Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians


The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in the United States is a federally recognized confederation of more than 27 Native American tribes and bands who once inhabited a range from northern California to southwest Washington and between the summit of the Cascades and the Pacific Ocean. The tribes spoke at least 11 distinct languages, including Tillamook, Shasta, the Clatsop dialect of Chinook, Kalapuya, Takelma, Alsea-Yaquina, Siuslaw, Coos, the Plateau Penutian languages Molala and Klickitat, and several Oregon Athabaskan languages. After the Rogue River Wars, these tribes were removed to the Coast Indian Reservation, now known as the Siletz Reservation.

Name

The confederation takes its name from the Siletz River, which surrounds the reservation. The word "siletz" translates into "coiled like a snake," describing the route of the river winding around the land and mountains to the ocean. It includes remnants of the Siletz, a Coast Salish people who inhabited the area up until the middle 19th century but who are no longer counted separately in the larger confederation.

Tribes

The confederation is made up of the following tribes and bands.
The Confederated Tribes emerged from the remnants of around 28 different tribes of coast Indians.

Interim-reservations

After the Rogue River Wars of 1855-56, most of the peoples were forced onto the Coast Indian Reservation, which later split into the Siletz and Alsea reservations, where they were to form a single unified tribe. The Coast Reservation originally comprised, which was established by the executive order of President Franklin Pierce on November 9, 1855, only weeks after the start of the Rogue River Wars. In 1894, 551 individuals received federal allotments and at one point, the tribes occupied 225,000 acres of land that constituted the Siletz Reservation in Oregon. The reservation was established via an executive order, which entailed the relocation of the indigenous peoples of the coastal region of the Oregon Territory.

Termination act of 1954

The Western Oregon Indian Termination Act of 1954, Public Law 588, came into effect on August 13, 1954. This new law severed Bureau of Indian Affairs supervision of trust lands and BIA regulation of services to the Indian peoples.
All of the remaining Siletz lands were sold except for the 39 acres called Government Hill. The proceeds of the sale of the timberland property were distributed to enrolled tribal members in two installments: $250 per person in December 1954, and a final payment of $542.50 per person in August 1956. Other inherited allotments were held in trusts but were also sold off at the request of the owners.

Restoration bills

During the 1960s, several members of the Siletz tribe began to organize and restore common bonds. Their initiatives included the restoration of the tribal cemetery on Government Hill and an aggressive lobbying of Congress and the office of the President to recognize Siletz as a federal Native American tribe.
In June 1974, Rep. Wendell Wyatt introduced a first restoration bill, but it did not pass.
On December 17, 1975, Senator Mark Hatfield introduced restoration bill S. 2801. At the time Senator Hatfield presented his restoration bill he was quoted as saying that the Siletz People were "ill-prepared to cope with the realities of American society" when the Termination act went to effect and that they had been "tossed abruptly from a state of almost total dependency to a state of total independence... to leave the only way of life they had known." The bill included wording to grant or restore hunting and fishing rights. This bill also did not pass.
Senator Hatfield and Senator Bob Packwood introduced a new bill, S. 1560, in the month of May 1977. Unlike its 1975 predecessor, it did not include that the hunting or fishing rights be restored. On August 5, 1977, the United States Senate passed the restoration bill and on November 1, 1977, so did the House. The bill was then sent to President Jimmy Carter on November 3 and then approved November 18.
Today about 5,100 of their descendants are enrolled members of this tribe, which is based on the Siletz Reservation along the Siletz River in the Central Oregon Coast Range, about 15 miles northeast of Newport, Oregon.

