Closed Captions Audio Described

Phil Hawks, a Chinook elder and descendant of treaty signer Huckswelt, describes life at Goose Point settlement where Lower Chinook, Wahkiakum, and Shoalwater Indians relocated after being displaced by the Donation Land Act. He recounts his childhood during the Great Depression, traditional foodways, and the community's eventual dispersal. Ray Gardner provides context on contemporary Chinook tribal recognition efforts and ongoing disputes with the Quinault Nation.

Transcript

0:13 Good afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Core Discover two and the tent of many voices. for those of you who are just joining us. I'll tell you a little bit about us. We are a traveling exhibit. We've been traveling the trail since January of 2003 and we finally made our way to the Pacific Ocean and we'll also do an extra return trip back to Saint Louis like Lewis and Clark did 200 years ago. And we call this tent to, tent to many voices because we're bringing people from all over the country
0:38 to do programs on Lewis and Clark as well as the tribal stories that the different tribes have. And today we have with us two members from the Chinook tribe. We have Phil Hawks and Ray Gardner and they'll be talking about the Chinook at goose point. So I'll hand it over to Ray Gardner for I am.
1:00 I'd like to welcome all of you to Chinook country
1:04 and Phil is actually gonna be the main one speaking about goose point, but I'd like to give you a little bit more background on Phil.
1:13 Phil is a direct descendant of Huckswelt who was a signature signer of the 1851 treaty at Tansey Point. He's also one of our tribal elders and he's also one of our council members. So he's one that those of us that are getting more involved in the tribe as we go along. These are the people that we look to, to guide us
1:36 as to how to move forward into the future. And Phil is the last member of the Chinook nation to have been born on Goose Point, which was a settlement where when people were pushed off of the river went up to goose point to settle up there. So that'll turn it over to Phil. OK. Thank you, Ray. Uh
2:03 Well, first of all, I'd like to acknowledge the core two of discovery. And uh
2:12 with their journey out here solidified the claim the United States had on this territory. Otherwise we possibly we could have been uh province of uh Canada like South British Columbia.
2:34 But I think the English knew that the young United States was willing to fight for the country after the results of the Revolutionary War and war of 1812. So cool, I'm sure that was uh the main claim.
2:57 The Lewis and Clark journey had made the stick the strongest claim to the occupation of this territory.
3:07 Like Ray said that the Indians were pushed off of the Lower Columbia by the donation land claims. And
3:18 many of them headed south. And, uh, most of them headed north, the Lower Chinook Indians and the Wahkiakum and lots of, and even, uh Shoalwater Indians settled on goose point. Goose point wasn't prime property It was swamp in one area. And,
3:41 and the, and the beaches around them were nice
3:45 laid between the high point, which is Bay Center proper and uh higher ground is Goose Point itself. And
3:57 my first recollections of
4:01 being aware of uh life starting was during the depression. And there were four residents, two houses and four residents at Goose Point myself and my great grandmother in one house and my great uncle Willie George and his wife Ida in the, in
4:26 the next house, it was a depression. My mother worked in oysters and my father was a fisherman in Alaska. He died when I was three years old. So therefore my great grandmother raised me until about eight years old.
4:49 Mhm.
4:52 She was raised as an Indian and times were changing but she would not, would not
5:01 conform to, actually to the white man's ways. We ate, we lived off the land which we lived like an Indian which wasn't, uh, too hard. Those days during depression we at salmon, we ate all of the salmon, boiled it smoked it, ate the salmon roll,
5:25 fish heads, everything but the bones. She had a smoke house and whenever fish was available, she smoked regularly and the surrounding area had oysters if you didn't like seafood. One way or another you wouldn't want to be living there.
5:47 So many people did move to the lot of adopted the white man's ways and non-indian ways and left
6:00 to the Connaught reservation when people were a lot have gone there. Some went to the cities, Tacoma. My great aunt went to Tacoma or my great grandmother's daughter went to Tacoma and she was after her to move up there. But it, it finally happened when she was
6:26 taken ill in 1942.
6:33 One thing I could recall is uh
6:38 Japanese had oyster industry there.
