Greg Archuleta (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) talks about the loss of culture and the adaptations of culture. 1:32.

Bio: Greg Archuleta is Clackamas Chinook, Santiam Kalapuya, and Shasta, and a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. As an artist and educator, he teaches about the culture and history of the Tribes of Western Oregon, including ethnobotany, carving, cedar hat making, Native art design, and basketry.

Transcription:

“Today I think our biggest thing is the threat of loss of culture. And so each community has kind of got to look at that and from their perspective, look at how they want to do that. And how they want to that, how the want to try and save it, what they want to do. And I think what you’ll see, and our tribe and I think other tribes too, you see a lot where you have to make adjustments and changes. I think one of the important thing is that we were never a stagnant people. We were always continually changing, adopting. If you look at our culture and history, once contact, there was contact, there was new tools available and stuff like that and the tribes adopted those and used them, you know like copper became really important here. High trade value after contact and was used in many different ways. Metal, even by the time Lewis and Clark came to the Columbia River here they’d seen these swords that were metal. So, you know, our tribes already had a history of somehow acquiring that actually earlier than recorded contact, and that being used by the tribes and then through the trade networks, then be traded and used in different ways by the different tribes.”