General Council hears from Cultural Resources, Ceded Lands departments

By Danielle Harrison

Smoke Signals editor

Cultural Resources Department Manager David Harrelson updated Tribal members on the department’s various programs and accomplishments during a Sunday, Dec. 7, General Council meeting held in Tribal Council Chambers and via Zoom.

That presentation was followed by one from Tribal Ceded Lands Manager Michael Karnosh.

During Harrelson’s approximately 35-minute presentation, he discussed the different programs within the department, various projects and future plans.

“Thank you for having me here to give an update about the department,” Harrelson said. “I’m going to do a quick overview about the mission of the department, which is to support a healthy community by facilitating dialogue, maintaining continuity and providing protection of Tribal lifeways for the benefit of future generations.”

Cultural Resources programs include the Research Program, Cultural Protection Program and an Archeology and Research Program. The Tribal Historic Preservation Office and Chachalu Tribal Museum & Cultural Center are also under the umbrella of the department.

Some of the department’s highlights include:

Cultural Resources currently has 26 full-time employees. Tribal member and longtime employee Travis Stewart is the Chachalu manager. Briece Edwards serves as the Tribal Historic Preservation Office manager.

Harrelson also took a moment during the presentation to correct the commonly misstated term “Culture Department.”

“In the spirit of sharing, I often hear the word ‘culture’ used and you can really help us by using the term ‘Cultural Resources Department,’ in place of that,” he said. “It also really does help understand that we are helping to build resources and that’s how we’re structured.”

Cultural Resources has hosted various activities during the past year. One was a glass workshop with Tribal member Douglas Burgess, who was one of the department’s Indigenous Place Keeping Artist Fellows this year.

“He came down with a mobile kiln and taught different forms within glass,” Harrelson said. “The most exciting thing people had was the ability to make their own beads…The prospect of being able to pull your own glass to make beads was pretty exciting.”

Additionally, National Poet Laureate Ada Limón came to Grand Ronde and gave a reading at Chachalu this year as part of a partnership with the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology.

“As a part of that, we gifted her a zine (small self-published booklet) that was created from the zine workshops that we hosted last spring where Tribal member Steph Littlebird came into the community and hosted three different workshops,” Harrelson said.

Other events included the annual acorn camp at TouVelle State Recreation Site, the celebration of Tribal plankhouse achaf-hammi’s 16^th birthday in October and some mountain trips to Molalla Table Rock.

“We’re looking at future capacity to partner with third-party entities to get Tribal members the opportunity to go into the high country to these important cultural sacred environments and places that our ancestors have talked about,” Harrelson said.  

The Historic Preservation Office has been coordinating what is now an annual trip to the Obsidian Cliffs in central Oregon near North Sister, an important high country mountain location with Tribally-significant archeological information.

“We go up there into that place with Forest Service staff and we’ve been able to selectively bring on different staff or sometimes community members on that trip,” Harrelson said. “The success of the Obsidian Cliffs trip has actually been a real driver for us wanting to look at mountain trips and how we can scale that because we see there’s a demand.”

The Historic Preservation Office has also been busy with archeological work after the Tribe took possession of Fort Yamhill State Park early in 2025.

“There’s a lot of archeology and cultural resources work that needed to happen there,” Harrelson said. “So, the team has been collectively resourcing and thinking about this work. To do so, we were actually able to bring archeologist and Tribal member Sharrah McKenzie, who was originally in our archeological field school years ago. It was really cool to see her come back and do some of that work at Fort Yamhill.”

Additionally, the Historic Preservation Office partnered with the Tribal Employment Rights Office this summer to do an archeological monitor training.

“We were able to train up about a dozen archeological monitors who were available to work for contracting consulting firms and it was another example of multiple levels of capacity building and development,” Harrelson said.

The Cultural Protection Program has reviewed more than 9,000 project notifications, permits and regulatory inquires in the last year.

“That continued to go up even through the pandemic,” Harrelson said. “There are three employees and you get to a number that is pretty significant but they know about a lot of stuff because they are constantly contextualizing what’s important to the Tribe and cultural significance, and how that lays out on the landscape.”

Staff recently had the ability to recover whale parts on the Oregon Coast. That work is the culmination of years of time and effort, Harrelson said.

“What was such a success for our staff is now other Tribes are doing it and the things that we’ve learned, we’ve been able to share with them,” he said.

