Johnny Jackson and Wilbur Slockish, Jr.

OREGON VOICES

Johnny Jackson and Wilbur Slockish, Jr., are living testaments to the determination of the River People to remain on the banks of the Columbia River and retain their ancestral traditions. Their uncompromising attitude has earned them a reputation as "radicals," even within their own tribe, but it is among the reasons there are still Native people on the river fifty years after Celilo Falls drowned. Both men are enrolled in the Yakama Nation, but they represent the interests of off-reservation Indians through the Mid-Columbia River Council (MCRC). In these selections, Jackson and Slockish discuss their memories of Celilo and their commitment to saving the Columbia River for the benefit of future generations.
As the current chief of the Cascades, Jackson fights to protect tribal fishing rights and sacred places. During the 1980s, he helped stop the Bureau of Indian Affairs' effort to evict the Sohappys and other river families from in-lieu fishing sites on the Bonneville pool. He still lives at a fishing site on the river in Underwood, Washington, to ensure that non-Indians and visiting fishers respect the property. Jackson was interviewed by Piper Hackett on March 28, 1999, and his interview is archived at the Oregon Historical Society.

MY NAME IS JOHNNY JACKSON, and my birthdate is February 2, 1931. I was born in Wahkiakus, Washington, which is about three-and-a-half miles above a little town called Klickitat, along the Klickitat River. I'm one of four chiefs of the Columbia River tribes and bands along the Columbia River here, and I live at Underwood, Washington.^* I've lived on the Columbia River all my life, as a fisherman. I've done other things like logging, worked on the railroad, and I worked for the cold storage packing houses — but mostly fishing.

Johnny Jackson fishes on the Columbia River at Lyle Point, Washington, in about 2004.

Courtesy Phil Schermeister, photographer

My Indian name is Tawatash. The name is a real old name. It goes back to the mid-1800s. There was a chief along the river here, where the town of Bingen is now. He was the head chief there of a big village of over 500. This chief also was very cautious and more or less kept to himself and the people around him, his own people. He was very cautious for all his people along both sides of the river and the rest of his chiefs, the chiefs that were around him. He did not associate with the new people, because in his way he visioned many things, which made him cautious, and he left warnings to his people of what may happen in the future. And that was the way he left this world.

My aunt, great-aunt, who was dying of cancer said that she had a vision that I had to have this name, and she gave me this name. Before I received it, I never really felt like anything was really important to me. But after I received this name, everything seemed to be important. I realized one thing after I received this name: one thing that many people think is so important was money. To me, it was shown that life, and the lives of others, the welfare of others, the well being of others, is more important than money. And the water, the land, is more important than money. He has shown me that all this is more important than wealth, and I still see it today.

IN OUR LIFE, IN OUR BELIEFS, everything that we have here is sacred. The water, the mountains, the timber. And sometimes when I'm troubled I'll go up into the timber, in the mountains, and I'll find myself and straighten myself out. Even when I'm real worried and feeling bad, I can go up there and release myself and feel better. Our way is spiritual in the traditional way. And we believe in the spiritual way, because before the white man came in this part of the country everything was spiritual. Whether it was spiritual from the land or from the Creator, it was a teacher and a way of life, and a knowledge. All this was given through a spiritual way. Man learned from it, and he took care of his family with it. And he learned respect from it, from these teachings, from these visions. He will always know what is right and what is wrong by following these ways of life and visions and teachings. Many things that I believe and I walk with today I learned from knowing who my grandfather was, and watching how he worked. Not asking for no money or anything, but looking at what was important for his people, and the rights that they had, and the way of life that they had, that he stood up for and spoke strongly for, and longed for. And he left me with that, because he stood up for my rights and all the other children, the people, the rights that we have today, he protected.

I believe that when my elders tell me about our ways, I listen, because it's part of this nature and this way of life of being a Native of this country. So I never doubt my elders when they talk to me. Even today, I'm still learning. I'm a chief. At my age, I feel that I know a lot and I've got a lot more to learn, and the only way I'll learn is by listening to my elders.

