LINCOLN CITY, Oregon — In the meeting room of the Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City, Oregon, hundreds of people dressed in tribal regalia danced in a circle. Drums made the floor shake, and singing filled the room.
Every year for the past 47 years, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians have held a powwow to enjoy getting federal recognition again. But this month’s event was especially important: It was only two weeks after a federal court lifted limits on the tribe’s rights to hunt, fish, and gather, which leaders of the tribe had fought against for decades.
Head of Siletz Delores Pigsley said, “We’re back to how we were before.” “I feel great.”
There are more than twenty bands and tribes that make up the Siletz. Their traditional lands covered a big part of what is now western Oregon. In the 1850s, the federal government forced them to live on a reservation on the Oregon coast. There, they were grouped as a single nationally recognized tribe, even though they came from different places and spoke different languages.
Congress ended the recognition of more than 100 tribes, including the Siletz, in the 1950s and 1960s. This was done through a strategy called “termination.” Tribes that were hurt lost millions of acres of land and government money and services.
Matthew Campbell, deputy director of the Native American Rights Fund, said, “The goal was to try to assimilate Native people by moving them into cities.” “But I also believe there was a financial side to it.” I believe that the US was looking for ways to keep its prices down when it came to helping ethnic groups.
It hurt the tribes to lose their land and ability to rule themselves, and they fought for decades to get federal recognition again. After the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin was restored in 1973, the Siletz became the second tribe to do well in 1977.
However the Siletz group had to agree to a federal court order that limited their hunting, fishing, and gathering rights in order to get some of their land back. They were only able to get back about 3,600 acres (1,457 hectares) of the 1.1-million-acre (445,000-hectare) reservation that was set aside for them in 1855. Along with the Confederate groups of Grand Ronde in Oregon, it was only one of two groups in the country that had to do this to get back their land.
The deal put limits on where tribal members could hunt, fish, and gather for food and ceremonies. It also set limits on how many salmon, elk, and deer could be killed in a year. Tribal chair Pigsley remembered how terrible it was: the tribe had to buy salmon for ceremonies because it wasn’t able to catch enough on its own, and people were arrested for hunting and fishing crimes.
“Giving up those rights was a terrible thing,” Pigsley told The Associated Press earlier this year. Pigsley has been the leader of the tribe for 36 years. “We’ve had to deal with the fact that it was unfair at the time for all these years.”
After many years, both Oregon and the US realized that the deal that made the tribe follow state hunting and fishing rules was unfair, and they decided to side with the tribe in asking the court to lift the restrictions.
As of now, the Governor of Oregon and Oregon’s congressional representatives have admitted that the 1980 Agreement and Consent Decree was a product of their time and took a biased and incorrect view on tribal sovereignty, tribal traditions, and the Siletz Tribe’s power and ability to protect and manage the wildlife populations it has traditionally used for rituals and food. This was written in a joint court filing by lawyers for the US, the state, and the tribe.
At the end of last month, the tribe finally got a federal judge to overturn the court order. Because of a different deal with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the tribe has more control over how they hunt and fish.
Pigsley thought about the people who had died before the tribe got its rights back and said she was hopeful that the next generation would carry on important customs.
She said, “There are a lot of young people out there learning tribal life and ways.” “Today it’s important because we want to raise healthy families, which means we need to eat more natural foods.”
Tiffany Stuart was celebrating and praying at the powwow. She was wearing a basket cap that her relatives were known for weaving, and so was her 3-year-old daughter Kwestaani Chuski, whose name means “six butterflies” in the Athabaskan language that is spoken in southwestern Oregon and northwest California.
Stuart said it was “very powerful for my kids to dance” because rights had been restored.
She told him, “You dance for people who can’t dance anymore.”
