Closed Captions Audio Described

Clatsop storyteller and cultural presenter Jeff Painter discusses Clatsop history, trade practices, and contemporary identity. He explains the Clatsop role as regional traders, addresses misrepresentations in historical narratives, and shares traditional stories including the creation of the Big Dipper. Painter emphasizes the importance of language, land stewardship, and correcting the false narrative of tribal extinction.

Transcript

0:06 Good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Corps of Discovery II ten of many voices. For those of you who have seen this before. Just tell you a little bit about us. We are a traveling Pacific. We've been traveling the trail since January of 2003. We started out at Monticello at Thomas Jefferson's home and made our way westward to the Pacific Ocean next year. We'll be doing the return trip back to ST Louis uh in 2006
0:30 we call this the 10 of many voices because we're bringing people from all over the country to do programs on Lewis and Clark. And we also bring in tribal presenters to talk about their tribes that Lewis and Clark may have today. We have with us Jeff painter and he's gonna be talking about the partnerships and resilience of the Clatsop and he is from the Clatsop Nation So please welcome Jeff Pam
0:57 Uh So good morning. And uh I wish you a traditional good morning in, in just a second here. Uh Explain about that song if you were here or coming in while that song was going on really different kind of beat, a real different kind of song that you'll hear in most places. And, uh, that's a gambling drum and, uh, it's one of our gambling songs. My grandma was called him Lucky Song.
1:20 Uh, because it's supposed to make your side lucky when you're trying to get the money off the other team playing gambling games. And these games typically go on, you know, three or four days and nights I watch my grandpa not leave the gambling area. And, uh, that's a lucky song. So you should all go buy a lottery ticket. She always says, you know, they make you feel good, they make you feel happy and they give you luck, so you should go buy a lottery ticket you can see if they still work.
1:45 So, um, I'm gonna welcome you in, in our Chinook German language. And then I'll say most of uh, what I said in English so that, you know what I said, some of it I won't translate. But uh, I might be able to explain that a little bit
1:58 so, uh [Insert Chinook]
2:26 So I said, uh welcome to everybody here to my land and my family's land and my people's land. Uh This land is still untreated, unseating, unseeded, unpaid for, uh, and, uh, we have squatters all over the place. Uh, and I'll explain a little bit more about that. But, uh and my, my great, great, great, great grandpa was one of those squatters.
2:48 Uh George W cook, cook for whom? Cook slow slew of an Astoria was name. Uh, he was one of those original squatters, but he had a good sense like most of the settlers to marry into indian families that live as a native, speak the native language and that kind of thing. It really wasn't until Lewis and Clark that we had these oddballs that would come visit, not trade, build a house, maybe not leave or maybe leave Um
3:13 I'm a little lost guys. The rest of what I said was uh my family is uh the Cook Butler, Casey mcmillan family. And we always say that so that if we're dating, I'm married and I'm not dating. But if we're dating that uh we're not dating somebody we're related to, you know, it's not really good form. So by saying, the cook butler casey mcmillan family, most everybody knows who those lines go down from
3:35 all the way up to uh British Columbia and down to California. Our, our family is spread up and down in the North West coast, but they all originated here at Quata Uh the village where seaside sits uh with a population of about 6000 right before Lewis and Clark. So a real similar population level and uh our villages at Nekatech and Nakaset which are up off the side of highway 101 where
4:00 the Gateway Discovery Center is that the tribe is in and then uh the village in the toll which is up uh the now called the New Clark River, uh where the two lost guys built their house and, and left them in this spring in the next year, whatever. So, um I said, I, I welcome you in the oldest way. I, I asked for your ears to be open your hearts to be open and I had nothing but good words and no hard feelings.
4:25 So if you, if you catch a tint of bitterness anywhere here, it's not really that way about you, even if you live here, it's about the way our people were treated and all the tribes have a very similar experience from uh who and Clark's impact and then what happened after that? So um don't take any of that personally and at the end, um I'll sing a song or say a prayer and depends on how much
4:50 time would have that kind of releases all that. So if you do pick up a little negativity or anything in there, we, we want you to let that go before you go out here so that this is a learning experience. Um So before I get going, see, I'm already going, but I'm not
5:06 among my people, most of the people of the Columbia River, the what not or I check out here um Before a storyteller. Not much, I'm a traditional storyteller among our people. And uh I also function that way among some other tribes that have adopted me, so to speak as their speaker. Um This particular necklace is to speak for one of those people. Those people know what that means.
5:31 It means I have the right to speak on the affairs, political affairs, spiritual affairs, whatever. Um And before a storyteller starts anywhere along this river, they always start by saying, what do you to repay And there's a reason for that. We tell our stories mostly in the long house uh at night time and during the winter around the open fire in the middle and still today,
5:54 it's kind of held that way late at night after everybody's eating and it's feeling kind of sleepy. Then you ask for the storyteller to tell you a story and the story might be a myth. You know, Western people call a myth like a creation story or a coyote story. It might be a story about geography. A lot of our stories just simply tell us how to get from point A to point B but the geography is hidden within the story.
