What would you do if you had dutifully been taking care of your finances, but suddenly the marketplace you were using got taken over by a hostile organization that denied you access to what you had been carefully caretaking?
It would be outrageous, right?
You’d be screaming for law enforcement to come in and arrest the criminals to take back what was rightfully yours.
Could this happen here? It already has.
The Native people were here long before explorers and settlers arrived.
The land has long been their marketplace that they have interacted with in a sustainable way. In return, the land has provided for the tribes for a millennia.
But then the settlers showed up, and through trickery and sheer force, yanked the land away from the Native people, and started demolishing countless resources.
Outnumbered, the Native people have been suffering for the past 200 years as a result of having their marketplace completely robbed.
Today, most people in The Dalles enjoy a prosperity and quality of life in the Gorge that is unmatched… this hasn't happened by accident.
The Native people yielded through force, pressure, and threats to make room for all of the new arrivals. They have done so peacefully throughout treaty after treaty, while their quality of life has suffered.
It's a shame that most Gorge residents haven't even known about the injustices caused by this takeover.
These distressed sites are mostly out of sight, out of mind.
As a recent transplant to The Dalles myself, I had known about the fishing platforms and the history of Celilo Falls and the role it has played in the cultural and food rhythms of the people who first lived here.
But I didn’t know about the tragedy that exists at the in-lieu sites.
This isn’t about sympathy; it is about humanity and focusing on social/economic fairness and justice, as well as a now-known obligation revealed through federal studies that we didn't keep up our end of a bargain.
It is a duty for all Gorge citizens to become educated about this situation, and do what they can to support the Native people getting the things they were promised in the treaties.
They have held up their end of the bargain — nd so must the rest of us.
This is a matter of a healthy and whole community. We should all do what we can, call or write Congressional offices, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as well elected officials to rectify this horrific situation.
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