Fwd: Minerva Soucie story/Oregonian (fwd)

[David Robertson]

LhaXayEm.  This has some relevance to recent conversation on this list.
Dave

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>
>	Oregonian Letters to the Editor, 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, Or., 97201.
>or by e-mail letters at news.oregonian.com
>
>
>
>
>  orr          TRIBES WEAVE THE PAST INTO A STRONGER FUTURE
>12/12/1999
>================================================================================
>                                 THE OREGONIAN
>              Copyright (c) 1999, The Oregonian Publishing Company
>                           Sunday, December 12, 1999
>EDITION: SUNRISE
>SECTION: FORUM
>PAGE: F01
>LENGTH:  173 lines
>TYPE: Oregon
>HEADLINE: TRIBES WEAVE THE PAST INTO A STRONGER FUTURE
>LITTLE NOTICED BY MAINSTREAM SOCIETY, NATIVE AMERICANS ARE REVIVING THEIR
>CULTURES TO HELP GUIDE YOUNG GENERATIONS<
>BYLINE: KARA BRIGGS  - The Oregonian  <
>DATELINE: BURNS --
>TEXT:
>    When fall begins, Minerva Soucie drives from the high desert to the
>foothills of the Blue Mountains and gathers young willow shoots from creek
>beds.
>    Back in her house on the Burns Paiute Tribe Reservation in southeast
>Oregon, a sliver of cattle ranching land, she bites down on the edge of a
>willow shoot. With her hands, she tears the willow in thirds, then tears
>them
>again until she uncovers the strong ribbons of fiber that grow inside the
>bark.
>    It will take a year for the desert air to cure these strips of willow.
>Soucie hangs them in coils that look like loose rolls of pale yellow ribbon
>on
>her walls. One day in the new millennium, she'll weave the willow into the
>kind of baskets her ancestors once used to carry their belongings and
>cradle
>babies across this high desert on the edge of the Great Basin.
>    Weaving baskets may seem common enough. But in 1997, when Soucie, 54,
>retired early from the U.S. Forest Service to make them, she found only two
>elders still weaving in the tribe's traditional way.
>    Native Americans such as Soucie in tribes across the country are part
>of a
>renaissance aimed at carefully preserving ancient values that will guide
>future generations. They are dedicating their lives to teaching central
>parts
>of their tribal cultures to the next generation. But as the country
>prepares
>to mark a new millennium, mainstream America still fails to acknowledge the
>contemporary worth and work of this land's first residents. It will take
>the
>teachings of Soucie and hundreds like her to pull aside the cultural
>blinders.
>    Native Americans are the smallest racial group in the United States --
>2
>million people, or less than 1 percent of the population. Oregon's 45,000
>Native Americans are 1.5 percent of the state's residents.
>    Their efforts to restore tribal cultures are happening mostly outside
>the
>view of white America and its love affair with Native American things --
>whether it's Navajo turquoise jewelry or Ojibwa dream catchers to hang from
>rearview mirrors. Beyond the noise of mainstream culture, with its
>overpowering messages about what we should own, look like and think, Native
>Americans are experiencing a slow, steady cultural strengthening that began
>in
>the 1970s. It's fueled partly by court decisions upholding tribal treaties,
>legislation ordering museums to return tribal artifacts and society
>acknowledging past wrongs.
>    This cultural upswing is unknown to the vast majority of mainstream
>Americans because their usual sources of information -- classroom lessons,
>the
>media and popular literature -- aren't telling the tribes' stories. But the
>United States is benefiting from this renewal through exhibitions; popular
>music by Native American bands such as Indigenous, a Lakota-influenced
>blues
>band from Pine Ridge, S.D.; literature by authors such as Sherman Alexie, a
>Coeur d'Alene Native American who wrote "Reservation Blues;" and, in two
>years, the opening of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian on the
>Capitol Mall's last vacant space, where a million ancient works of art,
>tools
>and artifacts will be displayed.
>    "It's just a joyous thing," says Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne and
>lobbyist
>for the legislation that created the new museum. "I have a feeling that
>people
>think of Indian pottery or baskets in the way we think of European art. Or
>in
>the way I think of hummingbirds. I don't own a hummingbird, but I would be
>poorer than I am if I didn't see them."
>
>    Teachers of tribal ways
>
>    In the more than 550 tribes in the United States, there are people,
>often
>several, like Soucie. In Seattle, Tsimshian carver David Boxley helps
>Native
>Alaskans recover their culture in a dance troupe called Tsimshian Hyook; in
>Neah Bay, Wash., Donna Wilkie and her family learn ancient whale songs her
>grandmother sang; on the Umatilla reservation near Pendleton, elder Cecilia
>Bearchum teaches classes in her tribe's language.
>    They are teachers who, like Soucie, find purpose in the teachings of
>their
>ancestors. All her life, the teachings of Soucie's elders guided her to
>work
>for her tribe's future, whether it was raising two children or helping her
>tiny Burns Paiute Tribe win federal recognition and gain title to its
>770-acre
>reservation. In the 1980s, she held every elected position in the tribe,
>including one term as chairwoman.
>    But her new work teaching Paiute culture on her kitchen table to young
>tribal members may be the most far-reaching. Her aim is to keep the Paiute
>arts and values alive in the new century. Last year, Soucie obtained a
>grant
>from the Oregon Historical Society. She's using it to teach two recent high