6:17 So you remember all those places you can't get lost because Toyota starts at this mountain, it goes to this river. And then uh some of them are like that. Some of them are stories about. Tell us, tell us that time uh last year when grandpa fell in the water, catching his hand. So they're contemporary things that they wanna hear again. And a storyteller puts a twist on those to make them funnier or bigger or easier.
6:39 Um, but they always start by saying what do you have for h and since you're not traditional people, I won't stick you to that. And by the way, my grandma has already bought you off. Which means, um, when I started speaking 25 years ago, this one old grandma, she said, you know, we don't tell our stories except in the winter time and we only tell mostly inside our houses to our Children. We don't do them like this the way the modern world does.
7:03 And, uh, we always get paid. The storyteller has to get paid. And so the Children would come forward with plates of food or maybe strings of dantalion and, um, or a coyote fur or badger fur or something that storyteller would need in order to keep his job and travel from house to house and building to building. And so she bought that off, she said from now on, nobody has to pay you and you can tell your stories any time of the year you want.
7:28 And she walked up on the stage and she slept $100 bill down And, uh, that's a lot for an elder that might be a month's income for an elder. Um, but that's the way those things are paid off. She could have done that with a big string of hi. This, she could have done it with a, a horse. She could have done it with a lot of things. But she did publicly in that way to say he's not bound by that anymore.
7:50 And, uh, I know my uncle Eddie Edmo, who's gonna be speaking a couple of times during this, that it had the same thing happen. His, one of his aunties pay off so he could tell the jokes and his stories out of the season. Now we have come in season. Uh but nobody's made him. So I'm gonna, I'll, I'll pay myself.
8:09 Actually, a little kid gave me this, this bathroom. Hi the other day. And so he's probably paying for everybody for the next year. Uh
8:20 So, you know, a little bit about me. So, um the first question I usually get from kids, by the way, kids under the age of about 12 and older people over the age of about 65 or so, um have no ability to edit. They just say what's on their mind. They don't really care. Little kids don't know any better because they haven't learned all our social niceties and
8:42 uh older folks just really don't care what they think of them because they're, you know, they just got their opinion. And so usually about this time, they might talk a third or fourth grader will say, how come you're so damn white, you know, uh where's your horse in your tipi uh, with that kind of thing on your head. Why aren't you dressed up with a headdress and all that kind of stuff? So, to address some of those issues, I'm real, real white. Uh,
9:06 there's some kind of Scandinavian descent on their mom's side, but we really don't know what that is because her, one of her relatives was left at the doorstep of the orphanage in Minnesota. Um, we later found out there's like an holy Olsen man in her family and some things like that to give you include, there's some Scandinavian somewhere back there. My dad's side of the family is the lots of branch of the family.
9:29 And, uh, they also have some branch and some other stuff in there. But most of our tribal people will, will agree whether you're, uh a native and I identify yourself as a native, doesn't have anything to do with how much blood you got. Uh, you know, for instance, the Cherokee nation has said as long as you have a drop, right? So blood quantum is a federal concept that was used to destroy natives.
9:52 Unfortunately, a lot of tribes have bought into that and set their own government policies up to eliminate natives under a quarter or an age from being members. Um, the way that native life is still practiced all throughout North America is, what language do you speak? How do you pray? How do you live? Do you live with the four seasons. Do you know the plants from your area? Uh I can't really be a Clatsop and live in
10:17 Oklahoma Right. I do something else. I mean, I could be Clatsop of my blood, but I'm no longer a Clatsop because in order to be a native Clatsop up, I have to be in my community. I have roles and responsibilities in my community. I have to use the plants in my community and the animals in my community and the fish and, and live through the four seasons. So, uh I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but I'm Clatsop because that's the way I live.
10:43 And, uh, actually, if you look at the way I live tribally because my people, when I was identified at the age of four were training. Uh, my family is a family of leader going way, way back and I was identified for training. They couldn't find anybody to train me. Now, that doesn't mean they don't exist. You got to be really careful about that. It's just my family didn't know anybody that had the songs or the language or any of the ways of training.
11:07 And so they picked the next best thing which was an elder by the name of Stony Weeks that I believe is still kicking around. And uh, he's a warm springs confederated tribe member. So picked a close relative and uh, he trained me for a little bit and then I went into drugs and alcohol and I don't mean, uh, as a counselor that came later, I mean, as somebody that was really in bad shape.
11:31 And, uh, I did that for a lot of years and when I was coming out of that, this chirokee elder, which is mispronounced Cherokee in English, uh, this chirokee, the elder who was running a gift shop and like most native people were told to camouflage. She wasn't wearing a headband in Reg gal and I couldn't spot her and she took me under her wing. And then I found out she's a big time healer and head to a society back there. And
11:54 I worked with her for a lot of years and I really couldn't pick up the Cherokee ways. I could help her, but I could pick them up and I happened to be in a ceremony with her. Um She was healing this other medicine man that was Lakota and then he started singing his songs. I knew what he was saying. Like I knew inside of me what the words were saying and I could sing them with them. And uh I told her about that afterwards and she said, OK, well, then I'm done with you.
