Portraits from the Warm Springs Indian Reservation
Tradition
Pausing with her kap’n while digging bitterroot and biscuit root for the April Root Feast.
Filling her wapas with huckleberries in an off-reservation clearcut. “One year we had to buy berries for feast.”
Dipnetting at her family’s scaffold at Sherar’s Falls on the Deschutes River. “The river people were very cooperative. Like my mother said, ‘We all got to eat, we all got to have moccasins, we all got to have beaded things.”
Roasting salmon for guests of Kah-Nee-Ta Resort. “(I get) funny questions, especially from those people who come from Germany and places like that.”
Tribal Fish and Wildlife employees capturing lamprey at Willamette Falls, a traditional site off the reservation.
A Wasco married to the Paiute chief, Viola learned to strip willows and make baskets from a Paiute elder.
Simnasho longhouse leader ringing her handbell during Sunday Washat services. “We’re growing up now. We have seven drummers every week!”
Head of the Feather healing religion. “The light hits me. It hits the whole house, the light, just like shocks…I have to pray pretty hard for myself, then help the sick ones, the bad-feelings people.”
Agency longhouse leader resting during an all-night funeral. “The elders are harder to approach now. Many young people want to hang onto the culture, but they don’t know what it is — it’s just a word.”
Elder of Warm Springs Shaker Church. “Christianity and Indian traditions say the same things and the Shaker Church brings them together.”
After years as a modern businesswoman, Alice had to learn from her elders how to hold her first traditional memorial and giveaway, for two of her adult children.
Miss Warm Springs presenting the Lord’s Prayer in Indian Sign Language. “There’s a certain image that’s expected. You can’t be popping your gum during the Lord’s Prayer.”
