Yesteryears -- Nov. 15, 2014

2009 - A ceremony officially honoring completion of the Grand Ronde Road improvement project was held with then-Tribal Council Vice Chair Reyn Leno and Tribal Council member Wink Soderberg helping to cut the ribbon. The project cost $6.4 million.

2004 - A team of volunteers helped in the construction of a new playground area in the family housing development Chxi Musam Illihi. The project took almost four hours to complete and became a safe place for children to play.

1999 - The Grand Ronde Tribe submitted a claim under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, asking for the return of Tomanowos, the Willamette meteorite taken from Oregon in the early 1900s. The meteorite belonged to the Native doctors of the Clackamas Tribe.

1994 - The Tribe reached an agreement with the Bureau of Land Management regarding a survey error that occurred in 1871. The 84 acres near the Reservation known as the Thompson Strip was not added to the Reservation and was sold in 1907. The Tribe gave up its claim on the land in exchange for another 240 acres and Congress approved the deal.

1989 - Smoke Signals and Tribal archives do not have a copy of the November 1989 edition.

1984 - The Tribal Constitution was adopted with a 145-14 vote. The new Constitution stated that the blood quantum requirement for enrollment was to be lowered to 1/16^th.

Yesteryears is a look back at Tribal history in five-year increments through the pages of Smoke Signals.