Day 14

Final day!

We woke up and checked our traps once again. Only two groups had caught something. And ours was one of them. We caught one little female mouse. It was cool to see just how smart animals are because we had put a lot of peanut butter in our trap and all of it was gone but only one mouse was caught.

This adventure has now come to an end. It was such an amazing experience to learn about Native culture but also see just how much they are trying to care for the environment. And getting to see all these beautiful places that I had never seen. This trip has definitely opened up my mind and made me realize just how many jobs there actually is in environmental science. But for now it is time to get back home to my kiddos. My son called me and said he had already forgotten what I look like.

Thank you to all the teachers for your hard work. For putting this amazing trip together. For putting up with some of us when we took too long to get in the car, Mike. When they locked the keys I the car, Taylor. Or for having to carry a little extra weight in your bag, Pedro. We all really thank you because if it wasn’t for all of you we would not have had the opportunity to experience such an amazing trip.

Thank you to all the White Swan high schoolers. For making this trip really enjoyable. It was great getting to know all of you and seeing how interested you guys were in helping the environment. I’m pretty sure you will all go a long way.

Thank you to all the Heritage students. It was great knowing all of you. Hope to continue seeing you guys on campus. And can’t wait to see the change each and everyone of you will have on our community.

POBR2K17

Day 13

July 21, 2017

We heard Jessica coming and when I looked up I could see Jessica’s legs! The deer had ripped the tent. We had waited for Pedro to come check on us last night make sure we were okay but apparently, he didn’t hear the screaming all he heard was the deer running around. This is the craziest camping experience ever! We taped up the tent and went to go check our traps to see if we had caught something. Nothing. None of the groups caught anything. So we left them there and will check them back tomorrow.

So we headed to Kamaik Park to meet with WSU graduate Landon Charlo. Hearing about the struggles he had to overcome to get through school. He talked about his studies with the Schomochile County. They have to study the Pileated Woodpeckers for 100 years. I thought it was crazy that he has been studying the pileated woodpecker for a awhile but has never seen one in person. He gave us a handout that had information about the pileated woodpecker. They are huge and their beaks can rally make some damage.

Afterwards he had us compare the aspects of the mountain and the different vegetation at different elevations. It was really interesting to see how the lower elevation had more vegetation even though it got lees sun because it had more moisture. We hiked up to the second point which was a 2 mile hike. It was such a beautiful view. At that high elevation that had more sun was dry and had little to no elevation.

Then we went to the wellness center to take a shower and while I waited for a shower to open up I was able to get some exercise in, even though technically the hike counted as a workout. It was time to get ready to go to the Pow wow. They had been telling me how cool it was to see everyone dancing. This was going to be my first time going to a Pow wow so I was excited. We drove about an hour to get there and went straight to an Indian Taco stand. I had never tried it and am not really a fan of trying new food. But since Alexis, our vegetarian, was trying it I just had to try it. I was surprised when I got mine. It was like an American hard taco or nachos but on frybread. It was good and big. I could not finish mine I got full with half of it. Afterward we were let lose to go explore. It was amazing seeing all these stand with handmade jewelry, bags, and paintings. Those were my favorite, the paintings. At 7:00 pm we went to sit down to see the introduction. Especially the little kids, they were so cute and they really got into the dancing. It was cool to see all these people dancing. They put so much passion into it. I loved it! We didn’t have time to watch the individual dances because Jessica said it was getting dark. ☹ It was still pretty cool seeing how it was. Hoping I ca make it to another pow wow in the future.

Day 12

July 20, 2017

Today we were going to go take a shower in the morning. Aww it was a gym. I wish we could have could work out. Since there were only 4 showers and we were about 8 girls not including people who walked in to shower I decided to go into the Sauna while a bathroom was available. It felt so good to sweat a bit. I don’t know what it was about the showers but suddenly everyone was getting ready combing themselves, putting on a little makeup. We came back and we had missed breakfast so we had to make our own.