I encourage my younger people today to listen to their elders, because our history's different. Our true history and our knowledge is not written. All the history about Native people is only assumed, most of it is assumed and it's believed that's the way it was. But the true history has never been told, and the only way I'm going to learn our real history of our Native people, is by listening to our elders. That's where my history is.

I WORKED AT OTHER JOBS, but then fishing was my main priority. I always done fishing, because I guess that was my way of life, being on the river, along the river. My brothers and sisters, they grew up about the same way, but now my sisters are married and live over in the Yakima Valley, but I stay here yet. I'll remain here the rest of my life probably.

My grandfather took me across over to the islands up there at Celilo when I turned about thirteen years old. They wouldn't let me go down there, or take me over there until I got about that age, then I got to go. I used to be able to go across the islands with him. And then he'd tie me up and show me how to use a pole and set net. Then later on I started fishing the way the others fished, with dipnets. But most boys learned earlier than that. Some learn when they're about seven, eight years old. My grandmother and my grandfather and my mom were kind of strict. They did not want us up there fooling around on them rocks. They were afraid that we might fall in. I did fall in. I got caught right away and I got out. There's been other boys that fell in there and they never came out, so that's the reason that they were kind of strict with us, about letting us go down there. But, that was the way I grew up. I grew up fishing all the time and when I was home, I went hunting. I never did go without a time that I wasn't fishing. And I'm still a fisherman. I retired from my other jobs. Logging was the last job I had, working out in the woods and I quit that, I mean I retired from that. Now I'm just a fisherman again.

Celilo Falls was — a person would look at Niagara Falls, and hear the roar of the water when it hits the bottom. That's what Celilo Falls was. It was a constant roar, you could hear it echoing off the bluffs from up there at Celilo Village where we used to camp. And there was tons of water coming over those falls and rocks. You get down there closer to it, that's all you could hear. And it was a sight to see, and people came from all over just to see and be at the Falls and take pictures, take pictures of the Falls, take pictures of themselves being there. And then they liked taking pictures of the fishermen fishing as well as taking pictures of the people putting up the fish, and cutting it and slicing it and getting it prepared for drying for winter use. So Celilo Falls was a very attractive place before it went under. I'd say it was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

But I guess the people of The Dalles, they're sorry now, a lot of them are sorry now that people thought that power was more important, and electricity was more important, and navigation of the river with tugboats and barges was more important. But I think they're kind of thinking differently now because the water's stagnant and it's undrinkable, and we don't know what all's in it so nobody uses it, except for fishing. I think that when they got rid of Celilo, they changed a whole way of life for the Native people and the river itself. It became quiet, stagnant and still moving. It moves, but all it is is just big pools anymore. All the glitter, the excitement of seeing fast roaring water and waterfalls and the Indians fishing on the rocks in the area, is gone, probably gone forever.

[With the completion of the dam] I felt a loss. In fact, I was working on the railroad the day they said that they were going to flood it. I took off and left and went down to Portland. I stayed out of the way for two days down there, never came back until it was over. When I came back there was nothing but a big pool behind that dam. But I didn't want to watch them cover the Falls, so I got out of there. A lot of the people that used to fish there did the same. And they said that the people that were there, when the Falls has been covered, a lot of them just turned and faced the bluffs. They didn't want to look at the Falls go under.

A lot of the people objected afterwards when it was too late. The [tribal] councils were trying to deal with it, but then the government told them that they were giving them so much money, which meant $3,700 for a person. All those eligible in that time were gonna get that apiece. And that was just a drop in the bucket. In fact, there was some amount of money that I could make in two days, three days, fishing — that didn't amount to much at all. We couldn't really buy anything with it, so we just had a total loss on it. A lot of people got paid for Celilo that didn't even have a right to get anything from it.

There ain't no amount of money that could ever, I don't think, that could ever make me leave this river, or get away from it, or give up what I have here — the rights for my people. When it comes down to it, my people come first, the children and the elders. I have concerns for other people and other races. But then my people are first. Because in many ways, with my people there's always a struggle for what they have and what they're trying to hold onto.

