Yesteryears - Sept. 1, 2024

Yesteryears

2019 – The Tribe closed on its purchase of the Blue Heron Paper Mill site from Washington developer George Heidgerken, returning the land to Indigenous ownership for the first time since it was ceded to the federal government in 1855. The Charcowah Village of the Clowewalla and the Kosh-huk-shix Village of Clackamas were forcibly removed from the falls to the Grand Ronde Reservation in the 1850s.

2014 – The Tribe heard a report on the use of the Spirit Mountain Community Fund grant and remaining funds from a National Endowment for the Arts grant, to integrate Tribal basketry traditions and language, as one of the Tribe’s cultural heritage preservation projects. The Tribe also published three children’s books about how to weave cedar bark baskets.

2009 – Tribal members were hard at work finishing the new plankhouse near the uxyat Powwow Grounds at Fort Yamhill State Heritage Area. They hoped to finish the work in the fall.

2004 – The state’s first Indian Housing Fair took place at the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, highlighting housing opportunities for the state’s Indigenous residents.

1999 – Tribal member Mark Grosser and his wife, Patti, expanded their Salem tattoo business to add a career school teaching the art of tattooing.

1994 – The Tribe was working closely with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and U.S. Fish and Wildlife experts to preserve a population of Nelson’s checker-mallow, a threatened species native to Oregon, that had been growing in the construction site for Spirit Mountain Casino. Existing plants were incorporated into a nature walk with educational materials on the area’s native grasslands. Some plants were moved to establish a new population, and the Tribe began controlling bush and noxious weeds at a third site, to encourage expansion of another checker-mallow population.

1989 – The Tribe updated its burial fund regulations, placing the duties of administering the fund under the cemetery committee, and adding some additional rules.