Yesteryears - Feb. 15, 2016

2011 – A naming ceremony was held for achaf-hammi – the new Tribal plankhouse. The Tualatin-Kalapuya word means “a house built of cedar planks,” which translates to simply “plankhouse.”

2006 – The statue of Martha Jane Sands was moved from the main Spirit Mountain Casino entrance to the Legends’ lobby. The statue was moved due to the high number of customers that congest the front lobby each day.

2001 – The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde’s Veterans’ Memorial Ad Hoc Committee scheduled a first annual dinner and auction at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall in Willamina for late March. Dinner tickets were $7.50 and made attendees eligible for door prizes, including a PlayStation 2. The committee had raised more than $40,000 of its $300,000 goal.

1996 – The Tribe and Spirit Mountain Casino donated the first collection of financial offerings left at the statue of Martha Jane Sands to three local Head Start programs. Offerings to Martha Jane, which have included bouquets of flowers and cash donations, began appearing at the base of the bronze statue shortly after the casino opened in October 1995.

1991 – Items collected by Andrew Kershaw, who served for 20 years as agent and surgeon at the Grand Ronde Reservation, were displayed for the first time at the Oregon Historical Center in Portland. Items included basketry, beadwork and artifacts from other Tribes that were collected by Kershaw when he served on other Reservations.

1986 – Smoke Signals started using the new Tribal logo in its masthead. “We felt the Tribe has a new logo now, and it should be identified with the newsletter,” the editor wrote. Other changes included improved letterhead and cover stock, as well as an improved graphically clean design.

Yesteryears is a look back at Tribal history in five-year increments through the pages of Smoke Signals.