Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Nez Perce Tribal Culture and Oral Traditions at the MAC



Interesting event coming up tomorrow night at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture. Josiah Black Eagle Pinkham, cultural resources ethnographer for the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) tribe in Idaho will be giving a presentation supplemented by a display of cultural material used by his family. The presentation is at 6:30 p.m. at the MAC Auditorium, $5 Suggested Donation.

By the way--what is up with that YouTube video? I wanted to enhance this post with something beyond the bare-bones event description on the MAC website, so I googled the presenter and found the clip. The first bit is a nice introduction by Pinkham, but I am surprised to hear a relation of Chief Joseph say "we are very thankful" that the Chief Joseph Dam was named "in his honor." This is the dam that completely blocks salmon migration--no fish ladder was included. I am teaching tomorrow night so won't be at the MAC, or I would ask him about it.

The above video seems to a spinoff from this six-minute documentary about the dam, which is narrated by Pinkham. It is extremely-well made, though very biased in favor of the dam and downplaying its negative impacts on the environment and on native cultures:

2 comments:

Clayton Hanson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clayton Hanson said...

Considerations?

Though an issue in this mitigation - unstated above - is that attempts to establish kokanee through the hatcheries have done poorly in Rufus Woods Lake and Lake Roosevelt. BuRec and USACE introduced walleye into both lakes and walleye are piscivores.