Yesteryears - June 15, 2026

2021 — The Tribe received $27.5 million in American Rescue Plan funds, designed to provide relief to working Americans, businesses and state or local governments negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tribe did not announce plans on how it would use the funding, instead prioritizing how it would spend the remainder of the $45 million in funds it received in 2020 from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

2016 — The Tribe won the Queen’s Award for best non-animated float in the Portland Rose Festival’s Spirit Mountain Casino Grand Floral Parade for the second year in a row. The float, titled “Have Some Real Fun,” paid tribute to the first float entered by the Tribe 20 years earlier and depicted a mother coyote watching her two pups as they played alongside flowers.

2011 — The Tribe published an updated version of the Cultural Resources Department’s Chinuk Wawa dictionary. The updated dictionary, at almost 500 pages, included roughly 1,000 core words and 3,000 compound words that documented the language as it was spoken by past generations of Grand Ronde Indians. The new edition was roughly one-third larger than the previous dictionary created in 2001.

2006 — The Spirit Mountain Community Fund approved $1.7 million in grants to 36 nonprofit organizations across its 11-county service area. “This latest round of giving underscores our tradition of sharing what we have with our community. It also affirms our conviction to make a key difference in areas that greatly affect quality of life for our Tribe and for all Oregonians: education, health, public safety, arts and culture, environment and historic preservation,” Tribal Public Affairs Director Siobhan Taylor said.

2001 — Tribal members Gene LaBonte, Russ Leno and June Olsen began work to map and mark locations of possible gravesites in the Tribal cemetery. The work was done as part of preservation efforts to identify missing cemetery records, determine availability for burial space within the cemetery, preserve the history of the old section of the cemetery and create a new updated record book to replace the original which had been lost in a fire.

1996 — Spirit Mountain Casino continued to hire and recruit employees for open positions at the casino, with 25 new and pre-existing positions set to become available. The Tribe observed the flow of new applicants was slowing down and encouraged Tribal and non-Tribal individuals to apply.

1991 — The Tribe’s Fish and Wildlife Department began distributing the subsistence salmon supply once per year rather than twice. This change was made to ensure more Tribal members received an allocation of fish and to eliminate confusion during the distribution process.

1986 — Tribal Council authorized the startup of the Social Services program, initially created to provide counseling and family assistance to Tribal members.

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