Nothing could be more ironic to David Lewis than the current controversy raging in the state of Virginia over white politicians who saw fit, earlier in life, to decorate themselves with “blackface.”
Meanwhile, Lewis said, the ongoing matter of “redface” never gets a mention. When he lived and researched tribal histories in Washington, D.C., he said, he was occasionally surrounded by football fans, of all colors, riding the subways to and from Redskins games — dressed and painted like stereotypical Indians from the movies.
Lewis, a tribal historian and member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, was part of a panel discussing indigenous life and history Saturday afternoon at Washington State University Vancouver. The event was hosted by Confluence, the nonprofit agency managing six landscapes along the Columbia River that tell about tribal history here; Vancouver’s site is the Confluence Land Bridge that connects Fort Vancouver to the riverfront.
“To be a native requires a lot of patience,” said panelist Paul Lumley, executive director of the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland. “There’s a lot more work we have to do in telling our story.”
The panel covered some of the basic facts and injustices of indigenous history. Tanna Engdahl, the spiritual leader of the Cowlitz Tribe, repeated a well-worn saying: The Spanish came for indigenous people’s gold; the French came for their furs; and the Americans, finally, came for their land.
“The settlers took everything,” said Lewis. “The arrogance of taking all that land, it’s still a big problem.”
Also wiping indigenous people off their homelands was infectious disease. It destroyed 98 percent of the local native population, Engdahl said. After that, when tribes were decimated and weak, the tricky business of treaties and rights began.
Whites and natives had completely different ideas about belonging and rights, the panelists all said. Some government treaties offered to grant back certain rights — hunting and fishing in certain places and certain ways — that the tribes never considered the need to enshrine at all.
“We were here for centuries, then we had to fight to be recognized by people who built highways across our land,” Engdahl said. “They said, you have to prove to us that you were ever here.”
“They tended to try to give Indians things that we already have,” said Lewis. The Grand Ronde’s position, he said, is that they didn’t lose their rights just because those rights were omitted from a dishonest agreement.
On the other hand, Lumley added, in recent years treaties have proved extremely valuable to tribes in court. A former Intertribal Fish Commission official, Lumley said he has testified in court and cited downriver hatchery data to help restore tribal fishing rights upriver along the Columbia.
“Some of the treaties have really put tribes in the driver’s seat,” he said. “If tribes are in charge of their own science, they can do great things. I’ve seen that in my own lifetime.”
Engdahl said her Cowlitz Tribe refused a treaty with the U.S. Government back in the 1800s, and paid the price. Her people either “scattered to the winds,” she said, or adapted quickly. She remembers her uncles fishing local rivers after dark and quickly hiding their nets if they saw headlights approaching, she said.
When the Cowlitz finally did win tribal recognition, Engdahl said, the release of energy and purpose was “nuclear” — leading to their purchase of tribal land and construction of the ilani casino and resort here in Clark County.
“We came back so strong. Ten or 15 years ago, you probably never heard the word Cowlitz,” she said.
A resurgence of tribal culture is underway now, Lewis said. He cited the drumming and songs by a Cowlitz drum group that opened the event. He recommended reading histories written by non-whites.
“Look for other perspectives,” he said. “Speak on our behalf when we’re not in the room.”
