Howard Teasley

Director and Operations Project Lead- Nez Perce Tribal Forestry and Fire Management Division and Board of Directors, Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center

Maxville, OR

September 18th, 2025

In bucolic Bishop Meadow, around 12 miles north of Wallowa, Oregon, sits the historic site of Maxville. A former segregated logging town, Maxville operated from 1923-1933. Now, the Maxville site is owned and managed by the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center (MHIC) to gather, preserve, and share the rich history of African American, Indigenous, and immigrant loggers in the Pacific Northwest.

Howard Teasley serves on the board of MHIC, bringing his expertise as Director of Operations and Project Lead of the Nez Perce Tribal Forestry and Fire Management Division. Howard kindly met with us at the Maxville site on September 18th. He began by explaining his unique heritage, which is part Nez Perce and part West African, as well as his upbringing in Seattle, Cheatham County, Tennessee, and Lewiston, Idaho. Additionally, he taught us the unique history of the Nez Perce tribe, whose traditional lands were taken from them during the Nez Perce War of 1877, when they were forcibly expelled from the Wallowa Valley. Howard emphasized the department’s role in overseeing forestry on the Nez Perce Reservation, as well as in the tribe’s ceded territory, where the tribe maintains a “Good Neighbor Agreement” with the US Forest Service to conduct forestry operations on USFS land. On the Maxville Site, owned privately, the Nez Perce were contracted to thin the denser sections of forest. Howard guides the forestry prescription, which includes the eventual goal of restarting cultural burning for first foods, as well as maintaining an easement to allow the tribe to harvest those foods on the property.

We thank Howard for his time spent with us, as well as his wealth of knowledge and continued work to improve forestry practices!

by Trevor Maziek