6:42 This one fellow came by the house every day and, and when the tide was right, and he would share his lunch with me and go on home. And uh
6:58 sometime later, some men came down to the point and said, uh World War Two was started or we've been attacked and to keep your blinds cold and your lights out during the what they call a blackout. It wasn't difficult for us because we never had electric lights. Anyhow, we had uh
7:23 kerosene land, no running water, we packed water from the well to the, to the house and used to run off from the roof into a gutter and into a barrel. That was our portion of water supply. But you didn't bathe every day,
7:44 heated the water and maybe once a week, take a bath.
7:54 Yeah. And uh wood, wood cutting was one of the main activities from the summer, spring, summer and part of the fall depended on the wood, on the wood stove to cook, cook with and
8:13 for heat. So
8:18 I learned to run not a chainsaw but a handsaw. And it was as soon as I could when I was old enough to handle it and chop the wood stack it,
8:30 my great grandmother, she
8:33 her, which had just fall by winter. But great uncle Willie, he was considered a grasshopper, I guess. He, he made enough wood to last two or three days. And that was it. It was surprising he could run the hand saw real well. He could have probably cut his wood in two weeks, but he
8:57 preferred to go a piece piecemeal, but we'd be in the house nice and warm and he'd be out to cut his two days supply of wood.
9:08 And that was his philosophy, I guess. No different than most of ours.
9:15 When people moved up to goose point, they were industrious. It was the houses that were left were sturdy. The shaker church had built, well, they had an orchard, I think it was a sconone family had a couple of dozen trees there. Apple trees and plums and, and uh the grandmother had an apple tree and two plum trees and
9:40 gooseberries and currants and wild blackberries were there.
9:49 When the Indians left,
9:54 most of the houses were dismantled or torn down and used for building uh other houses on the, on the Hill. There's only two houses that I can remember that tumbled down. Shaker Church was torn down and dismantled in the part of a nice house where Wolokofski is, was the man's name.
10:18 use that for the their house. And uh when the bell was taken at shaker church, bell was transported to Oakville and installed in the church over there.
10:33 Grandmother always had a smokehouse and had a garden all the time.
10:39 Sometimes a deer would raid it
10:43 other animals that uh were there
10:48 the bear would make the rig through the orchards once in a while and they'd swim across to Wilson Point. They never bothered the people.
11:02 Yeah.
11:05 Knows
11:09 Indians there.
11:13 I think I mentioned four different, five different tribes. Remnants of five tribes.
11:19 Yeah.
11:22 But I always learned that chinooks were extinct or nearly extinct. But huckswelt our, our great, great grandfather, which I'm a descendant of and Ray. Also there, there must be two or 300 descendants of him living and are scattered across the country and
11:46 on like my other side And down in there's almost as numerous there, existing
11:58 or extinct, I guess in the government size, forgotten reality. Many have moved up to the Quinalt reservations, Chehalis reservations, Skokomish Cities Tacoma mostly important. So, were not extinct. But then it is hard to prove.
12:23 I, I guess unless we all gather together and have a head count that doesn't count.
12:31 Well, it's trend, I think,
12:34 um World War Two or when that began. Uh my friend Japanese that I share, shared lunch with me. He disappeared not into the service, but he was taken to a concentration camp. I met him 20 years later
12:57 and most of his family moved elsewhere and his last name was Mukai. And his mother had a, she returned to the area in Raymond and ran a beauty shop in Raymond. But most of the Japanese
13:12 went elsewhere, bigger cities when they got back to the, the ones that did come back, their businesses were confiscated or run down or, or stolen. So that's a different story. But it's injustice. So, that the Indians shared with them
13:42 the
13:44 in the winter, the high tides took over goose point maybe four or five, five times in the winter,
13:55 it didn't bother the fruit trees or their berries.
14:01 because they bloom begin in the next in the spring. But when the high tides came, there were planks and firewood facing the cedar glass walls floating around. And I can remember Willie out there in his skiff one day gathering up items. I think some of them, there was this one
14:26 that he cut.
