Greg Archuleta talks about the return of plants and seeds and how tribes adapt plant uses.

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.

Transcript: Yeah, it’s pretty neat to see that. So, like there’s that one piece that was right here in downtown Portland where it accidentally had it landscaped and it accidentally got burned and then there’s all these native plants started popping up there in the city center area. So it’s cool to see things like that. it’s just amazing that those plants or seeds are just waiting down there, waiting to have that opportunity to return. When it’s there for them to come back, so.

But also knowing that, as I mentioned, things aren’t stagnant, that things do change. And maybe we’ll use the plant in the future in a different way and things like that. And our tribes had to learn to adopt a lot. We had in our tribes, like from the Rogue River and Shasta area they had certain basketry materials that were available down there that weren’t available when they got to the reservation. So they had to learn and adopt and use different materials than they had down there. So that’s, I think, just how tribes survived and were able to change and adopt like that too.