Category Archives: Oregon Multicultural Archives

Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs & Oregon State University sign new MOU

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Yesterday, Tribal Council members of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and leaders of Oregon State University signed a new memorandum of understanding, renewing and expanding their partnership. The day was full of presentations, sharing, and personal stories, culminating with the signing of the new MOU.

Council members visited the Archives in the morning and poster-sized versions of some of our photos were on display throughout the library. Tribal Council Chairman Ron Suppah found a connection to one displayed on the 5th floor: he was in the picture! What did he see?

suppah1.jpg4-H boys at the winter feed lot, located at the Warm Springs Agency

Beyond this personal connection, Suppah reflected on the larger connection between the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and OSU. “Where this journey began was when the federal government built The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River. Celilo Falls was a major fishing area, and when they closed the gates on The Dalles, we lost that fishing site, and the tribes demanded compensation for that.” The Tribes took this money (over $1 million) and commissioned OSU to conduct a study of tribal resources. Suppah says “The Oregon State study set the course for us as a tribal government.” You can find a copy of this 3 volume report in ScholarsArchive@OSU (Final report: Oregon State College/Warm Springs Research Project: Vol. 1. Introduction and survey of human resources, Vol. 2. Education, Vol. 3. The agricultural economy).

Change of Reference Room hours 4/6/09

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Tribal Council members of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and leaders of Oregon State University will sign a new memorandum of understanding on Monday April 6th. The day-long meeting will happen in the Valley Library, with a portion tomorrow morning in the Archives & Maps Reference Room. We will open at 10:00 am, so please delay your visit if you were planning an early one! The signing of a new MOU is an important act, one that deepens the 50-year relationship between the tribes and the university that began after of the 1957 flooding of Celilo Falls.

Want to know more?

Oregon’s Emergency Farm Labor Service

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Given the power of our information sharing yesterday (think Obama and the White House lawn), we continue the WWII farm service theme. Today, however, our focus shifts to the images of Mrs. Dorothy Burleson, who was a Walla Walla nurse at the Athena and Milton-Freewater farm labor camps. In these pictures, she is treating a patients in her trailer “Clicnic,” a dispensary at the Athena camp.

For those who haven’t read the last two Women’s History Month posts, between 1940 and 1943 the number of farm workers in the United States noticeably decreased — the armed forces manpower requirements and competition with higher paying jobs in the defense industries were the cause. Of course, at the same time, farmers were asked to increase production to support the war effort. By 1943, the nation’s food supply was in jeopardy.

So, on April 29, 1943, the 78th U.S. Congress approved “Public Law 45, the Farm Labor Supply Appropriation Act,” to “assist farmers in producing vital food by making labor available at the time and place it was most needed.” Each states’ agricultural extension services held responsibility for their emergency labor programs; their primary duty was coordinating and overseeing labor recruitment, training, and placement of workers.

In Oregon, the Emergency Farm Labor Service was established by the Oregon State College Extension Service. Between 1943 and 1947, there were over 900,000 workers placed on the state’s farms, thousands of trained workers of all ages, and nine farm labor camps. The farm laborers in our state were a diverse bunch, including urban youth and women, soldiers, white collar professionals, displaced Japanese-Americans, returning war veterans, workers from other states, German prisoners-of-war, and migrant workers from Mexico and Jamaica.

Chautauqua Program: Event at Heritage Museum in Independence, OR

Pat Courtney Gold presents “Innovators and Traders: Indigenous People of the Columbia River”

Pat Courtney Gold now devotes her time to creating art and lecturing on Plateau Cultural Art. The Wasco traditional art of full-turn twined baskets with geometric human figures and motif unique to Columbia River area was a dying art. Pat revived this art form, and her goal is to preserve the technique and record the traditional designs for future generation.

She has been an artist in Resident at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City, New York. The Peabody Museum commissioned a basket from Pat and asked to write an article about her work and the Wasco basket collected by Lewis and Clark in 1805 for cataloging accompanying “Northwest Native Weavers: Honoring Our Heritage.”

Pat’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Highlights in Oregon include The Governor’s Office in Salem, Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, the Littman Gallery at Portland State University, the Museum at Warm Springs, the Portland Art Museum, the University of Oregon, and Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center.

Her program will show how like to days hot topics of international commerce, diplomatic relations, cultural exchanges and tourism are important to the northwest; it was just as important nearly twelve thousand years ago among the indigenous people who lived along the Columbia River. These civilized and prosperous nations developed a marketplace that, by the 1700’s included trade with Russia, Spain, England, China and America, yet their story is often untold in histories of the region.

Pat Courtney Gold, a Wasco native enrolled in the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon, discusses the rich heritage of cultural and financial commerce conducted up and down the Columbia River. Just as questions of sustainability affect modern commerce, Gold will show how native people’s relationship to the land provided our first environmentally friendly model of commerce.

This free Chautauqua Program will be presented on Saturday, May 10 @ 1:30, Heritage Museum. 112 S. 3rd St., Independence, OR.

For more information, contact Julie Baxter (503)838-4989