14:28 I,
14:32 but now the,
14:35 it's a different type of vegetation or at least the, the beaches are sandy now with the, when the high tides came later. But
14:45 the change that uh deposited silk on top of the sand
14:51 more undesirable plants grew on that. And I think that from what I understand it's seems far fetched but, uh, caused by the jetties on the Columbia River changed the currents in the Willapa Bay and made erosion. There was one there are about 10 acres that was all gone and that silk had to go somewhere.
15:18 When the high tides did come, it would be discolored, brown colored and when it covered the beach and
15:27 that changed the nature
15:31 and the growth on there. Yeah, I think, uh,
15:36 County Park took over the lodge that, uh, Indians
15:43 had. I don't know what, what type of title they had in there. But Willie George, he was the last resident at Goose Point he moved up on the base center hill and about 1953 and his wife died and he moved to Aberdeen. Holquiam
16:04 a lot of Indians that left there. They came back to be buried in the Bay Center Cemetery. So their hearts, they left, but their hearts apparently were still in the space center area. Still. Now you're reading about someone dying and they were born in Bay Center.
16:26 Felt that to be very,
16:29 it's called the
16:32 Pioneer Cemetery. But there are, there are just as many Indians buried there as there as pioneers.
16:42 Where Goose Point is geographically?
16:46 Oh, that's right. Bay Center. Bay Center is a geographical center of Willapa Bay. On the west side is the Naselle River in the South Bay. And the right, right side is the Palix River and it's probably about a 3-3.5 mile Long Peninsula. Goose Point is right on the end,
17:09 swampy area and on the right end there's a high point, but in the middle it's,
17:17 yeah, in the bay on the Willapa Bay Yeah.
17:25 Oh,
17:27 maybe
17:32 south
17:35 a little bit south and west and east of uh, lead better point on the end of the Long Beach Peninsula maybe four miles across from Copeland
17:47 Shoalwater.
17:50 That was a, a naming contest. And
17:56 in uh in the 18 seventies, and this lady picked Bay Center. That was, that was the winning name. That's what it,
18:08 it was named. And then he established a post office called Bay Center. Goose Point is on the very tip though,
18:16 not the most prime area there, but that's where most of the Indians were sent
18:23 probably.
18:27 Pardon
18:34 uh I think they had to go voluntarily with the donation land claim on the, on the mouth of the Columbia. There was no land left for them and they didn't sign a treaty yet. Uh They could have gone to the Quinalt reservation, but, but many of them,
18:55 I didn't think it was too friendly up there.
18:58 I just settled where wherever they could, part, part of that too was in the treaty of 1855 when they came back to have to sign that treaty, which is a treaty that we didn't sign. Then part of the stipulations in the 1855 treaty was for people who moved north and with communication being not the best.
19:22 A lot of the tribal people knew that those talks were going on but they never found out that they didn't have to leave so they did leave and went up to Goose Point.
19:42 well, it's, the Goose Point itself is deserted. Bay Center is still there. That's south of Goose Point.
19:50 ask
19:52 actually the, the one person that's left that can actually take you and show you where everything was on. Goose Point is Philip as he walks on Goose Point every day and he can take you through and he can show you where the homes were, where the orchards were, where the gardens were, where the shaker church was where the old well was. And a lot of us have had the opportunity to go down there with him,
20:14 which is just a wealth of knowledge for the rest of us to know where a lot of our ancestors lived for a long time.
20:24 Goose point. No goose point was still clear out. At the very end of the point, there was settlements further back in from the point which is where the Town Bay Center is.
20:36 She'll take the mic now OK, let me come around with a microphone. If you have a question, it would be best to raise your hand.
20:47 Well, I'm just curious, what's the status today? I mean, what's happening or not happening uh of getting tribal recognition through the us government right now,
21:01 for those of you that don't know, obviously the Chinook are not recognized at this time. It would take all day to get to how we ended up there.
