CELILO VILLAGE: REDUX

     When I was a boy we would often go on Sunday drives. I remember once, driving east on I-84, as we passed The Dalles dam, dad pointed out where Celilo falls and village used be, buried as it is beneath several hundred feet of water behind the dam. Dad proudly told of how the village was removed to its present location and I was too young to question his pride in our white nobility.

   Fast forward fifty years to March 7, 2007. My son Aidan and I were driving to Celilo for a commemoration of that day so long ago. His brother was with the high school drama club in Ashland and I wanted Aidan to get a taste of Howard Zinn history, a historian whose book, A Peoples History of the United States, Aidan had recently read. The event was put on by the Confederated tribes of Warm Springs and the public was invited. We drove east on I-84 out of Portland on a crisp mid-morning, much like our family drives when I was Aidans age.

     There is a state park on the north side of the highway that divided the village from its traditional home. We parked and walked through the tents put up to display photos of the village nestled before the falls surrounded by the fishing platforms. We then rode a shuttle to the village that the government had gifted them for their sacrifice, at the base of a forbidding bluff that prevented the village from expanding. We were greeted by an elder with a long braid of plaited hair. He provided a steadying hand to the older people and to the young. He welcomed us to his village and hoped we would have a pleasant visit. The village itself was a sort of trailer park with a few plank-sided one story structures amid older manufactured homes. Dominating the village was a large counsel-house, made in the traditional manner. Jammed together in the parking area were portable food trailers offering delicacies such as Indian fry-bread and venison jerky for sale. A fireplace in the center had salmon tied to cedar planks, roasting around the fire and a cooking grate where strips of venison were placed. We bought some fry-bread and entered the council house, where the Bureau of Indian Affairs representative was being grilled in a more genteel way. He was having to defend the agency for not providing the electrical trunk-line to the village that had been promised. You could have literally hit a tee-shot from the village to the Dalles dam, yet electricity was provided by gas generators humming away throughout the village. Water too, was not yet provided to the village that had been populated for the last fifty years by people who had been forced to relocate so we could add electrical customers to the Bonneville Power Administration. The primitive structures collected rain-water and water was ducted from a spring in the hill-side through PVC pipes to each structure. In the hot days of summer that spring dried up. All of these issues were being discussed in the long-house. 

     Later, Aiden and I left the long-house and walked out into the sunshine. There was a white party tent nearby where village arts and crafts were on display. Paintings, delicate bead-work, woven blankets and fabrics. All were on display and for sale. Inside the tent we listened as a woman in her seventies was answering questions from a small group of curious white listeners. She was accompanied by her daughter and her grand-daughter. All three women, the youngest a girl of about ten, wore traditional ceremonial dress. Blouses with intricate embroidery, woven wool vests, leather skirts with fringe to the ankles and beadwork, and beaded moccasins and leggings. Their hair was braided, with the braids wrapped with leather and hanging to each side of their necks. 

     "Where were you on that day when your village was flooded?" I asked.

     "I was in the hospital giving birth to my daughter." She turned to the woman next to her.

     " How did it effect you?"I pressed."

     " as a girl I would carry fresh salmon in a basket on my back to the.        other shore. There was an overhead line with which we would pull           ourselves over the river. The money I made would pay for my                   schooling at the reservation." Others from our group asked questions which she answered politely. At one point she responded,

     "White people tried to take our fish from us, but we found more.              They tried to take our game from us, but we found more. The earth         mother has protected us."

Never once did she say, "you people". Never once did she scold us.

     We walked out of the craft tent into the bright sunshine. We bought slices of salmon and venison and ate as we walked through the village. An old man was being interviewed by a young reporter. The man would have been nearing eighty. He wore a wool vest adorned with battle decorations from WWII and Korea. His grey hair was plaited in braids that draped his shoulders. His name was Wally Yallup and he had been born to an old family of chiefs. His great grandfather, he said had his name recorded by the scribe at the territorial Fort. That scribe recorded his name as Pwee Yallup. We now remember his ancestor with the name of a Washington city. Wally Yallup fished with the men of his family on their own ancestral fishing platform. It was in the best place of the river. During a typical year he could make $30,000 from sales of his share of the fish. That kind of money in the 1950s would have been a princely sum.

     When the reporter was finished I asked if I could ask a question, he nodded. I introduced my son and myself and explained that I wanted him to see our history through a different lens. A trace of a smile crossed the old man's face. 

     "Where you here when the falls were drowned?" I asked.

     He nodded, then pointed to the steep cliff behind the village. "I hiked to the top of that bluff and watched my peoples history disappear. I cried all day."

     Thirteen years have passed since that day. I sometimes try to draw Aidan out on his impressions of that day, but he seems nonchalant. For myself, I remember the woman with her daughter and grand-daughter, I remember the way the village welcomed us, and I remember Wally Yallup. I also remember the humble condition of the village that the BIA had forced them to accept, when their village was deemed important for progress. I remember the lack of water and electricity that was the condition of the village for the fifty years of time that had elapsed. Some years later I read that water and electricity had finally reached the village. I also read that more manufactured housing had been provided. I saw in that village, the history that Howard Zinn, and writers like him have provided to us. The history that is not taught in school.