Closed Captions

Sam Robinson, a Chinook council member, traces his ancestry and describes pre-contact Chinook society along the Columbia River—their plank houses, trade networks, and relationship with salmon. He discusses the tribe's encounters with Lewis and Clark, their ongoing struggle for federal recognition since 1963, and contemporary efforts to revive Chinook cultural practices including canoe building, first-salmon ceremonies, and the plank house reconstruction project.

Transcript

0:03 Well, good afternoon and welcome to the tent of many Voices and core of Discovery 2. Core Discovery 2 is a national traveling a multi-agency federal exhibit about the Lewis and Clark expedition. It has uh a partnership among many different federal agencies.
0:26 See many of them listed on the stage here. The National Park Service is the lead agency, and those of us you see in uniform that are traveling with this exhibit work for the National Park Service. What we do here in the tenement Voices is we bring in a wide variety. Our presenters to share with us some different aspects
0:48 of that Lewis and Clark expedition 200 years ago. But also to look at the history and culture of all those various American Indian nations that were living here for thousands of years before the arrival of Lewis and Clark and the other Europeans or European Americans. And we have with us a representative of one of those American Indian nations.
1:13 We have Sam Robinson. He is Chinook. He's a Chinook council member. And he is a longtime resident of Clark County. He's also involved in the planning and building of a Capital Plak House, and he is gonna talk and share with us some of the
1:38 history and culture of the Chinook people. So let's give him a warm welcome here the 10 of many voices.
1:47 Hi,
1:49 my name's Sam Robinson. My father was Scott Robinson. His mother was Dora Clark. Her mother was Annie Hawks. Her father was John Hawks. And uh his father was Tom Hawks Huxwell who's who was a signer of the 1851 treaty. I like to I like to say this because uh um you know, in Indian culture we really take a lot of pride
2:13 of tracing back our history because for a long time in the Indian country we were forced to forget a lot of our history, so I like to talk about that.
2:26 Who, who were the, who were the Chinook people, you know, the Chinook people, they existed on this Columbia River out here and, uh, um, oh, these are some of my snapshots. I thought I'd entertain you guys with. Anyway, the Chinook people, they existed along the Columbia River all the way from the Dolls to the mouth of the Columbia River down the Tillamook up into the Willapa. There was, there was about 1111 different tribes along the way and some of them you've probably heard of, you know, up in the northern area,
2:51 you know, the Wasco, the click attack. The Moloma, the Willama, and the Cascades, and a lot of those tribes were seeded through treaties to, uh, to the warm up to the warm springs and, and in the Yakamon and down in the Grand Ronde. I myself today as a council member for the Chination, I represent the, uh, the five lower river tribes, the latza, the Cat Lama, the Willapa,
3:16 the Wakayakan, and the Lower Chinook people. We have about 2500 members there today. The Chinook people They're, they were pretty dominant to the Columbia River. They, they uh lived in plank houses because of the, uh, they didn't have to travel. The river provided for them. It provided smell. It provided sturgeon and steelhead. It provided transportation,
3:38 so we hung along the river and we made our domain in the river. It was uh. One of the uh quotes that I like to use is uh Doctor Steven Beckham from Lewis and Clark College was our ethno historian and he, uh, did an interview for an article in the Seattle PI. It made me proud when he said that, uh, Chinook people were the the oceans of America. You know, because if we knew how to uh
4:03 manage that river just like the pharaohs did their river. And we have many, many of the, uh, chiefs along the river that control that, you know, the chiefs such as casino and and Comcon and, you know, pre-contact, you know, with the Chinook people, you know, we, uh, we were powerful back then because we did a lot of trade off the river to Indian tribes that were, uh, up in the desert area would come down and get fish oil that we had prepared
4:28 and uh uh. And they traded, we traded for elk and, and so forth. And down at Kapotal village down there, it was thought that uh um Doctor Ken Ames from Portland State thought that uh
4:42 From their findings that the Chit people were probably manufacturing armor made out of el tides and there's trading now as far as Northern California. So there's a vast trade going on in, you know, with the Chinook people. And then Captain Gray and and uh uh Captain Gray came into the river and then the whole new world of trade opened up for us, you know,
5:04 and now all of a sudden we're getting things like iron and copper and and uh beads and things that uh uh people.
5:14 Definitely would want outside of our area, so we were controlling all that commerce in and out of the river. And the Chinook, the Chinook nation or the Chinook, uh Chinookan people along the river became so popular that other tribes outside the area would actually want to uh uh. want to uh marry their daughters into the tribe for the endowments because there was large endowments that were arranged amongst people.
