RIPPLE Rural Stories

I am a River Indian, I Eat Salmon-Eye Soup!

2009-10-22 15:28:49 -0700

Ed Edmo, a nationally acclaimed storyteller, actor, writer, director, and poet—and most of all an Indian—is often heard to state, in his best storyteller voice, “I am a River Indian, I eat salmon-eye soup!” Born in Owyhee, Nevada, a part of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, Ed Edmo’s family moved to Celilo Falls shortly after his birth. He spent his early youth living along the Columbia River in the Celilo Village, a stone’s throw from the legendary falls. He remembers with fondness watching the fishermen dip the long poles into the foaming water and, with muscles straining, raise the nets filled with salmon to the fishing platforms. His playground was the hills behind his home and the river beyond his front door. Ed also remembers the day the falls were overwhelmed and drowned by the waters of the dam. He tells the story of how his father took him out of school that early spring morning in 1957 and how he stood on the highway holding his father’s hand and watched as the water covered the falls. “I couldn’t believe it, it hurt my heart,” is how he describes that memory of his life and his community’s past.

Ken Kesey, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, described his long-time friend this way: “Ed Edmo has much medicine and magic.” Ed’s medicine and magic comes in the form of stories told from his heart about the sadness and the joy that has been his life as an Indian. Through his irreverent take on the world he shares a mirror that reflects the often harsh and unkind treatment of Native Americans by society, but always with a giggle he reminds us of the hope that he carries in his heart for reconciliation.

Ed the actor has traveled throughout the world, from Sri Lanka to Jordan and Tunisia, and then back to the U. S., performing in Kesey’s Children of the Raven. He has performed in his own original play, Through Coyote’s Eyes, and gifts his audience with fall-on-the-floor funny stories of five historical Indian men. He shifts with ease from the old man to the military scout, and evokes sympathy for the relocation of the 1950s Indian man as he is forced from his place of birth. Fred the Wino makes an appearance, as well as Alby the Indian Fisherman. In another of Ed’s original one-man shows, he is Grandma Chokecherry, and as she walks on stage she begins to tell the story of the Indian Boarding School through the eyes of a small Indian woman—and you begin to cry. She is dressed in a plain cotton dress and her sadness is tempered with her happy laugh that she hides behind her hand.

Ed is a gifted entertainer, but more importantly, he is a family man who calls Portland, Oregon, his home. He lives with his wife of almost forty years, Carol, and enjoys his most favored role—that of father and grandfather. Ed and his wife have two children, a daughter and a son. His children are grown and living on their own but the ties that bind his family are strong, and there isn’t a day that goes by that he doesn’t drive his granddaughter to school. When he and his wife, Carol, adopted their son, Ed recognized the need for a guide for Indian parenting. So he sat down and wrote one. The manual, Positive Indian Parenting, is used as the primary resource on Indian parenting for the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA).

Ed creates art by telling the unvarnished and sometimes hurtful truths of his life. But like Grandma Chokecherry, his irreverent and biting humor, coupled with his unflagging hope, are all a part of the message that Ed Edmo shares with his theater-going audiences and in his book of poems, These Few Words of Mine.

What is a Community School?

2009-10-20 22:40:41 -0700

In Kings Valley, Oregon, a community-oriented guiding philosophy has propelled Kings Valley Charter School from its original incarnation as an elementary school serving seventeen students to a preschool through eighth grade institution of over 100 that draws students from surrounding communities.

Mark Hazelton, the principal, executive director, and parent of two students at Kings Valley Charter School explains that the school has three things that set it apart. “We believe that people learn best when they are working at the right challenge level and are engaged in work that is personally meaningful, and working with other people; we try to instill an ethic in the students that their work is important and should be well done; and the third piece is that our school is community run.” Decisions about the school are made by a local board consisting of community members, and the school is structured in a way that makes it easy for parents and community members to stay involved.
The Kings Valley community members not only sit on the school board, they are also involved with its daily functions. In 2006 and 2007 the school logged over 4,000 volunteer hours and as of February 2008 they had already logged 3,000 hours—no small feat for a community of just 500 households. Volunteers not only work in a typical capacity on daily operations, they also helped to design and construct the school building. They work with students with disabilities and share their skills and interests with students on Project Day. “A lot of people have a passion for what they do,” says Hazelton, “and they don’t always have a way to share it.” Project Days allow community members to come and teach students about subjects like chess, horse training, and art.