Now we were off to the Casino to meet Monet’s Grandfather and Uncle. First we met Quanah Matheson, the Director of Public Affairs. He expressed how important Mother Earth is and how we a lot of people are not taking care of it. We as humans need oxygen, water, and food but we are killing the plants, we are poisoning the water, and putting a lot of chemicals into our foods. Natives only eat one third of what they gather and the rest is put away for winter. They don’t waste anything. They have ceremonies to honor mother earth and animal’s life because they are what give us life. And once we destroy everything what is going to become of us? It is crazy how much technology we have now a day. I mean most of it is very helpful but before some of it was done without it. Indians would be able to tell when it was going to rain, when it was going to snow by watching nature and what animals eat. Dave Matheson, the CEO of Coeur d’Alene, spoke almost the same way. He encouraged everyone to learn as much as we can and not just go home and continue living our same daily lives but to educate others. It is our generations job to make a difference and try to save our environment. If we don’t do anything about it, we will be leaving it to our children and grandchildren to try to fix. And by then it might be too late for them to restore all the damage we have done to the environment.

Afterwards, we came back to the tent site and we were going to mammalogy 101, basically we were going to make our own traps. Brenda and I decided to grab different sticks and tie them together to make two ramps. We went up to the middle and hid our bucket as much as we could.

Then the CRAZIEST thing happened! Around 3:00 am we heard rocks falling and all of a sudden there was a deer running right through our tent. It went on top of Brenda. She screamed. I screamed. Robin screamed. I was making sure that Brenda was ok since the deer was on her side. Thankfully nothing happened to us. We could hear the deer running and a wolf or a cayote. After that it was almost impossible to go back to sleep.

 

Day 11

July 18, 2017

Today I was feeling not feeling good. Head, stomach, my whole body just seemed to be hurting. Brenda woke up to shower and I just decided to just lay there a bit. Breakfast didn’t even sound good. I just wanted to stay in my tent.  I eventually had to get up and get ready to go to the Spokane Tribal Hatchery. There we were received by Tim Peone the Tribal Hatchery Manager, who graduated from Eastern Washington University. He explained how 80% of the people’s protein came from the River. The Hatchery was constructed in 1990. 20 years into the program they were mandated to pit tag their fish so that they could track how many hatchery fish are being fished. Their program is known as give & share, where 100% of the fish that is grown at the hatchery is meant to be harvested. Their current annual release goal for Lake Roosevelt is 3.7 million kokanee fry, 250,000 kokanee yearlings and 750,000 rainbow trout yearlings. They have just started to grow fish on top of fish. Where each bottom container holds 6,000 fish and each top container holds 4,000 fish. While we were there people were cutting the back fin of each fish so that once they were released they can be differentiated from wildlife fish.

Day 10

Today I was feeling not feeling good. Head, stomach, my whole body just seemed to be hurting. Brenda woke up to shower and I just decided to just lay there a bit. Breakfast didn’t even sound good. I just wanted to stay in my tent.  I eventually had to get up and get ready to go to the Spokane Tribal Hatchery. There we were received by Tim Peone the Tribal Hatchery Manager, who graduated from Eastern Washington University. He explained how 80% of the people’s protein came from the River. The Hatchery was constructed in 1990. 20 years into the program they were mandated to pit tag their fish so that they could track how many hatchery fish are being fished. Their program is known as give & share, where 100% of the fish that is grown at the hatchery is meant to be harvested. Their current annual release goal for Lake Roosevelt is 3.7 million kokanee fry, 250,000 kokanee yearlings and 750,000 rainbow trout yearlings. They have just started to grow fish on top of fish. Where each bottom container holds 6,000 fish and each top container holds 4,000 fish. While we were there people were cutting the back fin of each fish so that once they were released they can be differentiated from wildlife fish.

Next stop was Anderson Ranch. Eddy Mathlee, the program Manager, was there waiting for us along with Tom Boring and Dawa Numkena, who were techs. They have a Meditation Program/Big Game Biologist that makes sure animals have a good home. They put up fences to keep animals off lands, weed spray and cover up to help with deprivation of local farmers. They plant corn but never harvest it so it could feed the deer, moose, and elk. They also do thinning- No pruning. To be able to hunt moose your name must be drawn and if it is drawn your name is taken out for five years. Out of 158,000 acres of reservation in the past 2 years about 46% of it has been lost due to fires.

Finally we were going to canoeing to the Roosevelt lake. We had to have three people on each canoe. So it was Brenda, Monet, and I on one. As we got on it was a little rocky, mostly because I kept moving and Brenda and Monet kept screaming. But once I was comfortable we were good to go. We got the rhythm down and canoed our way to a floating dock. It was really fun diving off and Monet finally jumped in! On our way back when I tried to get on both of them went to the same side so we ended up flipping. Thankfully there was no rocks. We dumped the water and tried again. We paddled our way back to the dock to load up. I am not sure what happened but all of a sudden we just started to shift to one side and flipped AGAIN! We flipped the canoe over but there was too much water inside it so we weren’t able to get back on. We had to push it back to shore. When we got it there we realized that Monet had lost a sock and I had lost one of my sandals. So I had to hop back to the van. I’m so glad I packed two pairs of sandals.

