Day 4


July 10th – Tuesday



One of our longer days, due to driving. We started out at the Yakama Nation fishery. It was super amazing. They walked us through the whole process of trapping, transporting, and tagging the fish. This was a state of the art facility. The key point I admired was, no consumption of water. The water they get for the water to water transport and lift is all recycled back into the river. Everything was powered by non-electric motors because of the constant flooding. The fish lift is the second tallest in the United States.

They showed us how the whole process happens. We saw them tag the fish and get a DNA sample. That was truly amazing, these people have very cool jobs. I was a little saddened when they inserted the tracking device and extract scales, because poor baby fish. L

John was a Yakama Native and took us down to the scaffolding where all the traditional fishing happens. I really enjoyed all the knowledge he shared about the traditional fishing practices. He was more than welcoming inviting non-natives to come and watching the dip net fishing happen and further enriching our knowledge of Native Traditions. This is new to me, most of the things I’ve experienced are very rare because the Nation wants to preserve their traditions and keep it to themselves. This was different and I liked it.

After this we went to the petroglyph. Beautiful perverted pictures that tell Native stories. We took a light hike to “She Who Watches” it was beautiful and amazing big eyes looking at you. It was an amazing experience Jacob shared the story with us and gave it more meaning.

The group made it to Deschutes where we are going to camp until Saturday. There was a bear scare while some campers were playing soccer. Everyone freaked out and no one slept.  
We'll see what tomorrow's like.

- Destiny

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 2

July 8 th Sunday This morning the group went on a hike up Potato Hill. I was so tired I couldn’t wake up at 6:30 a.m. to hike. I woke up around 7:30 a.m. and the mosquitoes were up and ready to consume every drop of blood. I sat in a lawn chair watching everyone go up Potato Hill, it was funny. After everyone came back we had breakfast and packed up to come to Camp Chaparral to spend the day. On the way over we saw a cub walk across the road. I’m excited to shower J After the well-needed showers, our friend Doug Olney the resource manager at Yakama Forest Products took us on a walk. He showed us how to identify different trees, dwarf mistletoe, and gave use forestry terminology.   Doug is extremely knowledgeable in the field. He shared that he has been in forestry for forty years. That blew my mind, I have never thought about forestry as a long life career. Then, the whole camp was extremely happy to get news that we were moving camps. Potato Hill was beautiful but the
Read more

Day 11

July 17 th – Tuesday Agenda for today: o    Drove to kaulipel o    Met with Ray at the Wellness Center o    Toured   the fishery o    Visited the caves o    Had lunch at the powwow grounds o    Saw the bison o    Indian creek community forest tour and talk o    Spoke to Jr the language teacher o    Roamed the wellness center o    Dinner at powwow grounds o    Drove back to camp The drive over was about two hours in the van. Everyone slept and visited in the car. I personal slept and snored a lot on the way over. Ray is the Director of Natural Resources for Kaulispel tribe. He wanted to be a vet for a long portion of his life but he didn’t want the bills that came along with the vet degree. Thus he changed his major. He manages all the natural resources.   We visited the fishery where we met with ___. They recently got a new technology that the techs really enjoyed. They had triple rainbow trout and bull trout, it was super cool. T
Read more

Day 7

July 13 th – Friday We started out with Tom Walker over at Goose Creek. It was another service day, my tool of choice was a cute little shovel. Background on the Creek; the culvert needed to be fixed. Recently they replaced a giant metal pipe that was previously there, with a better stream simulation creek. During the reconstruction the equipment and works left the former grasslands rocky dirt. To help the vegetation return to its previous state we gave it a little jump start today. Part of our group moved out the big rocks and made the dirt a little softer that was upstream. Downstream the dirt was already soft and ready for sludge transplanting. My job was to dig holes that could fit the sludge transplant to help start the spreading of the vegetation. On our break Tom talked to us about the project and gave us some facts: about 400 Thousand dollars was paid just to the contractors, Goose Creek and Sparks Lake has never supported fish previous to 100 years, and non-native fish
Read more