April 1999     

Last Dance Congratulations, Erich Pedestrian Safety NALSA SABER Graduation Pledge Seven-Year Reflection Small Claims and Cinnamon Rolls Church of the Earth Y2K Nuclear Threat Tribal Members Speak INS Are Thought Police In re Robin E. LOVE, Debtor Selected Crime Beat Reports Living Large: Downtown Haiku Variations The Light William Stafford perspective Spring Wave Poetry Notes

Minority Law Day, presented annually through the cooperative efforts of law students at the University of Oregon, Willamette, and Lewis and Clark, was hosted this year by our own Minority Law Student Association (MLSA) on April 3. Students from each of these western Oregon law schools joined area attorneys, renowned members of Oregon's multicultural community, and prominent legal scholars for a day of lectures and dialogue addressing contemporary legal issues.

Lewis and Clark Professor Arthur LaFrance, with Lewis and Clark law school alum Vernellia R. Randall conducted a panel discussion on Health Law. State Representative (District 19, Multnomah County) Jo Ann Bowman, with Portland State Chemistry Professor Linda A. George and Portland Urban League's Environmental Programs Director Alan Hipolito, led a panel discussion on Environmental Justice. The luncheon keynote speaker was Senator Moses Boyd, and the day ended with a panel on Indian law, led by Kathryn Harrison, Tribal Council Chair of the Grande Ronde Tribe, and Benson Heath, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation.

I attended the Indian law panel. This is my account of what I saw and heard; it was a moving experience with an enduring message, the reverberations of which will have a permanent presence in Oregon.

A brief overview of context is necessary to understand the messages shared by Kathryn Harrison and Benson Heath. It is a stated principle of American Indian law that, under the Indian Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution,¹ Congress has plenary power over Indian tribes.² In the 1950s, as part of a legislative policy appropriately called "termination," the American government enacted a comprehensive program designed to assimilate tribes and eradicate the reservations. The era was ushered in by House Resolution 108 in 1953,³ which set forth a policy of "emancipation." Under the resolution, Congress would extinguish tribal status, revoke federal treaty rights, and halt federal provisions traded for land.

H.R. 108 was followed in rapid succession by bills targeting individual tribes for termination. One hundred and nine tribes in all were terminated, 61 tribes in western Oregon alone,⁴ where over 2,000 individuals were officially declared devoid of identity. The federal government sold tribal land to the highest bidder, canceled health, housing, and educational programs, and in some cases "removed" individuals to urban areas far from their homes. Tribal laws and governments were abolished.

Kathryn Harrison is a descendant of members of the Moalla Tribe, which was blended into the melting pot of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde Community in the 1850s, when the Grande Ronde reservation was created. Hers was one of the 61 tribes affected by the federal termination policy.

"Our people got word in 1954 that we were no longer Indians," she said. Though small in stature, Harrison's presence was powerful; she spoke calmly, in muted tones, but with passion and profound emotion. "The elders stayed; they kept track of the living and dead, and watched the cemetery. The others left."

Harrison's story continued, a chilling narrative of the termination policy at work in Oregon tribal communities. "Our land became important to outsiders, and exterminators were hired to get rid of us. Our people were told, 'You can take one bundle.'"

"One bundle!" she said. "One bundle from the only home you've ever had, the only place you've ever lived. What would you take?"

After the passage of the federal act which terminated western Oregon tribes, the 500-acre slice of reservation land left over after allotment (an 1890s federal policy to remove lands from communal tribal ownership and make Indians into fee-holding farmers) was sold off for $1.00 an acre, leaving the tribe with onlya two-and-a-half-acre cemetery. Their land all but stolen, their homes gone, tribal members scattered.

Harrison, like many others, was orphaned. She was sent to a non-Indian boarding school. "They said it was a rescue," she said, but, like many other Indian children in her situation, she was the victim of abuse and harassment in the boarding school. What was worse, she said, "I was starved for my culture."

After high school, Harrison made up her mind to reverse the course of history. Her goal: to reinstate federal recognition of the Grande Ronde Tribes. Harrison traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Oregon representatives and lobby for recognition of her tribe. She testified before Congress and spoke with as many people as she could. Back in Oregon, she helped other tribal members clear out an old tool shed and, from there, they corresponded with representatives, working continually toward federal recognition of a disenfranchised people. Harrison's work was tireless. They received grants from the Administration of Native Americans and the Native American Project of Oregon Legal Services.

In the meantime, termination era politics continued. As the Grande Ronde fought to reverse termination's destruction of the tribal land base, other tribes suffered the loss of their individual members through the assimilative "removal" provisions. Benson Heath, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, told Minority Law Day participants how he was removed from his eastern Oregon home on the reservation to turbulent San Francisco in 1967.

"To go from sagebrush and juniper trees to mini-skirts is a culture shock," he said. As if to increase the disconcerting effects, Heath arrived in February, during the Chinese New Year celebration.

Even as Heath was struggling to survive in a world entirely unlike his own, Harrison's work continued. After eleven years of tireless work, there was a glimmer of hope: a representative called Harrison and asked her to work for a plan for the reinstatement of the reservation. If Congress accepted her plan, the tribe could also gain recognition. Harrison traveled once again to Washington, D.C., and presented her plan to the Senate. Her daughter testified as well. That night, Harrison stood on the balcony of her hotel, hoping that the next day, the day she was to find out the fate of her proposal, would bring good news.

"I looked out over the balcony and thought of all my people," she said. "I thought, 'I am the eyes and ears of my people."

Harrison had asked the federal government to give back 17,000 acres of land in the Grande Ronde valley. In a 1983 act reinstating the Grande Ronde and re-establishing the reservation, Congress granted about half of what Harrison requested: 9,811 acres, all timber and all part of the former reservation. Though short of the original request, the conveyance was nonetheless a remarkable victory for the tribe.

Harrison is now the Tribal Council Chair of the Grande Ronde Tribe, the first woman to hold this position of leadership. The nearly three decades Harrison has devoted to tribal recognition have made possible the vast economic development the tribe has achieved since 1983. The tribe has sold much of its timber resources to raise money for endowments and scholarships. Spirit Mountain Casino, which opened in 1995, is currently the most prominent source of financial stability for the tribe. The key to the tribe's success, Harrison said, is their history.

"Our ancestors taught us, through their spirituality and their endurance, 'Share what you have'" she said. "And we are sharing. The money's not going to one pocket . . . it's going to all. We know what it is to go without."

² See, e.g., United States v. Kagama, 118 U.S. 375 (1886).

³ H.R. Con. Res. 108, 91st Cong. (1953).

⁴ 68 Stat. 724 (1954).