I live here, sometimes I'm here, living here all by myself. But I'm happy, because I got my ducks outside, I got my geese, I've got the muskrats out there, a weevil once in a while, the deer come down here. And me and my dog, we're happy as long as that fire is burning and the house is warm [laughs]. And I'm by the river. They asked me to go to the Yakima Valley many times and I says, "No, there's no river there. There's a river, yeah, but I can't live by it." Here I can. I'm at home when I'm by this big river. Even when I go on my trips, I'll be way off somewhere, I'll be thinking about this river and my place here.

I'M GOING TO START TELLING YOU about the river of my people, this land and our way of life, our rights. There's a great misunderstanding by a lot of people, white people and governmental people, on what was in the treaties when the treaties were signed. What they look at and what they understand is that our people came together with the white man, the soldiers and the cavalry and the governors and they says, "We're going to write up a treaty and this is what it's going to be, and this is how it's going to be. And you put your mark on there and sign it and that's going to be it. We're going to give you this, we're going to give you that, and this is what you're going to have to live by. And this is how you're going to have to live." But that's not so. That's not the way that we understood it, that's not the way our ancestors understood it.

We are river people along this river. Our ancestors are on both sides of this river, our people are buried on both sides of this river, up on the mountains and in the mountains, along the rivers, in many places. Many of the places that I discuss with the white man that wants to develop or do something, or log in certain areas, like over there in Oregon, he does not understand when we say, "We don't want you logging or doing anything there." It all falls back to when the treaties were signed, what was understood in that treaty and how was it understood and what all was there. How did the people look at it? How Native people in that time when the treaty was signed. The understanding they had is they were reserving and keeping the rights that they always had and their way of life, the way they always had it. I've always constantly got my back up against the wall about my people, for their right to fish, to hunt, or to go out and gather their foods, for our water, our mountains. The land is sacred to us.

We also have unwritten laws and traditional ways. These laws are reserved rights that we have. When the fish comes, we're going to fish. And we're going to gather the food as it becomes ready, and we're going to use it in the way we want to use it after we have our ceremonies, but we will always have respect for that fish in that water, forever.

These petroglyphs, original masterworks and spiritual images of the Columbia River Plateau peoples, include Spedis Owl, bighorn sheep, dogs, and elk.

Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

When they built The Dalles Dam and they finished the dam, they felt that all the people would probably move away and go back to the reservation. They failed to realize that we lived here; we were always here. We lived here all our lives from generation to generation. And fishing was our life, a way of taking care of the land. We had a lot of sacred land here — carvings in the stone, and the sights that are up on the hills overlooking the river. Many of the rock formations.

We don't want nobody to bother with, to change, or take, [what] is to be here, stay here. Not even the tribes from the reservations. We don't want them coming down and taking them, because in our area, for us, we protect them, we take care of them, watch over them. But then a lot of people don't realize that. A lot of people don't realize that the fisherman's life, or the way of life that he'll live with his family, that he depended on the river and the fishing seasons, while his family [is] going out and gathering the other foods. And he never was interrupted until the white man came and started developing and started moving in along the river. And they see him continuously fishing and not going by their rules and regulations. They feel there's a way that they have to force him to try to abide by their rules and regulations, and they wanted to change the laws.

But they fail to realize that they made treaties with our people in Walla Walla. The rights that the people reserved for themselves were the things that they've always done, the culture they always had, the way of life that they've always had. And fishing was one of them, fishing and hunting. They never ask anyone where to go hunting or go fishing. They lived off of the land and they lived off of the river. So therefore when the white man decides he's going to start bringing up new rules and regulations, and feel that the reserved rights should be diminished, that it's time for them to change, that's where he's wrong. Because we've given up enough, and if the government, if the agents, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the tribal councils, do not want to assist and help protect those rights, then we will stand up.

