Opinion: Nez Perce Tribe helps bring healing to Oregon town

When I first took a look, the people of Joseph and the surrounding area were at war with one another. The white ranchers and loggers who long had control over the place were losing ground to global economic forces, and changes in how the federal government managed the big swath of public land in the area.

Things got very ugly. A group of grim-faced men hung effigies of a pair of local environmentalists. Death threats flowed. At one public meeting, as county officials were heralding their cultural rights as fourth-generation landowners, a dissident voice asked about the Nez Perce Indians.

Oh, them. The town is named for Joseph of the Nez Perce — a Christianized name for both a father and a son who went to their graves fighting to hold on to the valley. In 1877, after being forced out of their homeland by a fraudulent rewrite of a treaty, the Nez Perce tried to flee to Canada. Their route, a journey of epic heroism, is now commemorated in the 1,170-mile-long Nez Perce National Historic Trail.

Captured just short of the border, young Chief Joseph and his band were never allowed to return to their Oregon home. Joseph famously died “of a broken heart,” in 1904, in a distant reservation that still holds his bones. His father was buried on a knoll overlooking Lake Wallowa.

But other than the grave of old Joseph, perhaps the most visible hint of an Indian presence in the area was a sign put up by a local high school, welcoming people to the “Home of the Savages.”

The Savages are now the Outlaws, per a vote of students. And the Nez Perce have returned as a cultural and economic force, after working with whites in the area to purchase land at the edge of the Wallowa River. This weekend, they host a public celebration, called Tamkaliks — “a recognition of the continuing Nez Perce presence” in the valley, as the tribe puts it. It’s a big tourist draw. The Indians are also working to bring sockeye salmon back to the lake.

Next week is rodeo, celebrating the cowboy traditions of the town, though named the Chief Joseph Days Rodeo. The two cultures exist together in a little valley, even feed off each other. At the town’s new arts and culture center, ranchers whose great-great-grandparents may have stolen land once vital to the Nez Perce sit side by side with Indians at brisk discussions of the past.