5:39 So they would actually flatten their daughters' heads, flatten them back so that they would look Chinookan and to make them more appealing to the chiefs so they could trade them, their daughters into the into the tribes and they could have that connection with all the power that was going up and down the river.
5:57 And then of course then by the time Lewis and Clark came in we've already been doing a lot of trading, you know, so when Lewis and Clark came in and they said, you know, we looked at these guys and. They didn't look any different than anybody else, you know, the other people were coming up the river. The only thing different is these people were going down the river. They actually they looked a little pathetic, you know, and they didn't really have anything we wanted, you know. They came down and they were,
6:18 they're pretty down on their last maybe 10% of trade items and so forth and it was just. He didn't have anything we wanted, you know, so we just kind of let them go on by, you know, by the time they went to by Ridgefield, you know, Capo village there, the village had 14 plank houses, um, but maybe about 800 people living there, and we were wearing overalls and British jackets and we had firearms, you know, so.
6:43 We were pretty seasoned to the trade, but we didn't let them start, you know, they got, they got hunkered down in a dismal niche and they thought it was the end of the world, you know, for 4 or 5 days or hunkered down there and they kept making many attempts to get around that, uh, around the dismal niche, you know, and, uh, they thought it was the end of it and then all of a sudden the chief from the Calamas comes. Paddling across the river, he's standing in his canoe and he's coming to trade,
7:07 getting food and uh they, they just, they couldn't believe it, you know, first thing they thought that the canoes were magical and I tell you from my experience, I think those canoes do take care of us. I've been out in the Columbia River in our canoes and I have a lot of faith in in in in those canoes. There's one of ours that's sitting out there right now and it's they're beautiful. We hope to have some larger westerns soon. But so we know, we talked them into moving over to Fort Klass, you know,
7:31 they made that famous decision down there at the, uh, station camp whether to move back up here to Stevenson or move down there to where Fort Klassip is, and they chose Fort Platip. That might have been their mistake. Because they got, they got a little moist down there, but you know, we, we made sure that they, they stayed alive and we, we fed them well and. And when they, when of course when they left, they signed over the for to the Chinook people, you know, so,
7:55 uh. Lewis and Clark, you know, back then, you know, we, we helped them out today, they helped us out, you know, I mean. It was probably about 4 or 5 years ago we didn't realize if we're gonna even participate in this whole entire commemoration. Um, council, we had a tough decision to make. What are we gonna do, you know. My my thoughts were.
8:20 To the council I was new on the council, so I was a new voice, uh, was that one thing that the Lewis and Clark can get back to us is enlighten the people on the plight of the Chin people, let everybody know where the Chin people stand today and where our battle's been for the last 33 years and so forth. So there was something to be had, you know, and still the decision hadn't been made yet, so.
8:44 One day we put a canoe out on the water and it was, uh, weather kind of like this, maybe not quite as cold but windy, not rainy but windy and choppy down at the mouth of Columbia River. We heard there were some reenactors they're gonna make a trial run down the river and it was Scott Mandrell and his people. So we're curious, we're curious about those people. And uh When we did Uh
9:10 We waited and they waited in the river, had a couple of fish we're gonna gift our elders. They never came. And then we get word, hey, they're already on the beach. They overturned their canoe about 20 miles up the river and they gave up. So we came and we gifted them a fish, you know, and then it was, it was kind of a uh.
9:29 They didn't expect anybody. Nobody came along and gifted them anything, so they weren't prepared to give back because it's always traditional to give both ways and uh. Gifted in the fish, they have no way to prepare it so we have an elder there. He's about 82 years old, George Logergan pulls out a little pocket knife and he filets that fish out and cooks it right on the beach for them and, and at that at that time he had this bond with Scott Manel, you know, and
9:54 Scott gets back to, uh, Saint Louis and he starts right out. He wanted to know who this George Loergan was and wanna know where he lived and so forth and so George, uh. They finally got a hold of George and they when they kicked off in Saint Louis, they flew George and his wife Milly who makes wonderful baskets uh back to uh uh. Saint Louis and And uh
10:18 It came time it came time for Jefferson to hang the medal on Louis there and stop portraying Louis, uh, stopped him and said, George Lagan in the crowd, and he gifted that medal to George and so there's that bond today. And then they made a trip to Bay Center and they picked up a little canoe called Little Wolf that Georgia carved out for his grandchildren and, uh, um. Little Wolf,
