5/16 CHEMAWA [Salem, Oregon]

And so, at long last, the Journey began in earnest.



After the "success" of Carlisle, money was set aside for the creation of 500 new schools. The first of the 500 was Chemawa in Salem, Oregon. As an interesting sidenote, do you know who bankrolled those 500 new schools?

The answer is: The US Department of War. Think about that for a moment. Not the State Department, not the Dept of the Interior, and certainly not Education.

Anyways, Chemawa has come a long way, and is now a school one might be proud to have graduated from. That doesn't mean the wounds don't run deep, and there's a hidden battle between those who want healing and those who want the past to be ignored.



It was a good start to our Journey. The auditorium was large and comfortable, the mics worked, and attendance was good. I won't go into too many details about the ceremony itself, both because I am pressed for time and because White Bison has covered it already.

http://www.whitebison.org/wellbriety-journey/NewsStories.htm

The Chemawa article is a little disjointed -- I'm probably not supposed to say anything, but there was a mix-up behind the scenes. Basically, Maria's notes were printed to the web instead of the full story. It'll be our little secret. Or, maybe it's been fixed already by the time you read this.

Oh, and speaking of which, I finally met Maria-of-the-never-appearing-airplane. I noticed a woman who seemed to know what was going on. Since I was trying to hard to pretend to know what was going on, I recognized the look immediately and correctly guessed her identity. Knee-deep in work was a good way for us to meet.

The opening procession was a surprisingly emotionally-loaded event. The Eagle Staff and the Sacred Hoop were carried in, and before the first length of the room was finished, several marchers and many audience members were already weeping openly. There's going to be some tears in the next few weeks, I wager.

Photos: Elders Theda Newbreast and Horace Axtell speak to the audience.

A woman named Jolene sang a beautiful song -- it will be one of the first things I try to get to YouTube. I'll keep you posted.

Dad was there, as were Rich, Ollie, and the kids. It was nice to see them in the audience, although I had little time for socializing. I've absorbed the role of all-purpose A/V guy and ran some movies, projected some slides, ran a spotlight (which was awesome), tried (unsuccessfully) to wire the auditorium's speakers into a single 1/8 plug... (Any thoughts, Dan Houg?), raised and lowered the house lights (also unsuccessfully, but I blame an obvious short in the wiring. It'd scare me if I worked here. I hope they look into that soon), and generally ran around constantly.

Oh, and I ran two cameras simultaneously. I was beat.

At the end of the indoor portion, most people boarded the bus and moved to the cemetery. No one knew if we would be returning, so I rushed to try to pack up all my various pieces of equipment. Time waits for no me, however, and everyone else left for the cemetery. Somewhere between my third and fourth load out to the van, the door to the auditorium was locked behind me. That left me with a portion of my equipment, alone, and late to the graveyard. After freezing in place for several panicky minutes, I decided to leave my things and insist we return later.

Flustered and now quite late, I made two right turns instead of a left and a right, and got lost.

I'm not really sure what happened at the cemetery, although I did eventually make it there just in time to catch the ending prayer. I set up a camera in a far corner, at which point Elder Axtell stopped the prayer and singled me out, telling me to leave this place immediately. Apparently, he thought I was from the newspapers; someone intervened on my behalf and the prayer continued. Still, it stung for quite a while afterwards -- it had been a largely successful day, but suddenly I felt like an outsider instead of as a valued participant. Or at least a neutral participant. Or at least not an unwelcome outside presence, interfering with ceremonies I wasn't welcome to witness.

Bummer.

Still, I had logged 12 hours of footage, my feet insisted I'd been working hard, and I got to run a huge honkin' spotlight. In all, a good sort of day. Now for 39 more of them.