21:13 But where we're at right now is I'll just kind of go back in 2001 in January 2001. After a long battle with the government, the government decided to recognize the Chinook nation and several of our council members went back to Washington DC. Were there when the recognition was signed,
21:35 they came home. It was a, it was a huge celebration for us. After all these years, we finally made it, it went into a 90 day appeal process. And on day 89 there was an appeal filed against her recognition that went to the appellate court. The appellate court upheld the decision. They did have many questions that they asked, but nowhere in that, that finding did it say
22:00 that it would change their verdict, which was that they upheld it. The Bureau of Indian Affairs used those eight questions as a way to open the entire process back up. And basically, they took it back to square one. The administration and the White House had changed during that time, there was a new administration in place and while our chairman was back in Washington DC,
22:24 actually having lunch at the White House by invitation of George and Laura Bush for the first function to kick off the Lewis and Clark commemoration. When he was leaving the White House to go to the airport. He received a call on his cell phone and it was from the Bureau of Indian Affairs saying we're just taking your recognition back away.
22:47 So where we're at now, we have talked to members of Senate and the Congress and we have hoped that they would be willing to submit a bill on our behalf and grant us our recognition back. They have claimed that they are in support of us. We three of us went back and spent a week in DC and worked out language on the bill and that was three years ago and they have yet to put it on the floor.
23:13 So really the option we're left with at this point is to take the federal government to court. And unfortunately, it's a very costly process. It's a very lengthy process. We know 100% sure that we would win that if we go there. Uh We've talked with an attorney that, that fought the Sampson
23:37 case in federal court and won and established some good case law. He has gone over our documents and said that we have over eight times the documentation of our existence of what Sampson had. The nice thing in court is no one else is allowed in the courtroom. It would be between the Chinook nation and the government.
24:00 So the people that have filed appeals that against us in the past would not even be allowed to have a voice in the courtroom. So that's kind of where we're at today
24:16 about how many Chinook tribal members were there at Goose Point at its peak? And about how many Chinook tribal members do you think there are today?
24:25 Oh,
24:29 I'm trying to remember the, um, the, the lots that were there probably eight . Probably eight lots or eight houses on goose point. But other Indians were up on the hill too. Also on Bay center, Bay Center was
24:50 on, on a hill and let's say a flat and then goose point was like this. And then, I mean that for the Indian settle was on the flats and then Goose Point was on the end. So, I don't know, just go by the photograph. But the, uh sacred there were
25:11 30-37 in the photograph there. But I don't think all went to church on there. So there must be, there were more Indians there on the, on the point than, than that. And then I think they graduate. Some moved to Bay Center. They might have been there before Goose Point. I'm not sure what they could afford to buy a plot and
25:37 the land there. But on Goose Point we might have been more or less squatters. But on the maps, all the maps are, uh, or broken down in the plots or names on it. And when they left, I don't know what happened. I know that the park has taken a couple of lots there extended out and I don't know what happened to the other ones,
26:02 probably sold for taxes that happened across, uh,
26:06 Across on Wilson point in one case where the, the owner died in, in
26:14 and no heirs and the county took it over and after several years, they sold it to someone else and then
26:25 the Indian relatives or descendants challenged it and they checked it in a were supposed to be look or search for the relatives to be,
26:40 to inherit it. But instead the county confiscated it and sold it to the, the term buyers, which wasn't the buyers that owned, it wasn't their fault. But I think uh Indians were compensated for the errors for it. But that was the discrepancy in the title there. The, they weren't supposed to take it.
27:04 I don't know the, the legal wording on it. I don't think that the Indians had to pay taxes at that time. So they didn't have to pay taxes. They were delinquent
27:21 and the number of travel members now is right at about 2500.
27:35 Um I have two small questions.
27:38 Can, can I ask you about your clothing? Is this ceremonial clothing that you're wearing? The red and the black? It's very beautiful. And I'm wondering when this is what the tribe wore, what was it made of? Actually this, this is, would be later in time, but it is ceremonial and it is wool
28:03 and all of the design is, is made of buttons and I'll go ahead and turn around. Now, I turn on my back because that's where the design is. Wow.
28:14 Are you that Native American?
