POBR - Harris Park Campgrounds - Day 12

 

People of The Big River

Location: Harris Park Campgrounds

Day 12

Today we did a ton of stuff, we had breakfast, packed lunch and headed off to meet Gail Redberg. Gail runs a native plant nursery. She showed us all of the things she grows there from trees to shrubs and smaller plants. Some grow berries others the bark is used medicinally, and some are just super great because they grow big and provide shade for animals. The reason why the nursery was started was because the fisheries program at Umatilla needed some native vegetation to put along the river. They did this so that the plants would provide shade for the bugs and critters that thrive in cold water, in hopes that they would live within the river so the fish would be able to eat them and also thrive in the bettered environment. After that Gail said that they began to expand and find a ton of varied plants to grow. Not only do these go out in the natural environments but now other people within the community are buying them too. Gail was super sweet, and she put us to work almost immediately, we were only with her for an hour, but it was super cool. 

Right after meeting with Gail we went to The Umatilla Tribal Agency to meet with Andrew Wildbill who talked to us about the different projects that the Umatilla tribe is doing including one specifying on their tribes first foods, a fisheries project, and a few different ones with a couple different animals. He also went in depth about how complicated the tribe’s history is and how their reservation kept getting smaller, in terms of land, throughout the years because of how to government and other factors. This all was surprising to me, as someone who isn’t a part of a tribe I only ever knew about a few different laws or treaties that are in place. I’d like to learn more but I didn’t realize how complicated everything is especially when talking about land and resources that are designated to each individual tribe. He provided a lot of information and made me want to learn more about the history of the tribes that surround me. Having moved not too long ago I was not aware of a lot of what was going on, on the land that I live on but getting to meet all kinds of different tribes and the respective people who live on different reservations I would definitely make it a point to educate myself on the history and current problems that everyone is facing.

Right after meeting with Andrew we went with Lindsey, who is a part of the Umatilla department of wildlife where we got to hold and watch Solai Le Fay band some baby burrowing Owls. It was so cool how they had all of the burrows set up that they built themselves. We watched Solai grab the owls and give them a tick bath to make sure that they didn’t have any the next time they came to check on them. We got to hold them and release them back into their burrow it was so adorable, they were so small and fluffy, and their success rate is super high and only getting better. It was really cool to hear that it wasn’t a super expensive project, yet they are having owls come back every year with growing numbers. After a very exhausting day we made it back to shower and blog and that was it for day 12.

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