Day 9

July 17, 2017

Today we went to the Tshimikain Creek, where we met with Kasey Flamagar, the Water & Fish Manager. We also met Nick aka Bubba who spoke about the water program with the Spokane Tribe. I never know just how important the creeks are to the tribes. Warren has spoken, just like many other that we have met, about the salmon and how much the tribal community was impacted when there was no more salmon. Our job today was to help them catch fish so that they can get genetic samples, weight, length, and tag the fish. To prevent interbreeding the hatchery will change the temperatures to make them sterile. They gave us our things and we suited up. The first one I tried on was really big so I ended up trading with someone else. But now the boots were really big and heavy. Why did I have to be so short and little? It was kind of scary just getting in the water and walking against the current because it felt like it was pushing you back. I tried to catch the fish but I was just not getting it. Maybe it was just the fact that I was scared to get shocked. Once I got the hang of walking against the current I decided to give it another try. I caught one! I was so excited. It felt good to catch the fish and see it get measured and tagged. After that I did not want to let go of the net it felt so good walking against the current catching the fish. I wasn’t even aware that there is a fishery program in Yakima county. I will definitely be looking more into.

The more I learn about the tribes’ culture and everything that they are trying to do makes has made me double thing about my major. I have had amazing jobs but not all them were trying to make our environment better or were passionate about what they were trying to do. I think that is what I am liking the most about this culture that everything they do is to better the environment and better their lives. It makes me ask myself do I want to go my whole working for a company that is probably messing up our environment or try to help people that are fighting for their lands, their rights, their future generations.

As we were just getting out of the shower, getting ready to watch a movie on Jessica’s’ trailer Warren showed up. He wanted to take us to the Pit House. At first I was not excited about going because I just wanted to rest. But when we got there it was cool to see the Pit House. To see what these people had made about 15 years ago and see how amazing it still is was crazy. As soon as you walk in you feel a sense of something that I just cannot describe. Everyone could say what they were thankful except me. I am just so used to holding everything in I could not open. I felt like it was unfair for everyone to be so open and me be so reserved. My story is just kind of locked, put in a vault, thrown in the middle of the ocean that it is hard for me to bring to shore. It’s hard to hear everyone’s story because I wish I could make everyone’s lives better but I know can’t. All I can do is pray for them and hope their lives get better. Maybe I can also try to get to know them better and check on them every occasionally.

Day 8

July 16, 2017

We are finally getting a rest day. Thank goodness  because I think everyone was already feeling drained. We had the chance to wake up until 10am but Brenda and I woke up at 8:30 am to get some exercise in. We were going to do some burpees over a bench. So, we walked around to find a bench that would work. Once we found a bench we stretched, put on some music on, and had the timer ready. I did the first burpee, jumped over the bench, got down to do my second burpee and on my way up I felt a sharp pain on my right leg. As I looked down I saw a swarm of bees all over my legs. I had stepped on their beehive! I ran as fast as I could, grabbing Brenda’s bag as I ran. When I looked back Brenda was still there trying to grab my phone. We both finally got to a tree on the other side, trying to catch our breath while we laughed. Take two, we decided to try again. I did my burpees, my squats, and next was the run. I ran to the tree across from us and when I was running back two dogs started chasing me. I freaked out and started running faster and Brenda started screaming at me to stop. As scared as I was, because I had already been chased and bitten by a dog before, I listened to Brenda and stopped. The dogs then just walked around me and then towards Brenda. Brenda tried getting them to leave but with no success and the fact that they almost peed on Brenda’s bag, we decided to just stop. Brenda decided to get in the shower while I proceeded to just workout in the bathroom. Even though it was the most awkward place to work out I was going to make it count. We were supposed to go see the sunset but stayed we got lost and missed it☹ Taylor had been wanting Brenda and I to stay up and play Uno so we decided to stay up and hopefully catch a glimpse of the Northern lights. It’s crazy how close  we have gotten around each other. Not just us but everyone in this group. We all have different background and have been able to give help and advice to others. And make each other laugh. A lot.