The Coquille Indian Tribe will soon be putting nearly $8 million in federal grant funding to work on salmon recovery and watershed projects, the tribe said Monday in a media release.
The tribe received two major NOAA grant awards this year, including a $4.249 million Barrier Removal Grant and a $3.608 million Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund Grant.
This story originally appeared on Underscore Native News.
This spring, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek promised to visit all nine federally recognized Native nations across the state. So far, she has visited eight and attended the annual Tribal-State Government-to-Government Summit in July. That time marked a span of months when Kotek heard from Native leadership across the state.
In an interview on Aug. 14, Underscore Native News + ICT followed up on those conversations, asking Kotek to clarify her commitments to Native nations and Indigenous community members in Oregon.
Opinion. Last week, three tribal leaders penned an open letter to presidential candidates, debate moderators, consultants, political commentators, and the media to push for Native American rights to be part of the upcoming presidential debate on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia and the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1 in New York City.
Tribal leaders Coquille Indian Tribe Chair Brenda Meade; Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana Chairman Marshall Pierite; and Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians Chair Brad Kneaper wrote that millions of Americans are tribal citizens who grapple with centuries of disastrous policies designed to stamp out our people and way of life.
Natalie Wilson of the Coquille Indian Tribe has a boots-on-the-ground approach to logging that connects her to the land of her ancestors on the Southern Oregon Coast.
Wilson, a fish and wildlife biologist and the tribe’s subsistence harvest program manager, inspects every tree to determine which will remain standing and which will be cut down…
Chair Brenda Meade writes in Newsweek: In the history of Native American tribes, there is a far too common theme—a court will issue a ruling or Congress will pass a law that reasonably protects our people or fairly guarantees our rights. And then as soon as those well-reasoned protections or rights become inconvenient, or political pressure dials up, those promises go out the window.
…Recently, a handful of tribes in California and Oregon who oppose the Coquille Indian Tribe’s plan to build a new casino in Medford have claimed we are “reservation shopping” and looking to add land to which we are not justified – an unfair and inaccurate accusation. These tribes apparently fear that our proposed casino would disrupt their entrenched monopoly on gaming in the region.
But with this accusation, they are creating a reckless and baseless precedent for political attacks against hundreds of tribes like ours who have worked to legally rebuild our reservations while carefully following layers of laws and regulations. And it hinders our ability to fund essential services like health care and education through gaming….
After more than three years of work, one of the Pacific Northwest’s busiest airports is set to reopen its main terminal on Wednesday. And it’s not going to look like your typical, industrially sterile US airport.
The emphasis on local resources and culture extends to the first inhabitants of the area. Some of the wood sourcing came direct from tribal lands.
Sunset Magazine – August 15, 2024
Portland Tribune – August 12, 2024
The 3rd annual Smallmouth Bass Derby is underway, and the public has a chance to win up to $5,000 for the bass they catch.
Hosted by Coquille River STEP Association and in partnership with the Coquille Indian Tribe, the derby is helping the recovery of salmon and other important species by ridding the river of invasive smallmouth bass.
The two Oregon tribes hoping to open the urban casinos — one in Salem, the capital, and the other in Medford, 30 miles north of the California border — say the projects should be viewed as opportunities, hard-earned and long overdue, to finance initiatives to house and heal their members, particularly their elders, while creating jobs for all local residents.
“It’s about self-determination,” said Brenda Meade, chair of the Coquille tribe, whose proposal for a casino in Medford, 170 miles from the tribe’s headquarters, has generated heated opposition. “We will decide what’s best for our people.
A review of the new book “Stories Are Weapons” by Annalee Newitz includes a chapter that focuses on a project headed by Chief Jason Younker. That chapter, titled “History is a Gift,” highlights “the importance of archives like the Southwest Oregon Research Project, or SWORP. Beginning in 1995, Jason Younker, Coquille tribal chief and anthropologist, and his colleagues began pulling out of national archives any and all material related to the Coquille nation and constructing an alternative archive, one that takes “the fantasy out of history,” in Newitz’s words…”
