Greg Archuleta (Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde) talks about life during the Termination period, and the efforts in the 1970s to revive tribal recognition and lands. 1:59.

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:

“In 1954 was the Western Termination Act. The reservation was closed and any lands that were remaining were sold off. And I actually got to see my great grandma’s receipt for payment and it was like $27 to $29.50, 29 dollars and 50 cents was about what she got paid at the close of the reservation. So the reservation resulted in a lot of the families moving away from the Grande Ronde area and they needed to work and things like that and there was also a relocation program at that point to try to get the Native people off the reservation and to relocate them to like Portland and San Francisco, Denver, Seattle. So a lot of the people kinda moved away from there in that point in time. But all we ended up with at that point in time was just our tribal cemetery, which was just under 5 acres. And I just remembered when we were pretty young we’d pretty much just go down there every year and help clean all the graves and we’d get to see a lot of our family and relatives at that point in time. And uh, Termination, lasted, so I was born at the period of Termination. And then in late 1970s some of the tribal members, elders, started working towards getting the tribe restored. Um there’s a couple tribes that were already restored like the Menominees (? 21:37) and the Siletz and then we were able to gain restoration in 1983. So since that time the tribes been pretty much rebuilding, since that period of time.”