I thought I should follow up the last blog post, a musing—and hope—that there will be Natives sprinkled across government no matter the new regime. And I should have added that the sprinkling will be in local and state as well as the national government, and that the watering of Native knowledge and values will continue to go beyond government.
Why?
The fine work of the Biden appointees in high positions will leave a mark. Many Natives they brought into government and programs they started and fostered will still be here. The co-management experiments with tribes and National Parks during Chuck Sams’ (Umatilla) time as Parks Chief will remain—and be hard to get rid of. The public recognition that Deb Haaland brought to US Indian boarding schools and their cruel injustices are now in the public mind, much like the Japanese Internment camps are part of our acknowledged national history. Public awareness—guilt, if you will, and genuine curiosity about the past—will continue.
Programs fostering and funding Indian involvement initiated by US Treasurer Lynn Malerba will go on even as she goes back to her role as Chief of the Mohegan Tribe. Shelly Lowe (Navajo), Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will be replaced with the new administration, but she will go on with her work in advancing the field of Native American Studies—previous work at Harvard and the U of Arizona—and Native programs and Native students at universities will continue and grow, no matter the particular administration.
The Yurak co-management plan, with the National Park Service and the State of California, will go on, and the Yuroks will continue their extraordinary work with land and water. They’ve grown their land base with California cap and trade, redirected their forests toward education, sustainability, and nurturing traditional medicinal and food plants. And—the Yuroks are responsible for revegetation on the Klamath River. The Klamath rises in Oregon and flows to the sea in California, and the recent removal of four old dams—the last one this summer—already has salmon swimming and spawning upstream, past the old damsites.
The Yuroks have also released four giant condors in service of bringing this ancient bird back from near extinction and extending its current range to old northern places. The Nez Perce currently study the possibilities of bringing the condor back to Snake River Country. Maybe the birds will resettle in Joseph Canyon—a place whose Nez Perce name is shared with the bird. Lead shot and the eating pyramid appear to be obstacles. Oregon and Idaho might have to follow our neighbors in California and Washington in banning lead in hunting and fishing.
The Nez Perce are busily covering their Idaho reservation in solar panels to replace power that will be lost with breaching the four lower Snake River dams. In February, President Biden brokered a $1 billion deal with Oregon, Washington, and four Columbia River tribes to revive Northwest salmon population. Maybe that money will flow towards dam removal?
There are so many programs and ways in which Native values have been brought forward in recent years, and especially during this administration. We’ve acknowledged that Indians knew how to live with fire successfully, without putting out every spark. We look to them for knowledge about the roles of salmon and lamprey beyond human food, to health of waters and ecosystems (who knew that migrating salmon carried trace minerals from the sea to trees hundreds of miles upstream). Native botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass has brought millions to the table of plants that have woven the natural world forever and been forgotten in monocultural agriculture. Native chefs scour the land for traditional and forgotten foods now served in Native restaurants.
Finally, remember the Native writers. Years ago, when I was at Fishtrap, Spokan writer Sherman Alexie remembered a time when there could be only one “Indian writer du jour.” Now there are many, some, like Ned Blackhawk and Philip Deloria, writing histories “Rediscovering” America’s Native past. Others, including Louise Erdrich, tackle old government policies and public attitudes towards Indians with fiction. And one Native writer, Marcie Rendon, from the White Earth Reservation, a stone’s throw from the town I was born in, Fosston, Minnesota, uses the mystery novel to talk about Indians and the foster care system, and Native women gone missing.
All this talk and writing won’t go away with a new national administration. We—the non-native population—will have plenty to learn and plenty of friends and programs in Indian country to support over the next four years.
Maybe we can even learn to think longer than four years—to think generationally about the world we live in; to think about living “with” rather than “on and from” planet earth.
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Photo–salmon in Klamth River, Oregon Wild