28:19 I mean that
28:22 and you with your culture and,
28:27 well, we would like to believe we are
28:32 uh interestingly enough. I know even when the new museum was built, they put an honor wall in and my mother and I submitted my grandmother's name along with Chinook nation. And I've yet to have anyone that's been there, be able to find it. So that's interesting. But the Smithsonian does acknowledge us. And when we were back in Washington DC,
28:54 we actually went to one branch of the Smithsonian and they turned over to us the documentation that shows that they have 29 of our ancestors left. So we would like to in time get those ancestors returned so we can bring them back to their own land and rebury them here where they belong,
29:15 what individuals or groups are against Chinook recognition by the government? And why? the main group that is against the Chinook tribe are the Quinalts
29:29 and the interesting part of having the Quinault being the one that cost us our recognition is that many members of the Quinault tribe are actually Chinooks that were adopted as Quinalts years ago when they were forced out of the area. The main reason they're against us
29:54 is the original Quinalt reservation was 10,000 acres and that's where the Quinalts resided through other land allotment acts treaties. The government bought up more land and put the reservation the size it is now, which is a little over 220,000 acres
30:16 through the land allotments of the tribes that went up there. Individual members of the Chinook tribe own 54% of the entire reservation. The Quinalts concern is that if we get recognized, they cannot control our land as they have for all these years. If our members go up there, now,
30:38 they have to ask him for all his permission to do things along with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Quinault are also in the process of trying to get a bill through Congress that, that claims that if you are not from a recognized tribe, you cannot hold land to trust, which if that bill is to go through, every individual member of the tribe would lose their land. And the Quinalts would get it.
31:03 Where's the Quinault Reservation? by up the coast of the in Barber County, north of North of Grays Harbor probably about 40 miles on the coast.
31:21 You know, I guess part of Jefferson County, part of Grays Harbor County,
31:29 it's on the main river is the Quinalt river that flows into the, from Lake Quinalt
31:36 up to the ocean, flows right through the middle of the reservation.
31:42 Uh Ray's uncles are Quinalt too and so are mine but I mean
31:52 on their books. You're a Chinook. But once you're in rolled area you are a Quinalt, you're not a chinook anymore.
32:05 If it's any concept that's, that's getting into politics. And I don't really understand too much of it. We're supposed to be the affiliate, one of the affiliated tribes up there with no say it's about what it amounts to
32:23 with any consolation. I have a book called American Indians and it refers to the Chinook as a tribe and I'm sure all of the other scholarly works and all the other authoritative books produced also
32:45 with references to the Chinook would refer to the Chinook as a tribe. So that's just another volume of information, which is I think to your benefit and at least in the political sense of talking to somebody that makes up their own criteria of what the tribe is rather than your social unit, which is your families and your, your organization.
33:11 Well, it is very interesting, even in the, in the situation we find ourselves in because if a person checks into federal law, it clearly states that the only way a tribe could be terminated is by an act of Congress. There has never been an act of Congress to terminate the Chinook tribe. It was a single individual in 1967 in the Bureau of Indian Affairs
33:34 that went through a list of tribes. And if they weren't familiar with them, they crossed them off the list and we were one of, I believe 19 tribes in the state of Washington that were crossed off that list illegally. So it's been very aggravating for us because we should not have to prove anything. And again, I've sat down with members of Congress and the Senate that clearly laid out
33:59 everything that they have done illegally to put us in the situation we're in. And they just look at it like, oh, well,
34:11 does the government or the Quinalt have a record of those people that were incorporated into the tribe that you referred to the time that they left? You used a certain word which I don't recall, but it was like a dispersion of some kind where people left. Um It sounded like, you know, they had to migrate somewhere
34:32 and some, you said your grandmother went to Tacoma and so many people went to Quinalt uh reservation. Um I'm just wondering, did, does the Quinalt have a record of what Chinooks were taken in at that time or does the government keep track of that? Nobody has any Uh So
34:53 some of my older cousins were allotted after, I don't know, maybe Ray knows, what year when they reorganized their or when they said all fish eating tribes can be invited to the, to live on the Quinalt reservation. And, and, and many of them were allotted 80 acres too,
35:15 to farm or whatever. But when they got their 80 acres, they discovered it was, it was almost all timber.
35:23 They weren't, but there were a lot of whether they were members or not. I don't, I don't really know, like a Chinook member was alotted 80 acres. A Quileute member. 80 acres, a Chehalis member 80 acres.
35:42 They were, that was their identity. But the Quinalts considered them Quinalts and after, after they were allotted on the reservation, maybe they can.