12:19 You, you're his now I am going to give you to him And the deal I made with her when she started working with me is she said your life is no longer yours. Now it's mine. And I said, good deal because I probably would have been dead within three more years if I would have kept for anything to use it. So you might as well have it. So, when she said I'm done with you, I'm giving it again, that meant out of your deals with him. And so ho
12:40 Laia who's now passed over, um I spent a lot of years with him and uh so my primary cultural training is actually Lakota, you know, Lakota mentality. Um I currently work with a Dakota elder and as well as a lot of other elders. But uh that's my main training is Lakota, which is kind of odd, right? You got a Clatsop guy with Lakota and in Warm Springs training.
13:03 And that's I find out now as an adult, very typical of Clatsop people, we had a lot of different cultures visiting here and playing around here and training here and getting shipwrecked here and uh discovering this place. You know, the number of guys that said I discovered Oregon or the Columbia River. Jeez, it's a big long list way before Lewis Clark. And then we, you know, now we do discovered it and
13:27 it's like, how many times can you discover somewhere? Somebody already lives there? I'm not really sure. I just discovered Jim's backyard because it's the first time I've ever been in his backyard. I think I'd like to name it. You know, I'll leave it in cooler because it just sounds Indian. Um and then I'll start living in Jim's backyard and never fail to live there. That's an interesting concept.
13:50 Uh, so I'm a big mix. I'm a big mix of stuff. Typical Clatsop of behavior. Clatsop were the Walmart of the Northwest one stop shopping. And anybody here work for Walmart. I don't want to offend you too badly. Just like Walmart, we employed slaves, didn't have nothing. They had no health plan. Uh, the advantage of being at the mouth of the Columbia or trade with us.
14:14 We had a one for two sale all the time. You're probably used to two for one sales where you go and buy one, get one free if you came to purchase anything from us or sell it to us. Uh We take two of whatever you had for whatever you wanted from us, you pay twice as much. So why the heck would you do that? And I go into this a lot more in my talk on trading. But it's important for you to understand why would anybody pay
14:36 a higher price than anywhere in the northern hemisphere for their goods? Well, it's because if you came from Alaska or around the island down the bottom of this river and you needed stuff from California or South America and didn't want to go all the way down there and rest your life or all the way up to celilo or out to the plains to get your buffalo. You can get it all at Tanzi point you can get it all here at Quata
15:01 where seaside current sits because all those people went through our doors at one time or another. So we buy stuff from them. We'd also journey in our ocean going canoes, which we just park. Um, the first one in about 100 years or so. Uh, but we journey down as far as, uh, anthropologist tells down to point raises in California, up to, uh, Southeast Alaska and Vanco
15:24 Island extensively. And I have a lot of relatives on Vanco Island and then, uh, up to a lot of call. Um, and so most of those goods we brought down also as well as fine. And so if you didn't want to risk your life, um, you could just stop at Walmart here on the, on the Oregon coast or at our cousin's shop on the other side of the river, the Chinook, one of the Chinook bands
15:46 and they get anything you needed not risk your life. You weren't getting a very good deal price wise, but it was a good deal in exchange for energy and time and then you could go on your way. Uh, if you read in Lewis and Clark's journals and I don't normally talk about this, but because we're here for Lewis and Clark, it's kind of interesting to know. They spend a lot of time complaining about how much they're paying for stuff, a lot of.
16:12 And anybody live like in a resort town like seaside or Ashland or Boulder. So, you know what it's like, you know, you don't probably shop in town. Like I, I lived in Ashland for 15 years. I never hardly ever shopped in town. I go to Medford and get for half that price. You know, typically not half that price, maybe 15% less or 10% less.
16:35 But if you're in a tourist economy, you wanna leave that economy to get your everyday stuff and come back. You know, you certainly wouldn't. Well, anyway, it's an economic thing. So these guys came, they weren't traders and they didn't understand trade. There's a lot in your journal about Chief, but Tofa and his daughter come in and trying to teach them how to trade because they were just failing miserably.
17:00 And, uh, they spent a couple of days with them and finally got them into the concept of making a deal isn't as important as having a good time. And they didn't understand that they'd come in and they'd say I'll give you. And this is just an example. This isn't from a journal but an example is I'll give you one Elf Hide for four Beaver Hides right? They just wanna make the deal and check out through the clerk and go,
17:22 well, for the Clatsop, half the fun is sitting there eating with you telling stories, gambling, maybe losing some of your money or either some of mine Eventually we're gonna trade for the beaver pelt and Elk Hide but first we gotta get to know each other and kind of tell some stories and what have you been doing until you got here? And that's how we learned like newspaper, what was going on. So you come in as Lewis and Clark and say here quick. Here's my hope I, in here you rides. I need to go. I'm late for lunch.
17:48 Well, the Clatsop guy typically would go. You're making me mad. You don't wanna sit down, you don't wanna play, you don't wanna haggle. So instead of, uh, your elk hide for 4 beaver hides eyes, I'll give you two beaver hides for that elk hide and you can go ahead through the checkout urgently since you're gonna just be that way and then you get half what you're already gonna get. Well, then they're mad about that.