Important events in tribal history

The Confederated Tribes have 5,100 enrolled members, 70% of whom live in Oregon and only 8% of whom live near on the reservation. An additional 6% live in the town of Siletz and 22.6% live in Lincoln County. There are 445 households in the city of Siletz and 143 households on the Siletz Reservation.
The tribe owns and manages a reservation located along the Siletz River in the Central Oregon Coast Range of central Lincoln County, Oregon, approximately 15 mi northeast of Newport. In total, they own a checkerboard of approximately in and around the original 1.1 million acre Coast Indian Reservation, established Nov 9, 1855 – which was quickly whittled down, and the tribe terminated by act of Congress in 1956. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians became the second tribe terminated by an act of Congress to regain federal recognition by passage of the Siletz Restoration Act Nov 18, 1977.
The tribe owns and operates the Chinook Winds Casino and Convention Center, the Chinook Winds Golf Resort in Lincoln City, the $9.5 million undeveloped oceanfront Lot 57 north of Chinook Winds Casino, Hee Hee Illahee RV park in Salem, the Logan Road RV Park, the Salem Flex Building where the Salem Area Offices currently exist, the $1.6 million Portland Stark Building which was purchased in August 2007, which is the site of the tribe's Portland Area Office, the Eugene Elks building which houses the Eugene Area Office, the Siletz Gas & Mini Mart, the old Toledo Mill site, and a commercial building in Depoe Bay.
The tribe also owns and runs the Siletz Community Health Clinic. A $7.5 million plan is underway to expand the clinic. $2 million of the funding will come from the Federal government's IHS Small Ambulatory Grant funding. The clinic is currently but will grow to between 2006-2016.
The Siletz Tribal Police department was discontinued, but the tribe now contracts with the nearby Lincoln County Sheriff's Office to provide law enforcement services to the Siletz area.
The tribe is gradually accumulating additional property into the reservation, as part of a 2005-2015 Comprehensive Plan. This includes entrusted to the tribe in 2007 by the state and federal governments as part of the New Carissa oil spill settlement, on the condition that the Confederated Tribes will manage it solely as a marbled murrelet habitat.
The tribal government is attempting to get old treaties recognized by referencing them in the tribe's constitution, and also by mentioning the treaties in a work by Charles Wilkinson, who has been hired by the Tribal Council to write a history of the Siletz. There have also been attempts to retrieve the remains of tribal ancestors from the Smithsonian Institution, and to retrieve various other tribal artifacts distributed throughout the United States of America.
The current Tribal Council includes Chairman Delores Pigsley; Vice Chairman Bud Lane; Secretary Sharon Edenfield; Joseph Lane Jr.; Loraine Butler; Lillie Butler; Reggie Butler; Treasurer Robert Kentta; and Gloria Ingle.
The tribal government's Public Information Office publishes the monthly Siletz News.

Cultural activities

Artifacts and historical documents are stored and displayed at the Siletz Tribal Cultural Center, located on Government Hill, under the care of Cultural Specialist Robert Kentta and Cultural Activities Coordinator Selene Rilatos.
Tolowa is taught as a common tribal language. Beginning Athabaskan language will be taught at the Siletz Valley Charter School, opening in the fall of 2006.
The second weekend in August of every year the tribe is host to its annual Nesika Illahee Pow-wow.
Every summer and winter solstice for hundreds if not thousands of years, a dance has been held, called, the Feather Dance, which would be held for 12 days at a place called "Yonkentonket," which means, "the center of the earth."
In recent years a new tradition has been started. During the winter solstice, dancers, singers, and tribal members from the Confederated Tribes visit the Tolowa peoples' cedar plank dance house near Smith River, California. During the summer solstice, dancers, singers, and tribal members of the Tolowa tribe visit the peoples of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz's cedar plank dance house.

Population

Finding records of the ethnic and cultural history of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz is somewhat difficult. A partial attempt at the tribal population makeup before it was forced on reservation lands in the mid-19th century is as follows:
The ancestors of the Confederated Tribes spoke at least 11 different languages.
According to a report by the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, Siletz Dee-ni is the last of many tribal languages spoken on the reservation. In 2007 only one living speaker remained. However, according to a later report in The Economist, the language has since been at least partially revived thanks to an on-line dictionary project; in some areas, "many now text each other in Siletz Dee-ni." The tribe has a language revival program with classes in three area offices and Siletz Valley school.

Notable Siletz people