Giffen to address southern Oregon watershed council

Tribal Council Secretary Jack Giffen Jr. will continue the Grand Ronde Tribe's educational effort in its ceded lands in southern Oregon on Tuesday, Jan. 24, when he speaks at the annual general membership meeting of the Seven Basins Watershed Council at the Gold Hill Library.

The Seven Basins Watershed includes almost 261,000 acres in the Rogue River Valley in southern Oregon northwest of Medford. Approximately 13,000 people live within the watershed's boundaries.

Giffen was invited to speak at the meeting in late November by the Watershed Council's Assistant Coordinator Alicia Fitzgerald. She asked Giffen to focus on the history of the Grand Ronde Tribe in southern Oregon.

The invitation was prompted, Fitzgerald said, by several Seven Basins Watershed Council board members reading about the Sept. 10 signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Tribe, Bureau of Land Management and Nature Conservancy regarding management of the Table Rocks area near Medford.

"We would love someone from your council to come speak about Native American history in this region and learn more about how the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde passes on traditional customs and knowledge," Fitzgerald wrote in a Nov. 11 e-mail.

Fitzgerald says as many as 40 people will attend the annual general membership meeting.

The Seven Basins Watershed Council organized in the summer of 2001 after the dissolution of the Evans Creek Watershed Council. Its bylaws, mission statement and first election of board members and officers were hammered out by January 2002. It meets the third Tuesday of every month at the Gold Hill Public Library northwest of Medford.

More information about the council is available at www.sevenbasins.org.