18:12 No, no, no. And on a couple of occasions they would steal the goods. Uh, they stole one of our canoe because they couldn't finish the deal and couldn't trade for it and angle for it and they just decided we're just gonna take it because they're stubborn. So, training is a lot of fun. Like the gambling I mentioned goes on 3-4 nights in a row. People hardly leaving except to go eat and come back and keep on gambling. It's really not about what's being gambled.
18:37 It's about hanging out with your friends. And, um, I remember growing up and going to the RV Park with my grandpa and grandma that they lived in during the summer, half of what they did there was not fishing, uh, which they're supposed to be doing supposedly, uh, or anything else. And most of it was just BS and the people that had been in, you know, Arizona for most of the winter or wherever it is that they had been and catching up, spent all summer catching up,
19:01 maybe catch 20 salmon but spent all summer catching up. Um, the excuse for being there was fishing. So it's like the excuse for being here is gambling or trading. But really, it's about getting the news from, you could get the news here from all the way out on the north plains up into Canada, Alaska and Rhode Island in northern California. Pretty good place to go read the newspaper. But you wouldn't want to come here as Lewis and Clark.
19:25 That's not a trader and has nothing to trade because you're paying a lot to just be hanging out here. And especially if you didn't wanna hang out, they used to shut the doors at night at the fort they didn't really get that, that everybody's door was open and anybody could drop by and get that as much as you wanted for as long as you wanted to stay. So they'd shut their doors. Well, they're, they're out of the cycle. Right.
19:46 They're missing most of the stories, most of the fun. And so all they see is the drudgery, you know, and they complain a lot of it. I gotta look over here. I don't talk off of notes, but I have old people that tell me things. I have to make sure I see. Um, I, it's been that way since I was about 12, but usually the old ladies, we're all, we're almost all tribes in North America and I'm generalizing about almost all our matriarchal.
20:11 Uh It may have looked like men were running stuff because they ran around headdresses and stuff. But the women still run everything in, in a legitimate tribal culture. The women are mostly sitting down and telling us young men what we better say in that men's mean, what decision we better reach because they think about things a lot deeper than we do. They think about Children, they think about generations,
20:35 they think about environment, we think about things like warfare, conquering, getting away from the women and Children hunting, you know. And so they'll tell you, you better make that decision for me than the chief would walk in and get all puffed up like it was his idea and say, here's what I decided, but everybody knew it was grandma. They came up with the idea, right? So I thought grandma said, say you better make sure you say this.
20:59 Uh Oh yeah, that's a good one. So, uh this one, grandma said, make sure that, that you guys always understand. There's three tenses anytime you're talking about native people and especially Clatsop people, um, past, present and future. And I can always tell when a historian is, is off base because they'll just keep talking about what we did in the past. A
21:22 good example is I've been declared extinct about 12 times since I was old enough to read the books. Um, I was declared extinct at video planet at Fort Clatsop Uh, uh one of our tribal members, it's a direct descendant to Chief Coloway who the fork was given to me as Lewis and Clark left. Although I don't know how they would have taken it with him, but they left it to JK away.
21:44 She was sitting in that presentation and that video came up and said she was extinct. And, uh, you've never seen an 11 year old girl, more livid. She wrote quite, quite a letter and quite a paper. And as a result, the National Park Service has refiled that video and, uh with the accurate story and that shows on somebody helped me out on Tuesday, I believe, uh class of winners story and the DVD s available in their gift shop exclusively.
22:09 And they did a really good job of telling the real story. But think about it. How long did that film play up there saying you were dead? And what does that do to people to keep being told you're dead? You know, I read it in the Oregonian and I read it in the story in the signal when the last Clatsop died, you know, 1905, Jenny Michelle for one thing, she wasn't the last Clatsop
22:31 She wasn't even the last old look. She was very popular. She is a celebrity of sorts. Uh, but we're still here. You know, we still speak our language and our songs take care of our burial sites and our sacred grounds in the Saddle Mountain and all that. Uh We just are real quiet about it. We're not big uh superstars like some of my relatives are that are in every movie, smoke signals, dances with whoops, you know,
22:55 uh dances with Lawrence and para is what, what, what friendly calls, it isn't it great how white guys always put indians better than indians you know, like Lawrence of Arabia, right? He was a better one of those desert guys than the desert guys could be in his kick butt, you know, dances with wolves a great ay I made so back to my past, present future and make sure grandma doesn't get me.
23:18 Um So anytime you talk about native people and it says we did or in the past, we, we did something you're leaving out at least two other aspects that are probably true. So I'll give you an example always, I want to include that past, present or future. So in the past, the Clatsop were fine cedar basket makers and made things like these cedar headbands and, and such. Um, today, the Clatsop
23:43 Nehalem continue to make fine cedar baskets and cedar headbands like this. This was only made a couple of weeks ago. Um, and into the future, the class of the Nehalem people will continue to be fine basket makers and they find cedar baskets and cedar and headbands like this. So that would be accurate. The way I used to deal with it academically when I was writing papers is I would write,
24:06 um, whoever, you know, the Lakota used to slash still and that didn't really work. It doesn't roll off your tongue. You know, the Lakota used to still hunt buffalo, it just doesn't work. And so you have to kind of break it up into at least two sentences. They used to do this, they continue to do this and then always include the clatsop preamble will likely continue into the future
24:30 and find whatever it is to continue to do that. Now, if you know, there's absolutely something that we don't do anymore, you've done all the research, you can, you can't find any evidence that this exists. Uh, among those people you still want to include this breaks the ground through it here. So I'll give you an example. There are lots of many other people who used to have winter ceremonial houses with mass
24:50 songs and dances and the full ceremonial cycle of winter as far as I know. And that's only as far as I know, we don't have any of that. We don't have a long house anywhere in this area. There are some of the buckle shoot scope and Tulalip but nowhere in this area. Um But what you can say is they no longer have the winter ceremonial dances with the mass songs and everything that goes with that.
