be presenting the 10 of many voices again tomorrow afternoon. I think it's at three o'clock.

Tent of Many Voices

Lou Pitt Jr. on Wasco and Warm Springs history and sovereignty

Lou Pitt Jr.

Warm Springs, Wasco

51:52

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Lou Pitt Jr. on Wasco and Warm Springs history and sovereignty

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