Faces Of A Reservation

1988 Winner of the Oregon Institue of Literary Arts' Frances Fuller Victor Award for Creative Non-Fiction.

Through her words and photographs, Cyntia D. Stowell shares her experience of the people and the land of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, located in central Oregon. A seven-year resident of the reservation, Ms. Stowell worked as a reporter of the reservation newspaper, Spilyay Tymoo (Coyote News), covering the public and administrative workings of the Confederated Tribes. After three-and-a-half years with the newspaper she describes her desire to meet the community in a new way:

Taking on just enough free-lance work to make ends meet, I began to spend more time in people's homes, just sitting and visiting. I joined in private religious ceremonies, stopped in at taverns, and followed people to work. And I listened. I listened to hopes and frustrations, diatribes and meanderings, voices of the ambitious and productive, of the lonely and confused. The voices confirmed what I had begun to believe — that there is no single truth about the Warm Springs Reservation. There is a collective identity based on ethnicity, history, and cultural tradition, a unified otherness built on adversity....But beneath the surface, there are as many faces to the Warm Springs as there are tribal memebers. And there are as many ways to experience Warm Springs as there are visitors to it, depending on where they come from, why they are there, and who they know. At last I had a direction for the book that I had been dreaming about. I would profile individuals whose thoughts and lives together shape the commiunity I had come to know.

Ms. Stowell details the cultural and anthropological differences between the separate yet eventually intertwining Paiute, Wasco, and Warm Springs (Sahaptin) tribes. The photographs in "The Faces" section introduce the community while "The Reservation" section gives the reader a context for that community. Her prose moves thorugh old wounds and new hopes, illuminating the strains of holding to the values of the past while looking toward the future. Faces of a Reserveration goes into territory that is at once alien and native, presenting a facet of Oregon and the United States that is as familiar as it is foreign. In the author's words, "This book is my gift to the people of Warm Springs. And it is their gift to me."

"Stowell has honored those wonderful people by stripping away all the available stereotypes and telling their story honestly and graphically....every page of Faces of a Reservation represents a victory won over ethnocentric bias and ignorance." Jarold Ramsey, author of Coyote Was Going There

This photographic history features 52 portraits and details the differences between the Wasco, Warm Springs, and Paiute Peoples at Warm Springs.

FOREWORD - xi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS - xiii
A NOTE FROM THE FIFTY-THRID FACE - xv
INTRODUCTION - xix
THE FACES - 1
Ellen Squiemphen, 2
Ken Smith, 4
Ellen Heath, 6
Amos Simtustus, 8
Mary Hote, 10
Celeste Whiteworlf, 12
Lillie Heath, 14
Maxine Clements, 16
Grant Waheneka, 18
Robert Macy, Sr., 20
Frank Charley, 22
Isabelle Keo, 24
Irene Towe, 26
Jacob Frank, Sr., 28
Peter Reed, 30
Viola Kalama, 32
Alice Florendo, 34
Maggie Wewa, 36
Maxine Switzler, 38
Susana Santos, 40
James "Buckwheat" Scott, 42
Felix Walulatum, 44
Eva Bates, 46
Prosanna "Prunie" Williams, 48
Matilda Mitchell, 50
Andrew David, 52
Clarence McKinley, 54
Noval Tufti, 56
Nathan "Eightball" Jim, 58
Masami Danzuka, 60
Sonny Jackson, 62
Lloyd Smith, Sr., 64
Trudee Clements, 66
Packy Heath, 68
Lucinda Smith, 70
Steven and Tony Tias, Ruthy Anderson, 72
Bernice Mitchell & family, 74
Annie Smith, 76
C. R. Squiemphen, 78
Wilson "Jazzie" Wewa, 80
Ken "Kenman" Miller, 82
Sammy Danzuka, 84
Woodrow "Woody" Smith, 86
Ted Brunoe, 88
George & Janice Clements, 90
Marella & Elsie Sam, 92
Susan "Kussa" Moses, 94
Kerland Suppah, Ally Whiz & Ambrosia, 96
Zane Jackson, 98, Jim Manion, 100
Olney Patt, Sr., 102
Lizzie Pitt & Elizabeth Woody, 104
THE RESERVATION - 107
Two Crises Survived, 108
Ancient Poeple in a New Land, 111
Before Boomtown and Beyond, 132
A Compromised Sovereignty, 150
Cutural Journey, 163
BIBLIOGRAPHY - 190
INDEX - 193