25:13 But we can expect in the near future that the Clatsop and Nehalem will once again have a winter ceremonial on house with their mass songs, dances and everything to go with that. You always want to give them the benefit of the doubt and never declare anyone extinct. You always wanna say as far as I know, you know, or they choose to remain hidden at this time, you know, would be great.
25:34 There's hardly anything that any truck has lost. That's a bad word. All that myself lost, haven't lost languages, songs, dances or anything else. Some of those have been put up on a shelf for a later time, but they haven't been lost. So you got that past present and future. I can get you to break this up. So I'm gonna tell you a traditional story. Uh
25:58 or you want a story, first story joke. So you get the whole story, a man's story story. OK. Joke. Uh I think the story won, the story won. So yeah, people book him twice too. He must be Chinook
26:16 Uh So I'll tell you the joke because it's an Indian joke. And I wouldn't normally tell you this first part because you'd already know. But, so you can get a concept of how dry our humor can be. And it's not just our humor, it's all Indian humor. Uh, so Karuk people who are relatives of mine, we tell a lot of jokes on people we know my uncle will often start jokes with. So one time Jeff was doing this
26:37 and uh I didn't really do that but it just good to throw somebody's name in there. Um So my Karuk relatives full grown stand about this high, really stocky broad, dark skinned native looking folks. Most northwest coastal looking folks look a lot like me. And even in Lewis and Clark's journals, they remark on the red haired light skinned native people. Uh We've been integrated for, you know, at least 250 years with Chinese Russians and
27:01 Spanish traders before Lewis and Clark got here. So we spoke English and we knew what they were doing before they got here and discovered my Karuk real short, real stocky walk right into a sweat box door without bending over. I tease him about that all the time. Don't even have to bend down to get into that door, just walk straight in, standing straight up. So now that you know that part, what's two miles long and this cold
27:27 I could have great.
27:30 See, it's kind of dry. You don't really laugh, you kinda go. *fake laugh* And if Jack Tom my cousin and Karuk cousin was in the audience, now I tell one about the Clatsop that are about me, but he doesn't get a chance cause he Not here. So I'll tell you a story. This is audience participation and I didn't think you'd have to work this early morning. So uh we traditionally had a, a talking stick or lifting stick.
27:54 So this will be your talking stick or in this case, a lifting stick. So to whatever side of your body you wanna go, you're gonna kinda hold this like a paddle for an hour and you can do it any time. All right. All right, you can stop that because I gotta teach you a word first and the word is yho, yho.
28:14 It's kind of like yah-ho ya-ho if you want to pronounce it that way, it's easier in English the words ya-ho. So everybody together ya-ho and that was pretty bad. So try again 123. Crowd: Ya-ho OK. So here's the story, their creator, by the way, none of us have the concept of the creator as a deity. Creator is like topical cons on
28:40 Lakota sacred energy moving around between you and me and nature and everything else. Um The creator that life force was moving across from the east coast to the west coast, dropping the Indian people and the languages into their place and placing them there along with the animals. And the planet and everything they depend on for survival. And their creator had gotten across the plains
29:02 up on the plateau area and reached the Cascade and trader looked in today and had a whole bunch of Indian people and a whole bunch of languages left and realized the oceans right here, we're running out of time running out of room to place them. And so prayer just dumped that bag over and all those different people and languages landed in this one spot that goes from about south of TM and K
29:26 up to Alaska to the DC or in the Washington area, we have hundreds of different peoples and languages. Uh languages as unintelligible to each other as Chinese is from English, I can go 100 miles up the coast and that language is as unintelligible as Chinese from English, right? Completely different people, different way of being on the world,
29:49 use a lot of the same plants and animals just because of the ecology. So all these different people got dropped here. They really couldn't communicate with one another outside of their own little group. And the creator had made a mistake uh which is very common. Creator makes a lot of mistakes. And then it's up to us to kind of figure it out and work with it. Uh like the way our weather was last week. Big mistake, but look at it today, it was great.
30:13 Uh Creator made a mistake, made the sky, too low sky was about this high. At that time, the stars were right there. People kept bumping their head. Then you look, uh, the animals kept jumping up into the clouds and would be in the sky and little kids at night couldn't go out because they might get trapped in the sky. The sun would come out. They dropped to the ground. So it was a big problem. The birds were only flying about this hike like running into it.
