Meet our Guests: Angela Bombaci

Angela Bombaci

Executive Director, Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland

Wallowa County, Oregon

08/26/21

Passion lights up Angela Bombaci’s faces as she talks about her role as Executive Director of the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland, a nonprofit that manages a 320-acre property in Wallowa, Oregon, that aims to reconnect Nez Perce people with their ancestral homeland. With miles of walking trails, a longhouse and beautiful dance arbor for gatherings and ceremonies, and a major salmon restoration project, the Homeland has become a hub for native culture in Wallowa County.

In 1877, the Nez Perce people were violently displaced by white settlers and the US government from what is now Wallowa County. Angela believes that the mission of the Homeland is even more important because of this. She is dedicated to helping provide the Nez Perce people the platform to tell their own story and a physical place to gather on the land that was once occupied by their ancestors since time immemorial. 

Angela says that “The highest priority [of the Homeland] is to create space for people to celebrate their culture.” This has included large, joyful gatherings like the Tamklik powwow, smaller events like naming ceremonies and celebrations of life and death, and groups like Semester in the West visiting to learn about Nez Perce story.

Angela has worked hard to facilitate positive relationships between current Wallowa residents and Nez Perce tribal members and has been thrilled by the joy and excitement she has received in response.

By Livvie Bright

Photo courtesy Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland

Meet our Guests: Montana Pagano

Montana Pagano

Watershed Restoration Specialist, Nez Perce Tribe Department of Fisheries

Wallowa, OR

8/25/21

Montana Pagano covers a lot of ground with her work for the Nez Perce Tribe as a Watershed Restoration Specialist. Her project area encompasses 3 million acres in Northeast Oregon and Southeast Washington where she focuses on salmonid (salmon and trout) habitat restoration. Semester in the West was able to visit one of her recent projects on a site owned by the Nez Perce Tribe where her team is in the final stages of creating a side channel on the Wallowa River to enhance native fish habitat. More than 100 years ago the river was straightened by non-native residents, destroying much of the river’s fish habitat. The Nez Perce’s side channel project reintroduces refuges for juvenile salmonids that are quickly vanishing from streams due to the prevalence of dams and warming stream temperatures caused by climate change.

It took several years before the project received approval and the Tribe was able to break ground. Montana reflects, “habitat restoration work takes a long time. It takes a long time to get this habitat to the level of degradation that it’s in, so you can imagine it takes a while to rehabilitate it.” Currently, the river is showing signs of improvement. The side channel has already created mellow stretches of stream for fish to rest with ample shade from transplanted willows, and the river will continue to evolve as natural processes take over the restoration work. A long time in the making, the persistent efforts of Montana and her team are beginning to pay off.

By Ruthie Colburn

Photo credit: Phil Brick

Meet our Guests: Joe McCormack

Joe McCormack

Tribal Fisheries Biologist, Nez Perce Department of Fisheries

Wallowa, OR

8/26/21

The Nimiipuu people, known by most as the Nez Perce, were forced from their homeland in what is now Wallowa County, Oregon in late 1877 by white settlers and the US Army. Since the infamous Flight of the Nez Perce, most tribal members live on a reservation in Idaho, hundreds of miles from their traditional territory. Joe McCormack is a biologist for the Nez Perce Department of Fisheries and one of the few tribal members still living in Wallowa County, working to revive populations of the salmon his ancestors subsisted off of since time immemorial.

Salmon historically spawned in the Wallowa River basin, but more than a century of stream channelization and habitat degradation has pushed their numbers close to extinction. After earning a degree in fish biology from Washington State University, Joe moved to a ranch in Wallowa County and today spends his time working to restore salmon to the Wallowa River. Most days, that means monitoring fish populations or adding structure and native vegetation to river banks. Joe considers himself lucky to have studied fisheries biology, as it gave him the privilege of living in his ancestral homeland, and he thinks education is an important step for other Nimiipuu to return to their ancestral land: “Young people now are getting undergrad degrees, graduate degrees, doctorate degrees... and that I think is key to people moving to Wallowa County, with those tools.” Joe is using his education and Western science as a lever to return culturally significant animals and tradition to his people’s home.

By Kevin Faeustle

Photo credit: Phil Brick

Meet our Guests: Rich Wandschneider

Rich Wandschneider

Library Director, Josephy Center for Arts and Culture

Joseph, OR

8/25/2

     In the small town of Joseph Oregon, so named for the famous Nimiipuu (also known as the Nez Perce) leader Chief Joseph, there lives a storyteller. Rich Wandschneider is an animated local historian and Library Director at the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture. Rich tells the stories of the Nez Perce tribes who inhabited and still inhabit the West: stories of cultural annihilation, land expropriated from the tribe by white settlers, and promises unkept. These stories aren’t his own, but he explains that when white settlers came to the West, they kept written notes detailing of all their journeys and conquests. With these stories, outreach and extensive research, Rich put together the Nez Perce Treaties and Reservations Exhibit at the Josephy Center. The exhibit includes detailed maps, historic drawings and paintings all to illustrate the impact treaties have had and still have on the Nez Perce tribe. Rich is a steward of Native American history in the West working to share the stories of the Nimiipuu with his community of Joseph, Oregon and all of its visitors.

