Normally during this time of year, the weather becomes warmer, daylight longer, and families enjoy community events like the Fun Run and Flag Day. Normally playgrounds and basketball courts are active with our children. Also during this time, you can find tribal members in the mountains carefully harvesting, caring for, and preparing our sister roots. Normally, we are honoring our…
By N. Kathryn Brigham The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are at war with an invisible enemy and we fight this war alongside all 574 Tribal Nations, the United States, and the World as a whole. In the beginning it seemed that this enemy would only take those over 60 years of age. Now we know that it…
The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) work extremely hard to address issues of mutual concerns with the State of Oregon. This government-to-government relationship ensures open and clear communication to ensure the needs of all of our citizens are being addressed through executive, legislative and judicial bodies. To this end, the CTUIR regularly meets with elected members of…
As the federal government and many state governments fail to address plastic waste, Indian tribes become policy innovators. The world is waking up to the growing problem of plastic waste contaminating our ocean and terrestrial environments. Local governments—lauded as laboratories of innovation—have begun enacting bans and fees on single-use plastics, reducing the amount entering the waste stream in the first…