Tribal member returns home to study the past

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

In the gentle rolling slopes of the Coast Range foothills above where the uyxat Powwow Grounds now stand, grassy meadows dot the hills among stands of mixed fir and hardwoods. An incongruous apple tree, laden with still-small fruit, stands in one field, marking European influence on the idyllic landscape, along with the power lines running across one end of the meadow and the sound of mowers below.

At the edge of the meadow, archeologist and Tribal member Sharrah McKenzie carefully measures out a 9-by-40-meter strip and begins pushing a heavy wheeled cart holding a ground-penetrating radar device across the roughly mown section. On this already-warm July morning, McKenzie is trying to finish her work for the day before the sun grows too hot to continue.

She has spent a decade of her life journeying to this time and place, acquiring the skills she is now bringing back to the Tribe.

Since time immemorial, the area now known as the Fort Yamhill State Heritage Area was the homeland of the Yamel branch of the Kalapuya.

After Europeans claimed the land and drove more than 30 Tribes and bands into the newly created Grand Ronde Reservation, it became a fort, bristling with soldiers, guns and horses. The fort was decommissioned a decade later.

Early this year, the Tribe acquired the property and has hired McKenzie to lead a mapping project. Working with the Tribe’s Historic Preservation Office, she’s using the work to expand the Tribe’s knowledge of the area’s history.

While archeological studies have been conducted here in the past, they primarily looked at the lives and perspectives of the soldiers stationed at Fort Yamhill, McKenzie said.

 The Tribe is taking a different approach, examining not only the site’s brief decade as a fort, but about the years before and after that period, from the perspective of its original inhabitants.

Speaking to attendees at the Tribe’s Honor and Recognition Event in 2024, McKenzie said it was something of a surprise to find herself with a doctorate in the little-known field of paleobiology.

Paleobiology is a combination of disciplines, using fossils to study the biological and environmental history of a region.  

McKenzie hadn’t loved school, she said, and gravitated toward classes with more of a social focus. After graduating high school, she traveled around the United States for two years, working odd jobs.

“After about two years I realized I was both self-sufficient and happy,” she said in her speech. “I was working in jobs that were constantly changing, and knew they were allowing me to travel and work outside, which was exactly what I wanted at that time. … I remember at this point having a real sense of confidence; it was the first time that I really felt that I had a skill set.”

With her newfound self-confidence, McKenzie pursued a bachelor’s degree in archeology at Portland State University.

“I felt like I had more control … I was able to choose what I wanted, that matched my goals and my wants and also my personality, that I wanted to pursue later on in life,” she said.

McKenzie loved the idea of being able to travel, visit other cultures and learn about them.

When Cultural Resources Department Manager David Harrelson and Historic Preservation Office Manager Briece Edwards learned there was a Tribal member at PSU studying archeology, they invited her to join a field school the Tribe was conducting in 2015, which involved studying a Grand Ronde Tribal school from the early 1900s.

“It was really great, because it really solidified my interest in archeology,” McKenzie said.

Attending field schools was a requirement at PSU, McKenzie said, to help students evaluate whether they want to continue in the field.

“A lot of people stopped, because it is very tiring, it’s physically demanding and you’re camping out for weeks,” she said. “We would get back and argue, ‘who’s making dinner, I don’t want to,’” after a long day in the field.

Despite the challenges, McKenzie knew she had found her path. She attended two field schools: The Tribe’s and a forensic archeology study of human remains in California.

The forensic archeology study taught her she didn’t want to focus on studying human remains. She eventually settled on paleobiology, which led her to graduate school in Barcelona, Spain, one of three choices worldwide. She spent the next eight years there, acquiring her master’s and doctorate degrees.

“You can start to put together an idea of the environment (fossils) were found in. … you start to understand not only the animals and the plants, but what kind of environment they lived in and what kind of changes took place,” McKenzie said.

Eventually, she hopes to bring more attention to paleobiology in the Pacific Northwest.

“Paleobiology as its own discipline is really lacking here,” McKenzie said. “The Pacific Northwest just doesn’t have the preservation of fossils so much.”

Much of what is now the Pacific Northwest was covered in shallow seas for millions of years and later subject to significant volcanic eruptions, as well as earthquakes. 

McKenzie said she loves studying past environments.

“That’s what I focused on when I was doing my Ph.D,” she said. “It’s possible to start examining how mammals developed, whether its primates or hedgehogs or pigs or whatever; you can start to see how they evolved and what features they retained over millions of years that allowed them to be successful.”

At Fort Yamhill, McKenzie hopes to study “the story of the people who were there, and why they liked being there. What kind of trees grew there that could be used for tools, and what kind of stones were in the river (that proved useful) … it’s going to be really great.”

When she returned to the United States after completing graduate school abroad, McKenzie applied for a job with the Tribe, citing her experience with the 2015 field school.

Edwards said the Tribe is lucky to have been able to hire McKenzie, who is now working part-time, leading the Fort Yamhill ground-mapping study.

“There’s a generation of Grand Ronde that’s stepping into cultural resources in this way,” he said.

McKenzie, who lives in Portland, said she’s working as many hours as possible this summer to conduct the ground radar readings, which will be studied more closely over the winter months to produce a map of the eight to 10-acre area. The work is expected to take a few years, after which the department will assess which areas merit further study.

McKenzie is also working with Oregon State University on archeological sites around western Oregon and will be teaching at Washington State University Vancouver in Vancouver, Washington, in the fall.

“I do wish some universities would start to teach more paleobiology classes,” she said. “If I could find a school that had a good department, I’d love to be a part of it.”