Mark Hazelton believes that exposure to non-academic activities teaches students more about life. Hazelton once took a group of sixth graders to help Betty Malone, a Christmas-tree farmer, plant shrubs and trees for a memorial garden. “Betty Malone is a real farmer,” says Hazelton, “and we’re out digging holes, and we have a sixth grade girl who doesn’t want to have her hands in the dirt, but Betty’s not messing around. This allowed for an interchange where this girl is exposed to this woman who runs a successful farm, and she learns you can touch the dirt, and wash your hands, and you’re done. It’s a life lesson there that’s special, and when you’re out working on projects, talking and digging, that’s special time too. To just talk about what’s going on in their life.” By treating community members as teachers, students in Kings Valley are given more opportunities like this to learn.

In addition to learning through community connections, Kings Valley students have excelled in traditional academics. The communities they draw from offer the same challenges many rural schools face, such as a high number of students on free and reduced lunch, and lack the resources that large school districts may have to serve their students with skills above or below grade level. They combat this by teaching to each individual student’s needs, and they’re showing positive results. About 46 percent of students at Kings Valley Charter School read at one or more grades ahead of their age group. The success of Kings Valley Charter School is an example of what can happen when a community has a vision and a plan, and capitalizes on local assets to help their dreams come to fruition.

From Famine to Feast
Nine years ago Kings Valley received a grant from the forest service to organize and create a community plan. As a result they formed the Kings Valley Area Association. The group worked with a local service provider, Diane Svenson, who had experience in community development in developing countries. At the same time, the original incarnation of Kings Valley School was moving toward closure. Only seventeen kids attended the school, and the Philomath school district lacked the resources to keep it running. The Kings Valley Area Association made the school their top priority and initiated a campaign to keep the doors open.

Mark Hazelton, who’d been working as an engineer, supported the campaign as treasurer of the Kings Valley Area Association. The group had the idea that if they developed a vision for the school, the school district might continue support. They sent out paper surveys, and Svenson led a visioning session to develop a cohesive vision for a “school of excellence” in Kings Valley. “A few things came out of that,” says Hazelton, “one was the school vision, and another was the vision for a place to trade skills and services and do work together, and another was that we all knew each other because in creating a vision for a community we’d been working together.” The school district did not adopt the vision and elected to close the school, but two leaders in the campaign, Betty Malone and Barbra Dowe, were aware of the new charter school law that would potentially provide funds to keep the school running as a charter school. “We had the vision completed,” says Hazelton, “we were able to translate the vision into a grant.” Twenty community members came together to write the grant and Kings Valley Charter School was awarded $350,000 from the state. All of this was achieved by capitalizing on local knowledge and the skills of community members.

Kings Valley had successfully organized to get the money to save their school, and now that the grant had been awarded they took on building and running their new school. This is when Mark Hazelton really got involved. “My background is in creating factories and planning large projects as an engineer. I came in for constructing the work plan.” It was a complex plan with seven or eight committees. “When the project got complex, I was one of the only ones who could understand the plan,” says Hazelton. “I had younger kids, and I didn’t think it was my time to become involved with school.” There was a one-year opening on the board and Hazelton and another community member flipped for it. “It wasn’t in my plan to be involved with the school,” Mark explains, “but by the time it was time to renew the position it was clear that the work wasn’t done.”

Capitalizing on community assets like Mark Hazelton’s project management experience was an important part of getting and keeping the school running. The school reopened in September 2001 with thirty-eight students. “We carried on and it was basically amateurs running the school,” said Hazelton. “We’re just farmers and engineers and loggers.” Not having professionals involved didn’t keep the school from growing. The community held on to their vision of a school of excellence that people would come to from other communities. As Hazelton notes, “the board was pretty thoughtful about making decisions, and things happened slowly. Three or four years in we decided we wanted something bigger. We grew by leaps and bounds.” Now there are over 100 students in preschool through eighth grade at Kings Valley Charter School and students do come from the surrounding area. About one third of the students are still from Kings Valley and others come from seven different school districts, including Independence, Philomath, Dallas, Albany, and as far away as Corvallis.