30:38 And so some of the head people got together and the spiritual people and said this is something we have to fix. The creator left this for us to work out on our own because we've been praying about it for years and the sky is still that high. And they were trying to figure out how they were gonna communicate this to one another because they don't speak the same language. They had the Chinook jargon in common. And that's uh it's a, it's not a true language.
31:02 It's a jargon combined with a lot of stuff. So they were able to get the word across. But they realized there are hundreds of tribes that are gonna have to help us lift this sky, which they're lifting ho still very ho OK. You still got it. And uh the only word we all have is ya-ho every single tribe has that word in common. And what it means is everybody get ready to do it and now it's, that's all that ya
31:27 ho so everybody get ready. We work together. We're gonna do it now. So, so word spread. Bring your lifting poles to your place. And we're all gonna try and lift the sky on this particular day at this particular time. And word would go out from the central area on the Columbia River. A man was gonna stand there and yell at a hold and then everybody would go, ya ho and try to lift it up with their lifting hole. So here we go
31:52 left, right.
31:55 And that man at the Columbia River yell, ya-ho. And we all went 123. Everyone: Ya-ho
32:02 That was pretty good actually. But we only budgeted it about like that. And we were like, well, this is gonna be a lot of work. We really gotta put some energy into this. So not everybody dropped their lifting pull. I hope a couple of people left yours up because you gotta prop it up while a couple of us get ready to take another day. So a couple of you hold yours up so you can keep this sky propped up at three inches. We gained
32:24 and uh then the rest of us will go down and now 123 Ya-ho that time it went up about that high. So a couple of you guys keep your sticks up there and we need to keep it up as high as we got it. And we're gonna go one last time because three is a real sacred number and 123 Everyone: Ya-ho! And this sky went up to where it is. Now today you guys were successful, good job. And the rest of the story is
32:49 we made a mistake at the time that we did that last push like that. There were three young men hunting an elk along with their dog and they happened to have wandered up into that cloud when we started lifting. And when we did that last push the cloud, the cloud took those three men and their dog in that up into the sky with them. And if you wanna see them, they're still up there every night,
33:12 you can still see those three men and their dog hunting that and you call it the big dipper. That body of that elk is that big square, rectangular part and it hangs down with me and handler is going up this way and the handle going out that way, what you call a handle. That first star in the handle is actually two stars and then there's another star and then there's that third hunter at the end still trailing that elk.
33:36 One of the remarkable things about that story, that's a very old story. It is pulled all over the northwest is that that second star at, at that very first star, that second little star, the dog is not visible with the naked eye wasn't visible until just a little while back in, in Indian time, uh with Western science that they could see that star. One of the first things the scientist said was,
33:58 how did they know that star was there? There's the dog, right behind the elk so And it help. So, um some of our stories have truth that then gets it catches up as science catches up. You realize that story makes sense. We have stories about tsunamis that are now starting to make sense in the archaeological record. And the archaeologists are having to say, gosh, maybe these guys weren't just here for 13,000 years because they
34:23 know about two other tsunamis that go back to 100,000 years. In their old tradition, they talk about that wall of ice up on the Columbia River during the ice age that they would go visit uh and all the way up to Canada and things like that. So science catches up with us, uh eventually partnerships. Um we're people of partnerships, a lot of people have had a lot of questions about my Chinook
34:46 cousins on the other side of the river and how we're related, especially during the last week's event. It's important to realize that tribe is a totally foreign concept. OK? I I haven't yet met anybody who defined themselves as a tribe before the federal government came in and said you need to organize in order to sell your land. So call yourself a tribe, right?
35:09 That's based on uh western policy of nation to nation treaty making. Uh We didn't have nations for the most part. Um And I always say that because there are some exceptions, but for the most part, we didn't have nations like that had kings and chiefs and rulers that you could go talk to about selling land. We had individual landowners and it's still reflect, reflected in our place names like Nakota
35:34 Mechanic, Neo COIT, uh Neocon, those all start with any, any in the jargon means the place of. We didn't name rivers, mountains, villages or anything else but nekotak would designate that place where kotap lives ne near Cox at that place where the cocky are living. So the cox, it might be the cox family.
35:57 We don't know but think in terms of 30 people living together in, in a couple of houses on that spot on the river. They have primary fishing rights probably right there. Um Gathering rights right there, but they don't own that land. They don't have any concept of owning that land. They have a concept of managing that land. They also don't have to report to Coboway or anybody else that later called themselves their chief.
36:20 There's no, no political structure to support that. It's just individual families on the land related by intermarriage and language use and come together for winter ceremonials. Um And it's not until later on when they said, well, what do you call yourselves here? Uh We didn't call ourselves. Clatsop either. That's a, a work for us. Latsop, people that dried fish.
36:42 So there's a lot of people up there called us people that dried fish. Latsop of, there's one village that was referred to as Clatsop up there by Tan Point. And, uh, when they were trying to settle the treaties in 1851 and explain to us what we were trying to sign away,
36:59 we said, well, we need to get together with our relatives and figure out what we're gonna call each other because we're related to everybody from the tip of that river past Celilo south to Roseburg over to the coast. And on up, we're all interrelated, intermarried, uh had a lot of the same language in common and the US was not going to treaty for that bigger chunk of territory. They had no concept of that.