When The Dalles Dam was finished and the government felt that it was time to start changing the land in the fishing areas, for his needs and for the needs of his people, so that he could make more money off of it, it was time for me to stand up and let him know that I disapproved. It's time to let him know that many of the places along this river belonged to my people in the beginning and they were never paid for. Not even the right-of-ways of these highways and these railroads that have gone through. Yet today, our people have sacred sites, the cemeteries, that they're still standing up and having a hard time protecting. And this is the way that nature protects us, it protects our health, protects our rights.

As many dams that they've put on this river, it's never stopped flowing. The mountains are still standing. Those are our sacred mountains. They're the ones that provide the water for us, the lifeline that was lived off of. The food that we need, that comes back every year, through the water, the food that we have to gather up in the mountains. The mountains are the only ones that protect our food anymore. Everything else is development. Some people say, "Well that chief, he just likes to fight once in a while." But that's not it, it's for the sake of the people. A lot of times I'm speaking out because I speak for those that are scared to speak.

Wilbur Slockish, Jr., the Klickitat chief on the Mid-Columbia River Council, served three years in prison with David Sohappy, Sr., and Sohappy's son David, following their 1983 unjust conviction for illegal fishing in the notorious "Salmonscam" case. The case resulted from a federal-state sting operation that prosecuted Sohappy and eighteen other tribal fishers for selling fish caught with ceremonial permits. Since being released in 1989, Slockish has returned to fishing and has worked for the Yakama Nation on various issues related to water quality and salmon recovery.
The following excerpt is from an interview Michael O'Rourke did with Slockish on February 11, 2000; the interview is archived at the Oregon Historical Society and available on-line at www.ccrh.org.

I WAS BORN IN WAPATO, Washington in 1944. I've lived both places, on my father's family allotment around the Columbia River area until 1954 [and on the Yakama Reservation].

We lived on the banks of the Columbia River and my father fished there. I did come back over here during fishing times and spent time along Celilo area, Klickitat River area. My parents were out berry-picking, picking fruit, fishing, drying fish, drying all of the various products, the roots and the moss that we eat and different things for our wintertime foods. We had cattle. We had a milk cow, chickens. At that time, we had put away a lot of our winter foods. Money was pretty scarce in those days.

Our traditional natural food supply, that was the diet. [My grandfather] had horses he'd trade for different things. Hams. And we had a little spring house that was dug into the ground and we had a pipe where the water would come out. It was cold in there. That was our refrigerator and water supply. We'd put everything in there. We used to make our own butter, all of that.

When I was over along the Columbia, it was the traditional food supply. And when I was over on the reservation, it was a mixed diet. My grandmother on the reservation, she had some of the foods but then over there was, she had both sides, pork chops, chicken and steaks, beef, like that. Sometimes you'd get the roots and fish and the other huckleberries, but it all depended on where I was at.

I could go down [to Celilo Falls] and do some sneak fishing when there was nobody there, but mostly it was the older ones that were able to fish. I used to pack sacks of fish up there for 25 cents. They'd give me a quarter to pack their fish up to different places and a couple fish and I could pack those.

Fishers work Downes Channel at Celilo in the 1950s, just prior to the falls being submerged.

OHS neg., CN 007466

[WHEN THE FALLS WERE SUBMERGED] all of a sudden we just had one little small area then that we were able to fish in that was down at the Klickitat River, which was a similar style but it was a very small river, but we were able to fish there, too, on our family fishing sites. My father used to fish in a place called Underwood [Washington]. White Salmon River down there. There used to be big fish down there. He used to spear fish down there that weighed up to 100 lbs. With a spear, you know.

We have seen a decline of the runs. We've seen fishing times reduced, and it always seems to be focusing the blame on our people for so-called over-harvest, that we were the cause of declining runs. They don't want to really focus the blame on the two reasons for these declines of these species, fish and deer and elk and other things. They don't want to blame it on their industrial activities. Now, where the water used to be cold and running, you know, free-flowing, the fish were in abundance, but soon as they started pooling it and making the water warm, that's when the declining salmon starting coming into being.

