"Reading the surviving legends of the Chinook people is to revolve through a hidden door into an alternate universe that is at once utterly familiar and yet deliciously exotic, like stumbling across the border into an undiscovered country peopled with talking coyotes, magical bears and ancient clans.

It is a tragedy that we live here at the heart of one of the world's great civilizations and yet know so little of it. Granted, the Chinook did not litter these shores and valleys with great marble ruins like Imperial Rome. Their history is easy to overlook, their grand cedar lodges long swallowed up by the relentless storms of the North Pacific. But the Chinook people abide as much as modern Romans do, quietly living among the echoes of bygone times.

There were no happy endings for the Americans who lived on this continent before 1492. The world of the Chinook collapsed in a horrific cataclysm of alien plagues and invading settlers. The vast majority of the tribe - grandpas and grandmas, girls and boys, warriors and traders and slaves - were dead long before a federal treaty was half-heartedly offered in 1851. There was barely anyone even left to mourn the passing of some families. That treaty died stillborn.

But survivors there were, and survivors there are."

Get the Story:
Editorial: It is time (The Daily Astorian 5/26)

Chinook Recognition Bill:
H.R.2576: Chinook Nation Restoration Act

Related Stories:
House bill introduced to recognize Chinook Nation (5/22)
Editorial: Move quickly on Chinook recognition (1/29)