37:22 Nor did they trust that we could get everybody to sign away their rights for that bigger piece. So the Clatsop Got together with the Killmon and the Ams and the Klaxon I Clarus and everybody else around here. And basically said this is the area we normally use from the mouth of the river to Lewis and Clark River uh at Mount Columbia, Lewis and Clark River up to the top of Saddle Mountain, down to the end of Elk Creek in uh Cannon Beach area.
37:46 And then all the way up the coast to the tip called that Clatsop land And then ATM said, OK, we'll take that line and we'll go from there over this way. And same thing with Clatsop and I, and all those other people. So they are artificial definitions, you know, um when people complain about all you guys are organizing as a tribe now and you should be a part of us. Well, there's no historical context for that.
38:09 We're the only tribe in Oregon that wasn't sent to a reservation.
38:14 You understand what a reservation is? Anything, anybody quickly? What's a, what's a reservation? It's important that we get that reservation is not something the government gives you real important concept. A reservation is land reserved by the natives for themselves in exchange for certain things and letting you have the rest of the land
38:37 and it's misapplied a lot like they sent them to the reservation. But what you got to understand is they had already reserved that land in most cases. There's a couple of exceptions like Oklahoma but for the most part, we said this is our best land. It's got our burial grounds in it. Our fishing grounds. We're reserving this for ourselves. You can have this other part for an exchange. Now, we might not stay on that reservation. We might travel all over the damn place.
39:02 But if war broke out, um or we were under threat from the settlers and pioneers, which is frequently the case because there were Boies on ourselves, then we could go to the reservation and be protected by the Indian agents. Um, and so when they say, well, they sent him to the Reds, what that means is maybe a war broke out and, and we were the cause of it or whatever. So they would take you back to the Reds for perfection, um, or prosecution, whatever
39:27 is the fact that we didn't end up with the reds. Um, and so they didn't send us anywhere. Uh We had the option of joining the grand law at their res if we wanted protection, uh We could join the Selitz of the reservation, if we wanted a protection, we could join uh the Quinault, which a bunch of us did um for protection, but it was totally up to us. Most Chinook and Clatsop
39:51 of people though were successful businessmen and traders and we didn't want to leave this area and didn't need protection, you know, really owned businesses like my grandpa George W cook, who owned a pineland business, owned the entire west side of the city of Astoria um down to the river. Um No big deal. He bought up all the tribal land and held in a trust for tribal people.
40:12 Uh very successful guy. So what would he need to go to Red so that he wouldn't, he, he owned the res and let everybody else live on the res Um That now in contemporary times, it's got to be a problem because uh some Clatsop went to Grand law and they want to speak for all Clatsop A lot of Clatsop went to GONA
40:35 They're not interested in speaking for all clatsop, but they genuinely are uh where a dog in the fight. Uh The Chinook tribe is trying to get recognition up there again and they think we should join them and really, it's everybody's ultimate decision. Um Parts of my family have joined with the Chinooks in the past and the Grand Rone supported the siletz Um But never felt the need to join with or be
40:59 a member of any tribe because that doesn't make me Indian, I'm Indian because of the way I live and speak and practice in my community. that I'm in, it's not because they give me a card that says you're now officially 1/8, you know, whatever the heck it is. Um So people will ally with different confederations and these are all confederated tribes. Remember that none of these are tribes like tribes,
41:23 they're confederations of different people come together saying we wanna settle, they'll come together. This is also grandma's word. They come together based on land connection, intermarriage alliances, political and economic. And then the advantages. If there's no advantage of aligning with you, then my life, if you might as well stay and won't ask for it. Uh If you can't do anything for me, I can't do it for myself, then I'll just be me. But I'm still Clatsop of you know,
41:48 still Clatsop for the most Clatsop are known as the uh peaceful people of the Columbia River. And there's a good reason for that. If Walmart, you don't want anybody too darn mad at you because then they don't go spend money. Um It was also a place where warring people would frequently come together and be training in the same place. And so in uh some communities were known as mediators uh, up
42:12 to the Olympic Peninsula in British Colombia, often they would call on a Clatsop mediators to settle disputes among the warring parties. There's a lot more warfare from that side of the river on up than there was on this side of the river. Uh, and there's a lot more people competing for resources that we have here too. Um, so we've just kind of laid low and been happy and come straight with us and meet and have time and we're still kind of that way today.