We used to hear frogs all the time, but we don't hardly hear them anymore. We're starting to hear them in places that we haven't heard them before. There was a lot of frogs disappeared. A lot of people don't understand that the animals announce to us the arrival of certain foods. The frogs, they tell us when it's going to rain and they sing, oh there's going to be some rain coming. The fish are almost here, or the fish are coming. They're going to be right here. A lot of people, they don't believe that. They think it's one of our tales that we try to put out, but the animals do tell us and communicate with us. You just have to know how to listen to them.

They always point out, they keep saying that it's tribal over-harvest.

Well, we're just one voice, who's going to listen to us? They haven't listened to us since they came here, because that's one of the first things that the settlers came out with when they first got here — "We just want a little piece of land to grow a crop to feed our people." Now, who has the little piece of land? It's our people that have just a little piece of land. If you need a good example, right here along this Willamette River here, you can take a look and dig into the records. Some of my people have put their hands in this river when they've been down here fishing, and their hands have rashes and different things that they get on their hands, sores. I won't come down here and fish because I know what is in this river, all the industrial [toxins] that are pouring into this river.

I ENDED UP ON THE BI-STATE Water Quality Commission for the Lower Columbia River and that's how come I know [about] the discharges in this river out here and the sediments and parts per trillion and all of that. I did attend a great number of the meetings. I think it was a three-year appointment but I didn't participate in any more after a while.

It was all industry-supported and if you brought something up and industry didn't like it, they wouldn't address it. So I ended up hearing and wondering about the health problems, wondering why salmon runs were declining and made the connection that farming practices, logging practices, all of the user groups affect the reasons why the salmon runs were declining. It wasn't our fishing that did this. It seems to me, oh every few years, that government and various user groups like to point their finger at us, and it's easier to blame somebody else than their economic practices because they're afraid if the truth comes out, they're going to lose their jobs and then what are they going to do? My response to a lot of them is to say that I thought you guys were all of superior intelligence, you know. I said, "You came in here, changed my economic system and I survived. If you're of superior intelligence, would it not be easier for you to survive because whether anyone realizes it, we have two rules that we lean on. Tribal rule and the white system." But they never have answered that.

My thing is, nothing is [free]. Someone is going to have to pay for it, this economic gain, this economic growth. And it's my people's health that is suffering. It's the health of my food supplies, the health of my water supplies, the health of my mountains, the health of the wildlife, the fish. They're also [suffering] for this economic growth.

Some of the allies that I have, they understand this message, but a lot of them, you know — I had one lady from, her husband worked at the Hanford site, and she told me that her husband wouldn't do anything to harm us. Well, he's not in charge of the operation, he's just a worker. He doesn't know what harmful effects these are. He's just working. He's doing his job. And I told her, I said, "Look, we're trying to get it to the cleanup place. That's what we want to do is clean this place up. Maybe your husband will get a higher-paying job." She was a delegate to the Washington Association of Churches, and we were trying to get their endorsement for our activities. She wouldn't give it because she said that her husband wouldn't do it, so she wasn't going to support that. And that's when I told her. But she came back again the following year to the Washington Association of Churches meeting and she told me she understood it then because her husband now had a higher-paying job. She said she was not going to have to give up the lifestyle that she was accustomed to because of his high-paying job. They're not willing now, but if salmon or any of the other species are not here, the health of the animals will be the health of the people. My belief is if the fish are gone, if all of the other food supplies are gone, then we will cease to exist as a people.

I think it needs to be understood that the things that I try to present and why I do it is for my future generations, my future people. And my belief and my ceremonial practices and belief, it's so that when my time comes, I can be able to tell the creator that I did my best to leave the world as He wanted it, that I did my best to make sure that my children had a place to survive. That my animal resources, that my plant life were here as He placed them, and I did my best to ensure that they were here for future generations.

^* In preparing this interview for publication, Jackson noted that his grandfathers were Tommy Kuni Thompson, chief at Celilo Village, and Flank Long Slockish, Klickitat chief.

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