The Research Program performs, supports and administers projects that include bringing forward written and recorded information about the Tribe’s languages and history.

“You can set up an appointment and work with a librarian to learn about information that relates to the Tribe,” Harrelson said.

There are self-published books available for the community and staff ask that it be limited to one per household due to publication costs.

Chachalu has hosted several successful marketplace events this past summer on the third Friday of every month. A holiday market was hosted Friday, Dec. 12.

“That’s something we’ll definitely be looking at continuing to do,” Harrelson said. “It definitely gets a different mix of people coming in the doors and seeing whatever our changeout exhibits are. We do two to three exhibits a year.” 

Chachalu has also been recruited to be one of four Oregon partners out of 300 different museums and arts organizations across the state for a project called Art Bridges.

Lastly, the museum had its first traveling exhibit open this last year called “Transgressors.” The guest curators were Tribal descendant Felix Furby and Tribal member Anthony Hudson. The exhibit will travel for the next two years throughout the state and features the history of Two-Spirit and Indigequeer identities as well as those of contemporary artists.

“That was a growth of a relationship of community coming forward and it started small…then it got bigger and they had a lot of success,” Harrelson said. “It just gives you an idea of the portion of Tribal and community members seeing a need, saying something, growing it in small steps and now we have a traveling exhibit.”

Cultural Education has hosted different gathering and community trips, workshops and cultural lifeways drop-in programs.

“Our staff have readjusted the work of the program to allow them to support out more often as people provide these classes,” Harrelson said. “Culture is everything, so everyone should be able to do culture. Cultural Resources is there to be a resource, not a gatekeeper.”

Upcoming department work includes the opening of two new exhibits, a Molalla Table Rock trip, Tribal learning cohorts, placekeeping blog posts and cultural fire activations and collaborations throughout Tribal homelands.

After the presentation, Harrelson took four questions and comments from the audience.

 “I appreciate the presentation, the way you put it and all that you do,” Tribal Council Secretary Jon A. George said. “I think the return of our culture and our cultural knowledge that is happening here…it creates community…especially when you have Elders coming here and others bringing their children and how all that information is shared in there.”

After a lunch break, Karnosh gave an update about the Tribal Ceded Lands Department.

He started the presentation by sharing a map of the combined area of the Tribe’s ceded lands.

“We do a variety of things in ceded lands and consider ourselves a service department,” Karnosh said. “We work collaboratively with at least seven other Tribal departments on a regular basis.”

Ceded Lands has been on the Tribal team for conservation land acquisition since 2011, Karnosh shared, and has helped to acquire almost 2,000 acres throughout the Willamette Wildlife Mitigation Program.

Additionally, Ceded Lands supports government-to-government consultation between Tribal Council and other governmental leaders such as the city of Portland, Clackamas County, U.S. Forest Service, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and others.

“You heard David mention the 9,000 notices per year, we actually go through those and highlight the ones that we want to talk about and bring to everyone’s attention,” Karnosh said. “We want to get the Tribal pieces where they fit best so we get Tribal coverage on all of these things.”

Another focus area is working collaboratively with various Tribal departments to build and maintain relationships that allow the Tribe to tell its story. Examples include various memorandums of understanding with government entities as well as partnerships with The Nature Conservancy and McKenzie River Trust.

Currently, Ceded Lands is working with the city of Tigard to create an interpretive walk along the Fanno Creek Trail.

Upcoming work includes developing a project tracker and action organizer with the Tribe’s Salmon Strength Team, advocating for Tribal water rights and water quality, assisting with three potential land acquisitions, continuing to build relationships with various government entities and helping secure fee-free recreation and cultural access areas for Tribal members on federal, state and conservation lands.

After his presentation, Karnosh took six questions and comments from the audience.

“Thank you so much for your presentation,” Tribal Council member Toby McClary said. “It was very informative”

In other action, it was announced that the next General Council meeting will be held at 11 a.m. Sunday, Jan 4. The hybrid meeting will be held in Tribal Council Chambers and via Zoom.

Door prize winners were Liena Nelson, Leroy Good and Cassandra Scott $100; and Collette Abdie, Lisa Maddox, Chris Mansayon, Tammy Cook and Solitare Ramos, $50.

To watch the entire meeting, visit www.grandronde.org and click on the Videos tab.