By Jade Strapart

Meet our Guests: Angel Sobotta

Angel Sobotta

Nez Perce Language Program Coordinator and Storyteller

Wallowa, OR

8/26/21

Wearing traditional beaded moccasins, a ribbon skirt, and an intricate necklace, Angel Sobotta welcomes us with a Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) greeting. She greets Semester in the West in the dance arbor at the Nez Perce Wallowa Homelands, a site reclaimed for the celebration and recognition of the first people of the region after they were forced out by the US Federal Government 100 years ago.

Angel is dedicated to reclaiming Nimiipuu tradition through language. “You must rename it to claim it” she says. In her culture, names are a source of guidance—something to live up to. Angel’s Nimiipuu name means “the red glowing part of the sunset.” Both of her names remind her of beauty and grace and have helped to guide her through troubling times. She believes that bringing Nimiipuu language back into the lives of her people can do the same. She refers to the revival of language as a medicine to heal her peoples’ spirits, provide understanding of their culture, and connect to their ancestors.       

Angel shares the story of the sáplis- a symbol sacred to the Nimiipuu derived from the rotation of Hiyumtaxto around Luk’upsmey (the Big Dipper and the North Star, respectively) that creates a map of the sky. Based on the location of Hiyumtaxto, the Nimiipuu know when to harvest and hunt and when to migrate each season. This sacred symbol has been appropriated by other entities—the Nazi Swastika has the same basic shape—and through the telling of the origin of Hiyumtaxto and the sáplis, Angel works to reclaim the symbol and its meaning.

To conclude the morning, Angel led the group in a traditional friendship dance, stepping clockwise to the beat of a drum. Circling around the center of the dance arbor, Angel smiled and shook hands with each student she passed.

By Katie Wallace

Photo credit: Phil Brick

Meet our Guests: Kathleen Ackley

Kathleen Ackley

Executive Director, Wallowa Land Trust

Wallowa County, Oregon

8/20/21

Kathleen Ackley is the Executive Director of Wallowa Land Trust (WLT), a nonprofit focused on conserving land and maintaining its ecological health. In Wallowa County, where private land is tightly woven into the fabric of the valley, the land trust works to conserve parcels of land for myriad purposes, from grazing to recreating, for both people and wildlife. They rely on the voluntary participation of landowners to carry out their work in protecting lands identified as significant in terms of biological diversity, cultural connections, and educational value. Preserving the prominent glacial moraine on the east side of Wallowa Lake is a major project championed by WLT and for good reason: it is a window into our geologic past and keeps the skyline free of imposing mansions.

Through Kathleen’s eight years with WLT she has seen a shift in their responsibilities and practices. Maintaining workable land has become more of a central tenet in the land trust sphere, along with movements to return land stolen from indigenous peoples and take action against systemic racism. Kathleen knows that land trusts are not exempt from addressing these societal reckonings. In a statement released on their website, WLT lays bare the inequities they continue to hold central to their work. Kathleen engages with such issues through her efforts with the Oregon Land Justice Project, a group which works to amplify indigenous stewardship knowledge and provide a space to hear from Native American leaders and allies about making land management more equitable. Kathleen made it clear that this work is vital, saying “it is not just about taking their knowledge for our benefit, it is about facilitating reconnections…for people with their land and for people with people. This is the right way to move forward, but it is far from easy.”

By Ani Pham

Meet our Guests: Ellen Bishop

Ellen Bishop

Geologist, Writer, Photographer

Wallowa County, OR

8/20/21

Gathered atop a hill that overlooks Wallowa Lake, Ellen Bishop (with her dog Pepper at her side) introduced Semester in the West to the local geology of Wallowa County and the nearby Eagle Cap Wilderness Area. From our perch at the Old Chief Joseph grave site outside of the town of Joseph, Oregon, Ellen pointed to the southeast and directed our attention to the large hill that makes up the perimeter of nearly half the lake. Called a lateral moraine, the feature is a signature geologic landmark of the area. Ellen encouraged us to imagine the geologic structure that lies beneath the dry grass. The moraine is composed of compacted gravel that originated in the nearby Wallowa mountains. It was transported by glaciers that covered the area until the end of the Pleistocene Era. These same glaciers are responsible for many of the geomorphological features of the area, but Ellen pushes us to think even further and consider how the features might be viewed and understood by the long held indigenous understandings of this place. That consideration is at the heart of the work Ellen now does. A former geology professor turned full-time author and photographer, Ellen has recently embarked on a new project in the field of ethnogeology: the study of how geological features are understood by indigenous communities around the globe. By pairing her geology expertise with the creation stories of the Nez Perce, Ellen hopes to acknowledge the overlap of indigenous knowledge and stories with geologic history. Through her work Ellen brings a deeper understanding of the Wallowa Valley to the people who call this place home, both past and present.

By Alli Shinn