It’s unusual for a rural school to have the reputation to draw from such a large area outside their community. Hazelton attributes much of the success to the community aspect of the school. He says the small size of the rural community has contributed to the school’s success. “The smallness of the community means you can’t fail the kid,” says Hazelton. “If you know people well, and you don’t do a good job for their kids, there’s something personal there. The kids are going to inherit the land. They are going to live next to you. If you don’t do a good job, they’re with you forever.” While Kings Valley Charter School now serves students outside of Kings Valley, this attitude has persisted. “Now if you come to the school, you’re part of the community,” continues Hazelton. “If you were to export this model, you would have to define community. The community size has to be such that the interested parties can all put their input in.”

It may seem odd that Mark Hazelton went from such a small role with the Kings Valley Area Association and flipping for a one-year commitment to the school to becoming the impassioned executive director and school principal he is today, but his involvement with the school project shifted his perspective. “How I think about life has really changed, in terms of what I should be doing,” he says. “I could have stayed working as an engineer making money for myself and other people, here I don’t make much money, but the impact on these lives is much greater; there’s more pressure but the outcomes are much more special as well.” The school project has brought out this community-oriented side in many people in Kings Valley. Not only does the school stay running with a constant stream of volunteers, so do the local farmer’s market, the fire department, and the Kings Valley Cemetery group.

The Kings Valley community tapped into their local assets to create their dream school. They relied on local service providers to come up with a vision and a plan. Dedicated community volunteers committed their time and professional skills to identify and capitalize on a funding opportunity; they used local volunteers to build the school. It is, in the end, the community that makes Kings Valley Charter School the unique and successful school it is today.

Perspectives on the Environment Rooted in Sense of Place

2009-10-20 11:36:09 -0700

La Laguna Serves Up Single Mom’s Family Recipes

2009-10-19 11:42:06 -0700

What happens when you work for your uncle in a Mexican restaurant at a young age? Sometimes you grow up to open your own restaurant. And when that’s successful? You open another.

That is what Angelica Zurita did. She opened La Laguna Mexican Restaurant in Enterprise, Oregon, in 2003 and has since branched out into the nearby town of Joseph. “It’s a new adventure,” says Angelica. “And everything is falling into place.” The La Laguna Restaurant in Joseph is meant to be exactly like its Enterprise counterpart, right down to the paint and the décor. “We will have outside seating as well,” she notes enthusiastically.

After working in her uncle’s Mexican restaurants, she began thinking about opening a restaurant herself. She spent time doing research on women with small businesses. Part of her research involved contacting the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce for information on businesses in Enterprise. It was their recommendation that put her in touch with Myron Kirkpatrick of Wallowa County Business Facilitation. Angela describes the steps she took to lay the foundation for her new venture in a matter-of-fact way. “Myron helped me create a business plan, [he] walked me through it and I put it together myself.” Wanting to make it on her own financially, Angelica turned down financial help from her family and gives credit to the Northeast Oregon Economic Development District (NEOEDD) for giving her a loan. “Myron told me about Lisa Dawson [at NEOEDD] and I called her,” Angelica notes simply.

Lisa Dawson saw something in Angelica. “She had knowledge of the business and industry,” says Dawson. “She also did a good job of preparing a business plan through the Wallowa County Business Facilitation program and she had matching funds to bring into the business. She had really done her homework and had great personality and drive.” The matching funds Lisa refers to came from a loan that Angelica acquired from Community Bank. “I had no money,” she explains, “and my family would ask what I would do if I failed. I asked them back, what does a child do when they fall down? They get back up and try again”.

Lisa Dawson also feels that Angelica has a great product. “La Laguna provides excellent customer service and the food is good,” she says. “It’s amazing that this is the first Mexican restaurant in Wallowa County. Angelica could see there was a demand for Mexican cuisine in this market and no one else was providing it.” It’s due to the help Angelica found through Wallowa County Business Facilitation and NEOEDD that she feels allowed her to get started. “I make a donation to the cause [Wallowa County Business Facilitation] each year,” she says, “and that is the only money I have given [for their services].” It was Dawson who then referred Angelica to the Connecting Oregon for Rural Entrepreneurship program (CORE). Funded by a W. K. Kellogg Foundation grant, CORE helps strengthen and publicize rural entrepreneurship. Through this program, entrepreneurs such as Angelica Zurita can get word out to local communities about who they are and the products they have to offer.