>school graduates, Eric Hawley and Priscilla Kennedy, both 18, how to weave.
>    "These two individuals will be teachers in the new century," Soucie
>says
>while helping Hawley create a design for a cylindrical basket. "I figured
>this
>is the time I need to teach them because they are open to learning."
>    But Soucie's teaching is about more than baskets. She thinks weaving
>leads
>Paiutes deeper into their culture -- requiring them to know the tribe's
>plants, land and language. And within the language are the tribe's stories
>about how to weave only good thoughts into baskets.
>    The 308-member Burns Paiute Tribe is a remnant of the 2,000 Northern
>Paiute
>who a century ago lived in southeast Oregon. Its members are but a tiny
>part
>of the Paiute nation that lives in Nevada, California, Idaho and Oregon.
>The
>Oregon tribe's population dwindled over the past 120 years from war and
>then
>imprisonment at Fort Simcoe, 200 miles north near Yakima. One hundred years
>ago, the tribe's land, including a 1.8 million-acre Malheur Paiute
>Reservation, was sold to cattle ranchers.
[B>    But the tribe returned to its land, at least a little piece of it
on
>the
>edge of Burns, and kept itself together, each generation teaching the
>Paiute
>culture to the next.
>    "The story of Indians in the 20th century is of tremendous resilience,
>willingness and ability to adapt and keep going," says Peter Iverson, a
>history professor at Arizona State University who wrote "We Are Still
>Here,''
>a book about contemporary Native Americans. "And that story would have
>surprised the hell out of a lot of people 100 years ago."
>
>    Mountains of memory
>
>    As a child, Soucie came to an area in the Blue Mountains, which the
>Paiute
>call Thuga, to camp with the older women and to gather food. On a recent
>drive
>there, Soucie looked across the sagebrush covered hillsides and remembered
>the
>women, naming them one by one. In the spring, she will bring children from
>the
>tribe here and teach them the lessons the women taught her -- which roots
>to
>dig for food, where the rattlesnakes hide, and what mountains their
>ancestors
>climbed to pray.
>    "This land brings back all my childhood memories," she says. "This is
>the
>home of my ancestors, where they lived and gathered food. The tribe is
>still
>digging today. They are the children and grandchildren of the women we knew
>when we were kids."
>    Popular images of Native Americans rarely have anything to do with the
>reality of tribes today. Most Native American history books are really only
>the history of white relations with tribes. And most popular fiction and
>movies, such as "Dances with Wolves," relegate tribes to a place in the
>distant past, where they are portrayed as noble savages.
>    But Soucie learned as a girl, and an adult, that tribes must present
>their
>image of themselves. Outsiders may know many facts about a tribe, but
>Soucie
>says they don't know what it means to be Native American, or specifically,
>a
>Paiute.
>    The ability to renew and refresh that image is possible partly because
>of
>some tribes' new affluence. Although Native Americans remain the poorest
>people in the United States, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, more
>resources have been available to support cultural programs in recent years.
>Some come from federal programs for Native American children, others from
>tribes that have opened casinos in the past 10 years.
>    Slightly more than one-third of Native American tribes across the
>country
>have casinos, but those that do at least provide seasonal employment for
>tribal members in remote areas. A handful, such as the Grand Ronde tribe's
>Spirit Mountain Casino in Western Oregon and the Mashantucket Pequot's
>Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, are profitable enough to change the tribes'
>economic outlook. New jobs on reservations also help strengthen tribal
>cultures by making it feasible for some urban Native Americans to move back
>to
>their communities.
>    In the new millennium, tribal members must tell their stories in books
>and
>movies, says documentary filmmaker Phil Lucas, a Colville based in Seattle.
>He's filming a documentary for national Public Television that examines
>what
>tribal life will be like in the new millennium. In telling their stories --
>and sometimes in telling their side of the familiar story for the first
>time
>-- tribal people can work to erase the stereotypes held by mainstream
>Americans.
>    "Somehow, within the new century, we need to define ourselves rather
>than
>to accept the definitions of the colonizers," Lucas says. "If we can create
>a
>true image that speaks of us without stereotypes, it will need to begin by
>saying Indians are human."
>
>    Hopes for a heritage
>
>    Within her tribe, Soucie hopes the young people will learn to respect
>themselves as they realize the rich heritage into which they were born.
>    Although Soucie is but one woman working toward that goal, her aim is
>high.
>    "I hope that my grandchildren's grandchildren will speak their language
>in
>their homes," she says. "I hope that they will still have a lot of Paiute
>blood. I hope that they will practice our tribal ways even though they will
>live with technologies that we don't know now. And I hope that they will
>still
>be proud to be Indian."
>
>    Kara Briggs is a Yakama Indian. She covers mid-Multnomah County for The
>Oregonian. You can reach her at 503-294-5936 or by e-mail at
>karabriggs at news.oregonian.com.
>ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photo by L.E. Baskow/The Oregonian
>Graphic - Native American Tribes in Oregon  Map and statistics
>KEYWORDS: NATIVE AMERICANS
>================================================================================