10:42 they took Little Wolf and Little Wolf followed them all the way down the trail until they got to the playing house, and then they gifted it back to George and Milly then and then so Little Wolf made the entire journey and Little Wolfs so we're up on the porch today and you know it's a great little canoe and George's got 3 other canoes in the works, but they're almost as long as the stage right now, 82 years old and they still car canoes, you know, so. And he's also got,
11:06 he's running cattle out there in Bay center too. It's, it's just a great, you know, it was a great bond that we made that day and then we decided to move forward with the Lewis and Clark event and um.
11:20 And it has, it has it every, every place we go, you know, every place we put our canoes in the water, people are happy to see us and then we, we feel good, you know, and then when we tell people of, of the uh. Of the tribe, you know, in our in our. In our plight. Well, let me explain to you what you're seeing here, but I was just gonna put this up here for you guys to see as a backdrop. I'll explain to you. This is one of our ceremonies that you know,
11:45 in the last 5 years we decided we need to start bringing back our culture. This particular ceremony here is our first this ceremony. And when you, when you bring that first salmon into the river, there's certain ways you need to prepare it and there's certain ways you need to treat the fish, you know, you, uh, you bring the fish up and one of the elders kicks the fish to kill the fish and then the, the children there, their feet putting berries in the fish's mouth and feeding the fish and you honor the fish and then you cook them and
12:09 everybody eats the eats from that fish and then when you're done.
12:14 Eating that fish, you put it back into the river, you put the bones back into the river. And that allows that fish to go back out to the into the ocean and let all the other salmon know what kind of respect that you've treated him with and they'll come up the river too. Some strange things have occurred, you know, we've we've taken those bones out into the river in our canoes and you put them back into the water and we generally go out there on an incoming tide,
12:39 so the water is always coming up the river so we don't get sucked out into the ocean.
12:44 And we've gone out there and you lay down the bones. They're on some cedar boughs and they're floating there in the water, you just take lay it down. Well, one year we just set it down and those bones just shot out like a rocket right back out to the ocean. And the wildlife they're always around us too, you know, the eagles, they come and check us out and the sea lions and the salmon and so I think, you know, uh, nature itself understands that you know people are out there again and,
13:09 and they really uh. They like they they like that, we like that too.
13:16 This particular here is the opening of uh William Clark Park. It was uh it was a great day.
13:23 And well I'll let you keep putting those anyway so,
13:26 so anyway, so we, we decided to come out and we decided to go ahead and participate with certain Lewis and Clark events or some of them that we couldn't because of the politics of it, but, uh, but, uh, in reality I, I was, uh, my cousin and I, we, we put it up to vote that we would come in court too and tell the story and the council vote allow us to do that, you know, and today, you know, um.
13:51 Today one of our biggest battles for the tribe is to uh. Is to battle for federal recognition. Um
14:01 In 1963, 1967. We, uh, we're gonna go for some uh. Some aid for a few of our elders that needed some, some medical aid and the federal government came up and told us, you know, uh, what do you, what are you talking about? You're not a federally recognized tribe anymore. We're like, what are you what are you talking about? Well, there was a head of the DIA that decided he would go ahead and swipe over 100 tribes off the list of recognized
14:25 tribes and us being a landless tribe was, it was a pretty easy pick, you know, for them, even though it took an act of Congress to uh take us away and that never occurred. But meanwhile they're, they're gracious enough to uh create a process for you to go through to become recognized again. And so we, we went through that process for 26 years. And uh only, only to be turned down.
14:50 And then right at the end of uh uh. Right at the end of the Bush administration, Kevin Grover saw it in himself to, uh, take, take a look at those recommendations that were being placed on his desk because he didn't believe that the research was done properly and he had actually hired an attorney to go through all the paperwork and they looked through all the paperwork and he called our counsel back there and he said, I want your counsel to come back to DC.
15:14 I want you to be back here in 24 hours and I want you not to tell anybody that you're coming. So it was a great day, you know, uh, they went back there and had a big ceremony and people came in down from the House and the Senate and everything to witness the signing of the, the recognition.
15:31 And then we, uh, my granddaughter. And then we went to uh uh.
15:38 A 90 day appeal process. And uh With that on the eighty-ninth day of the ninety-day appeal process on our federal recognition, the Qua tribe decided that they would go ahead and appeal to appeal us and uphold our recognition.
15:53 And um
15:57 So we, we appealed it, we won the appeal. And then the Quinaults