Angelica’s uncle, who was the source of her inspiration, helped her the first month with advice over the phone from his own two restaurants in Spokane, Washington. His influence on her approach to her cuisine was not far behind. Angelica took her uncle’s recipes and “moved them around,” setting her apart from other Mexican restaurants that have since opened. “It’s more authentic, there’s more kick to my salsa and more spices to my food. It’s also the atmosphere of La Laguna that sets it apart,” she contends. “We are here for it all—birthdays, anniversaries, going away parties, and [customers] get free fried ice creams as a birthday cake.”

La Laguna is a family business, with the family reaching beyond Angelica’s. “I have three employees who are related to each other but not to me, but we see each other as one big family,” she says. She has been on her own for the past three years as a single mother of five children ranging in age from five to nineteen. Self-proclaimed as independent, Angelica says she has had to learn to coordinate her life. “It’s been an experience,” she concludes. “I’ve learned a lot.”

Return to Ancestral Lands

2009-10-18 09:28:22 -0700

Memorial Day Parade Bridges a Cultural Divide

2009-10-17 11:42:29 -0700

On the surface, White City is an unincorporated rural area in Jackson County, just east of Medford, Oregon. Like other southern Oregon towns, it’s known for its warm weather and has undergone a rise in population over the past decade. A closer look sheds light on the ethnic division that has existed in the area with increased Latino migration in the 1980s. As of 2007, nearly 29 percent of the population self-identifies as Latino, well over 1,700 individuals. Despite making up a large portion of the population in White City, the Latino community has gone underrepresented at community events and in local institutions. This lack of inclusion prompted Rural Development Initiatives (RDI) to begin working with Latinos through its Latino Leadership program to help people in White City initiate changes at community events, so that they reflect the true colors of the local cultures.

One of White City’s most established celebrations is the annual Memorial Day parade. Until 2007, there was little to no representation of the Latino community in the parade. However, all of that changed when a connection was made at an intercultural luncheon sponsored by the Ford Family Foundation and facilitated by RDI. Norma Montaño and her two sisters, Olimpia and Ana, had been interested in integrating the Latino presence into White City community events for some time. “We had been trying to connect with the mainstream culture for many years,” says Norma, “but just hadn’t found the right opening.” The right opening turned out to be an encounter between the Montaño sisters and White City’s Community Activities Coordinator, Kristin Howell, at the luncheon, where participants from English-language and Spanish-language leadership training programs shared food and ideas for the community. There, over spaghetti and Caesar salad, Howell stood up and said to Norma Montaño, “I need to talk to you, I’ve been trying to connect with the Latino community for years and haven’t been able to.”

After some discussion, coordination, and concentrated hard work, Howell and the Montaño sisters developed a plan to incorporate the Latino culture into the upcoming Memorial Day parade. For the first time ever since its inception, the May 26 parade included Latino music, dress, and dancers. Norma Montaño reflected that the experience “was very emotional, sharing our culture with the other groups in White City.” And when asked how the Latino presence was accepted after so many years of not being included, she responded in Spanish, “I felt very accepted; our participation was greatly valued and appreciated.”

This first foray into organizing the parade and the parade itself were successful, and since then Norma Montaño, who works for a low-cost health clinic originally created to serve Jackson County’s migrant population but now serving the entire county, has been asked to weave Latino culture into a parade in Ashland, Oregon. She is helping to organize a talent show for Latino youth, and plans to put together a community-wide event in honor of Mexican Independence Day each September.

The key was the connection. Montaño recalls that “Kristin and my family were both looking for the moment to connect with the other’s culture and felt frustrated that we weren’t getting through. If it weren’t for that luncheon, who knows how much longer it would have taken to find each other.” The Montaños and Kristin Howell increased their social capital—that is, the number and strength of ties in their community—and more importantly created a bond to achieve mutual goals across a cultural divide.