42:36 There are some people that have kind of felt a cringe about us talking about the land, not being treated and taken care of like we're gonna want all that our own back. We're just happy go lucky folks who look just like you and I'm not gonna go yet and, uh, live every day life and old job and everything else. We would like to have a little piece of land somewhere to have a long house some day to be able to have a sweat lodge in the ground
42:59 instead of our funeral sweat grounds or what we call transient sweat lodges. The ones above the ground is for when we're traveling. But our lodges belong in the ground and they're built like houses in the ground. But we're told we can't build them like that unless we own the land and have control over it, that we could take care of it. So it can't be somebody else's land. They're letting us use or loaning to us or, you know, it's gotta be ours. But yeah, we like to have a little
43:24 land be able to have a little cultural camp for kids and do stuff with kids from the school, but we don't want all this back. We're not, we're not diluted, you know, and, and we don't think we're gonna get any large proportion of any of this back
43:37 and make sure I got all the grandma's words, sorry about the beads hitting your mic there. Uh We got the three tenses. We all lifted this guy that's pretty good. Um And it's important to recognize that just like we lifted this guy together. That's how the Clatsop have always done everything in partnerships, cooperation with a lot of other trucks, which is true for most Northwest tribes, we had to do a lot of cooperating
43:59 and so we intermarried amongst one another so that there were alliances and uh people owe you stuff and you could count on support if you needed it. And, uh, we all lived at the sky today. Not one of us could have done it. And it's gonna be that, that takes us into a clatsop future clatsop future of the hand of future people working together. We have a lot of allies in uh the city of Seaside, the Prevention Center and all those other agencies.
44:22 And that's what it's gonna take. Clatsop of the hand though. I know people to do this by themselves. So, uh and we're still here part, recognized, we're still here. There's still a big presence. Go up to our Gateway Center in lebron and she's giving me the high sign for her questions. So, um but I'm not wrapped up yet, but let's open it up so that you can say what you need to say. Yeah, microphone
44:44 we got,
44:50 oh, why did I get, am? OK. Um I heard some lectures across the street in Washington and I realized that Lewis and Clark were over there and they came over here for the winter. However, and you told us a lot about the Clatsop and how friendly you are, how nice you are. And I, and I get that all the time. Every tribe the same way
45:16 every Indian I talk to says the same thing. Anyway, that's a anyway. Um Did you help Lewis and Clark a lot in finding their Elk food, which was supposed to be here and not bigger animals and better for them to eat and it was better fishing and all that type of thing. Did you help them a lot when they came over here? Did you know they were coming over here
45:40 a little back, a little bit about them? Um, that's actually covered a lot more in the effects of Lewis and Clark at the end of the trail. But let me just kind of briefly, they made that vote to come over here based on the game that was more plentiful over here that they were used to eating. Uh, these are guys that nearly starved to death because they wouldn't eat the salmon Right. Nearly started eating their shoe leather while
46:04 they ended up because they wouldn't eat salmon. And they liked red meat. They liked Elk and they liked dog more than anything. They, they ate a lot of dog when they were here. They ate almost all of our dogs. They didn't eat their dog and we thought that was funny. They wouldn't eat salami but all the other dogs they can trade for. Um, but they eat a lot of meat. A lot of meat. Um, and I've seen some of the statistics.
46:27 I don't wanna kick it out there because maybe somebody else knows more. But it was a lot, like, hard to comprehend for Uncle Bay kind of thing eating them all the way through. Um, and they had run into some hard times over there. The weather is also worse on that. Side of the river much of the time. And they heard about the peaceful class of people that were used to hosting traders. Um that probably wouldn't go to war and there was still a
46:49 lot of active war over in the lower sound at the time, going on between tribes and other people. Um You know, you go back and read the history. There's a lot of history of um settlers and traders and ships getting attacked from back to River Island south to the mouth, not so much on our side. And so that, that was probably a factor and the fact that there were a bunch of help and they were easy to get.
47:14 And so they had sent a little exploratory trip over here at some point and they'd seen that there's just help coming out of our ears and the weather's better and they've already offered us a place to camp and we weren't negotiating a hard bargain for that at all. We just said you guys just need to get out of the rain. So that's how they ended up here. Yeah, one more question. The report
47:40 in the reports. There was lots of talk about vine roots and they lived on roots when they were here in Green Park. What roots are they talking about? Well, Guapado and camus, it would have been the main ones but Guapado and camus. But there, there's, you know, probably, um historically, at least 30 different roots. That were part of our diarrhea, right? Without having native people on the land though, we,
48:04 there's not an inch in North America except for the deserts. Um, that was not cultivated. And so we, you know, as settlers came across they adopt the, great wild North America untamed and nobody living here. And they didn't realize that almost every food source in every inch of the forest was being maintained or burned by native people in order to make those plants grow back. So that Wapato is basically extinct here. Now, that was a staple diet item.
48:28 You have to go up to Soy's Island to start running into Wapato and it's almost inedible because it has to be played with by native people with root sticks. It's kind of like your domestic potato. If you quit playing around with that potato and let it just sit for about three generations. It'll go back to the original potato, which is almost inedible, just a starchy ball of fiber. And that's what our guapado on camus is done where native people don't still play with it.
48:52 It's still there as a plant. It doesn't occur anywhere around here in any great numbers. It's still there, but it's not a food source, but that's what they're talking about is guapado was just harvested in heaps from any swampy here. But it was because it was cultivated and we still have a lot of plants here that don't belong here that were cultivated by the medicinal. Uh That's it. I my day. I'm sorry, I have to wrap. Glad you have uh at least three more opportunities to hear
49:17 different talks about me uh during the next three days. And uh I wanna thank you back all I see in our language. Thank you for your good e your time, your good energy. And I hope you feel good about what through
49:35 come on. Our next program is Jo Jo. He will.