16:03 Stated 9 questions to Gail Norton on whether the process was even a good process to begin with. And upheld it again for another year and a half. Well, Gary Johnson, our chairman, happened to be back in Washington DC about 3 days before
16:21 Neil McCaleb's decision to, uh, whether to carry on with the recognition or not, and he was there to kick off the Lewis and Clark, and there's only 33 chairmens from 3 tribes back there, so we thought that this was, this was a great sign for us that out of all these tribes that were along the trail that Kerry was back there with George and Laura Bush having lunch only only 3 days before the decision came.
16:43 At the end of uh
16:46 At the end of the uh. We about 4:30, Gary's getting on the plane to come back and uh he gets a call from the, the BIA. And the BI told him as they were closing the doors that they turned us down.
17:04 So today, this, this lady right here, she raised my, uh, my uncle down on Goose Point. Goose Point is a small village in Bay Center. It's over, over the over the uh bluff it down to some swamp land. And uh The reason that was a village in Goose Point there is because we, we refused to sign a few of the treaties.
17:28 Some of our treaties were ratified. Therefore they, they forced us off the rivers to hide from the from the military and when we went down onto the when we went down on to the uh uh.
17:40 Into the Willapa, we had to hide in lands that nobody else wanted. Anyway, but the good story about this one is that Philip, he'll be speaking here in a couple weeks. He, he was raised by Chicha, his grandmother there, and he didn't even speak English until he was 5 years old and went into kindergarten, but he still remembers, you know, Chicha and and living down on Goose Point and, uh, how the happy life that, you know, it was a good life for him. It was,
18:05 you know, and he learned how to respect the land and he definitely, uh, she kept him working hard, you know, chopping firewood and, and everything going there.
18:14 That's my great, great grandmother Katherine George. She was a wealthy person. She's wearing a lot of detail in there. She's got a nice 4 point Hudson Bay blanket on. That's that's my grandmother. I was unfortunate. I never was able to meet her.
18:30 But anyway, so, um,
18:34 You know, we, we battle ahead, but you know, as the tribe for recognition, but we will we also we're proud we're not waiting we're not waiting for things, you know, I mean the tribe, we're trying to bring back our culture things such as Lewis and Clark, such as the plank house, you know, uh, really helped us bring back a lot, uh, the, the thing about the plank houses, you know, all of a sudden now you're starting to learn how to, uh, use cedar again, you know, making cedar houses, you know, making cedar headbands, you know,
18:58 gathering. And so forth, you know, because the, the Chin people that they were, they were heavy on the gathering they made they they used uh uh spruce root from the spruce trees to weed baskets and that that spruce roots would swell up and make you water tight baskets that you could cook in, you know, cedar, cedar was the tree of life. Cedar provided you with clothing in the inner bark you could. clothing you could make canoes, um,
19:23 you could, uh, make plank houses. You could also, uh, they used it for diapers for their babies, you know, so I mean, uh, there, there was a lot given from the earth there. The plank house is a beautiful project. I don't know if many of you have been out there. It's over in Richfield at the wildlife refuge, but. A lot of a lot of heart and soul went into went into that building to build this, this replica. I, well, I don't even like to call it a replica anymore.
19:48 I just call it the most modern tuna plant house today.
19:53 Because there was
19:56 So much life in the plank house, you know, I mean, the family would gather in there during the winter and each house, each house was actually uh um. He had a head of a household in there and there could be 60 to 100 people living in that house and he was responsible for the health and welfare of all those people in that house, so he would live on the wealthy end of the house, you know, and, uh. Yeah He was, he
20:20 took care of everybody from his immediate family down right on down to the slaves, you know, that had been taken in from other tribes.
20:31 And it was warm. It was cozy. There's a lot going on and a lot of storytelling, a lot of basketry being made. Maybe it could be nets that were being made from nettles or, uh, a lot of stones and so forth that could be pecked to make fishing weights.
20:46 But we lived on the river. Therefore, water, water was everything, you know, we had no need to move off from the river and today we still.
20:54 would like to stay on the river.
21:00 But a lot of our ceremonies, like I said, a lot of our ceremonies, our first good ceremonies we're bringing like naming ceremonies. We got 3 canoes that we've named just recently. Uh, we hope to get more canoes on the water. Uh, we're, we're putting together a canoeing society with Grand Ron because there's a lot of Chimean people in the Grand Ronde from this middle river area, and they're recent, they're right now they've got a 35 ft canoe in the works and, and we hope to, uh,
21:23 build a 36 ft canoe because we want to have a bigger one and uh. And we, we just recently paddled the paddle to Illwal, you know, it was our first time to be in the paddle, and we paddled 9 days, a little over 110 miles up through the up through the sound, and next year, uh, we plan on paddling our second year we're gonna paddle to Macau and uh, we, uh,