35:54 But yes, those records do exist and they do have those. And it's, it's interesting the criteria that the government has chosen to use against us and our recognition. And one was one of their comments was that we can't prove that we stay together as a people in our land. Well, that's very interesting when they were the same government who kicked us off the land.
36:19 The other is they claim that the local community doesn't know we exist or acknowledge that we exist. Well, I don't know too many local people that don't know that we exist.
36:32 They also one of the criteria they used against us was that in the late 18 hundreds, that we couldn't prove that we had a government in place. Well, I would just about question any tribe in the United States during that time period to be able to show that they had a government in place. This is not like we took minutes.
36:55 I mean, all of our things were handed down orally. That's how our stories went from generation to generation. So really there, there would be very few tribes that could prove their existence during that time frame. So they've been very selective of what they can use against us and whenever they have come up with something like that and we've been able to fill that gap, they immediately add something else.
37:21 One thing I can remember beginning school, if I, if I didn't belong to a tribe in school in Bay Center, they said you kids are Indian and you have to take cod liver oil for your vitamin D because you don't get enough sunshine. Now it's just Indian kids and not the nonindians So somehow they identify,
37:46 I mean, you were recognized as Indian even if you didn't belong to a tribe.
37:58 And also free lunches. That was one benefit
38:09 that hat you're wearing is that part of your Indian cloning? Yes. And that, that was something that we wore even prior to Lewis and Clark time or whatever it was. It's one of the reasons why we thought Lewis and Clark was pretty pathetic when they got here. I mean they had their buck skin clothes which were rotting off their backs, which was obviously not good for this climate around here.
38:34 So we had cedar skirts, cedar capes, cedar hats. We didn't have to worry about them at all.
38:46 What can we do as uh residents of Washington to help you in this cause? Is there anything that we can do? One of the things that, that I always ask people to do? Is to write your state representatives, your federal representatives and say, why aren't you doing something for these people? And obviously anybody in a political office doesn't pay any attention to anything
39:11 unless enough people are asking why and holding them accountable. So it's, we have uh I, I know myself, I ask everywhere I go, if people believe in us to do that, to write letters to the representative, we talk to them and when we know letters are being written to them and then we go talk to them and they say, well, nobody acknowledges you,
39:36 then we know that we don't need to talk to them anymore.
39:41 Another, another fair is some people are afraid that Chinook to start a casino somewhere.
39:58 So this might sound uh like a silly question. But see, I have, it's really funny but I don't know much about Native American tribes in the state. I'm Native Oregonian. I live in the valley, but I've always heard of the chinook, you know, and there's a salmon named after the chinook salmon didn't start out as the chinook. It was named after the tribe.
40:19 So can I, you have a cultural identity in the minds of many? And so the question I would ask is, what is the thing that you will gain maybe most? And first with the um this country having recognition of the Chinook tribe,
40:40 there's, there's several things that, that we would like to get back. One is we would like to have a land base in our own country. There's pieces of land that we have looked at and we've even told the state and federal government that we would like to have. It's on occupied land, it's owned by the government, but it's old building sites that are important to us. So we would like to have them back
41:05 with the, our main goals that we have going forward is to be able to provide health care for our people. And we would get that in recognition because we would get federal dollars to be able to put a clinic in place, would like to be able to provide housing for our elders. Give them some place to go, some kind of elder hostel or whatever we don't have that
41:29 we would like to work cooperatively with the county and bring business back into the county. It's a very depressed county. No one can argue that. So it would be two fold for us to bring business in one our tribal members have had to leave would be able to come home and have a job and be back in their homeland.
41:52 Our youth that are growing up now would know that they would have some place they could stay and have a reliable workplace and not have to leave. And as a result of that, we just be county as well.
42:10 Any other questions?
42:16 Is there anything else that you wanna add? Ray or Phil Before we close?
42:22 No? I do wanna thank you guys for coming and sharing this with us
42:32 and I do apologize to you Ray you wanted me to mention that he's vice chair of his tribe. So I forgot to mention that. So I'm sorry about that. So thank you for coming. I wanna thank you folks for coming. We do close at five o'clock today, but we will be open tomorrow from 9 to 5 and uh, we have different programs.