On the Umatilla Indian Reservation near Pendleton, Oregon, sits one of the west's truly remarkable destinations, The Museum at Tamástslikt Cultural Institute. A world class facility inside and out, Tamástslikt is the only museum on the Oregon Trail that tells the story of western expansionism from a tribal point of view. Permanent exhibits bring to life the traditions of the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla Tribes, who have called the region home for 10,000 years. But the museum doesn't merely remember what has been. Tamástslikt (the word means "interpreter") connects this rich, storied history to our present day--did you know, for example, that the confederated tribes are recognized leaders in the restoration of salmon habitats?--and then expands the experience further by sharing the dreams and concerns of its tribal community in a moving exhibit called "We Will Be."
In honor of Native American Heritage Month, please enjoy some story and dance from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) in Eastern Oregon.
Scholars Bobbie Conner and Bill Lang discuss with each other and with the audience the experience of newcomers entering and crossing those homelands, including how those events impacted life for Native people and how those foreigners’ experiences in the plateau contrasted with the goals they had set when leaving their homes. (Recorded in 2019 at the Oregon Historical Society)
Learn more about how the flag of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation serves as a symbol of identity, tradition and culture.
"The Umatilla (Imatalamłáma), Cayuse (Weyíiletpu), and Walla Walla (Walúulapam) peoples, who comprise the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), have traveled throughout the west, including to the lower Columbia and Willamette Rivers and to Willamette Falls, to exercise their reserved treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather the traditional subsistence resources known as the First Foods. They have been doing so since time immemorial, an important indigenous concept which describes a time continuum that spans from ancient times to present day. In postcontact years, interactions expanded to include explorers, traders and missionaries, who brought with them new opportunities for trade and intermarriage as well as the devastating circumstances brought by disease, warfare, and the reservation era. Through cultural adaptation and uninterrupted treaty rights, the CTUIR never ceased to continue to travel to the lower Columbia and Willamette River and falls for seasonal traditional practice and for other purposes. ..."
The tribal perspective takes center stage in this narrative where tribal voices tell their own story. Personal histories of westward expansionism are not background but foreground. Beginning with ancient teachings and traditions, moving to the period of first contact with Euro-Americans, the Treaty Council, war and the reservation period, and then to today’s modern tribal governance and the era of self-determination, readers will see continuity in the culture and in ways of life that have been present from the earliest times, all on the same landscape.
áw Pawá Láakni / They Are Not Forgotten is a book like none other. This ethnogeographic atlas of Native place names presents a compelling account of interactions between a homeland and its people. A project of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation - composed of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla Tribes in eastern Oregon - Cáw Pawá Láakni documents and describes more than four hundred place names. The full-color, detailed maps and the narrative that introduces and supports them paint a picture of a way of life. This meticulous assemblage of memory and meaning echoes cultural and geographical information that has all but disappeared from common knowledge.
To create this historical and cultural atlas of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla homeland, which spans the Columbia River and its tributaries from southeastern Washington to northeastern Oregon, ethnographic, traditional, and institutional knowledge was gathered together and incorporated into a GIS database to produce customized maps that present this knowledge. Many of the accounts are from the individuals who traveled on horseback, lived in and saw these places, and possessed knowledge that can no longer be replicated. In presenting these place-names, the Tribes strive to ensure the vitality of this communal knowledge into the future.
In Cáw Pawá Láakni, places named in Indian languages are juxtaposed with sites that are central to the colonial period in the West, such as those described by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and those given to fur-trading posts, missions, and places on the Oregon Trail. The atlas adds a needed and vivid Native perspective to the written history and geography of Oregon and the West.