21:48 the shortest route seems to be up the coast, but I don't know if it can also allows us to land on the beach or not, so we'll probably end up going up to the sound, but, uh. It's great, you know, it's great to be able to stop in every one of those villages and you're accepted onto their shorelines and they they feed you and and there's a lot of drumming and dancing and just it's, it's just a great and then you pick up the next morning it might be 4 o'clock in the morning and you start paddling again and you're
22:12 tired by the time you reach the shores, but they take care of you again and you do this day after day until you reach your final destination and then they usually have about a 3 or 4 day party going on there.
22:35 Today we exist down in Chinook, down on the coast. We, we, we've existed in a, uh, I believe it's about a 1926 school building. Uh, we've been able to, they've been able to provide us with a space down there for the last 33 years.
22:51 One of the hard things is right now is I know the school, the school district down there wants to get rid of that building.
22:59 They, they don't. Want to turn it over to A large developer. Uh, they're hoping that the tribe can somehow come up with some money to buy it but we don't have the money, so we're hoping that we can work out some kind of a long term lease with them. It's not much. Uh, we just had a commemoration event down there a couple weeks ago, uh, 4 days. We've had a lot of free salmon dinners and,
23:21 and we did some drumming and ceremonials and talked about our culture and our past and history and it was, it was a great time and a lot of friendly faces come down. We had a lot of people from up here, a lot of people that I see up here every day came down to visit us and. And uh just to just for people to come down and say hey wow wow this is how you exist you you guys deserve a little bit better than this and we said well this is just we're we're glad to have this right now
23:45 we move forward, you know I've had people come up to me and say, well, you know, you're you know you got a casino. I said no, that's not us we don't have a casino. In fact, we voted in 1999 not to go into gaming, you know, had we had we voted to go into gaming and maybe be fairly recognized today, but we, we didn't want to sell our souls to. To become fairly recognized, we thought there was a better way to do that.
24:09 But then then people are just, just awed by the fact that the, you know, the the tribe is not a federally recognized tribe because most of them say, hey, I've read about you in school, you know, and sure you're still there. You, you're in the journals you gotta be around, you know, the Lewis and Clark journals, you know, I said, yeah, you know, but, but we're not, we're working our way back. I said it may take a federal lawsuit or it may take a bill from Congress, you know, so
24:32 I always promote the fact that if you see your congressional people, your senators to. You know, lobby lobby for that Chinook recognition, and I think with this Lewis and Clark, this whole Lewis and Clark scenario, it's really, uh, brought a light to the to that fact and more people are putting a little more pressure on the politicians. It seems like politicians are a little more apt to talk to us nowadays, so I, we really appreciate any of that that you can do for us.
24:59 We did a reenactment with Lady Washington out in Baker Bay. And it was, it was a beautiful day and they, they flew flew our flag for us all the way up from, uh, Oregon all the way up into Baker Bay.
25:14 Any day in the out on the canoe is a great day and any day drumming is a great day also.
25:25 We're gonna be doing a reenactment this Saturday too, um, probably about 12 o'clock out here by, uh.
25:32 By Husong and Larry's we're gonna do a reenactment with one of the long boats from Lady Washington to do a trade reenactment. Weather providing, of course weather probably won't bother us too much. We don't mind the rain it's it's not too bad.
25:47 That there is at the Chinook Point down there by Fort Columbia. Um, there's a cove down in there where the Chinook people used to set it down inside the cove and wait to watch the ships come up into the into the mouth of the Columbia River so they could go out and trade. Trade was trade, you know, I mean we could like refer to the trade and how we control the trade once, once the first ship came through and we realized that they wanted.
26:11 They wanted those furs we started stuffing those plank houses full of furs, you know, and we start trading with the other tribes and really bringing them in there and in the plank houses there was, there would be. Trenches or storage facilities dug underneath the bunks or into the floor. So, um, when Lewis and Clark stepped into the plant houses for the first time down there at Capapotal, they didn't see a whole lot going on as far as storage,
26:34 but there was a lot of stuff stored on the floor that they didn't see. And, uh, so we would fill those plank houses full and then trade out and build that empire. One of the one of the sad stories is that uh in about the 1850s.

Tent of Many Voices

Sam Robinson on Chinook history, culture, and federal recognition

Sam Robinson

Chinook

26:49

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Sam Robinson on Chinook history, culture, and federal recognition

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