Some days are more surprising than others. Yesterday was one of them. Through a series of misunderstandings and unanticipated cancelation of a meeting I found myself in the area of Grand Ronde and chanced on a tribal museum and cultural center, Chachalu.

The name was given by the Yamhill Kalapuya to the area near the coast range where many native American tribes were relocated after the 1850s’ treaty negotiations. It means Place of Burnt Timber referring to traditional methods of healthy land management. 27 tribes and bands lived and persevered on this reservation, coming from throughout Western Oregon. They lived and persevered through the next loss of land and recognition during the termination policy of the 1950s, with the restored Federal recognition of 1983 not making up for the effects of decades of enforced poverty, lack of access to education and long-lasting effects of displacement.

The museum’s mission: As fire is used to ensure renewal and growth, our mission is to honor tradition by working to propagate and preserve traditional life ways, culture, and traditional homelands of the people relocated to Grand Ronde.

The museum is part of a multifaceted project of the Confederate Tribes of Grand Ronde, known as the Grand Ronde Cultural Development Project, through community input meetings. Other parts are oral history collection and curriculum development for tribal history lessons in public schools which have been successfully implemented since 2016. The museum houses exhibits, archival material for research, rooms for conferences and workshops, instructing in carving, basketry skills and native plant use and identification.

The wooden building is beautiful in its simplicity; it opened in expanded form (4000 share feet) last summer with an exhibition hall that contains artifacts and written information about tribal history and important tribal members.

Salmon and eel, major sources of protein, are displayed throughout the hall, “swimming” above your head.

This summer it also exhibits a truly stunning art installation retelling the history of Tomanowos (Spiritual Power), the Willamette meteorite.

The chunk of metal (the size of a car) fell out of the sky about 15.ooo years ago and was transported within an ice block by glacial floods from Montana to Oregon. It was greeted as a sacred object by the Clackamas tribes believed to be sent by the Sky people.

The next part of the story in a nutshell (details here – some will make you laugh out loud, some angry): Man removes meteorite from now Oregon Iron and Steel Company land. Lawsuit grants the company ownership rights (all the way up to the Suprem Court in 1905.) Meteorite then gets transported to Pdx Lewis & Clark Exposition where it is seen by a wealthy NYC socialite who buys it for $26.000 and donates it to the Museum of Natural History in New York where it resides until today. All efforts to bring it back, including one in 1999 when the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde filed a claim for repatriation of the meteorite under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, are unsuccessful.

In a mediated agreement, the American Museum of Natural History retains ownership unless the museum permanently stopps publicly displaying the meteorite. The Grand Ronde receive the right to an annual ceremonial visit as well as a commitment from the museum to provide a display for visitors that would discuss the significance of the meteorite to the Clackamas.

A tiny, previously sliced-off piece was returned by Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville this February and is part of the exhibit.

The current exhibition, called Witness, was created by Garrick Imatani, an associate professor and chair of the Foundation program at Pacific Northwest College of Art, together with tribal students; it consists of a styrofoam replica of the meteorite, a photographic series reenacting its journey and a film, The Drift.

Here is a description by OPB’s April Baer: Grounded in a huge constructed glacier form, Imatani’s film, “The Drift,” imagines what kind of cataclysmic event might cut through the bureaucracy that prevents the repatriation of some tribal artifacts. It shows Tomanowos levitating from a highly stylized museum environment, amid a natural disaster on par with the Missoula Floods. As Times Square fills with water, the meteorite levitates majestically into the air, its shadow flitting across the Statue of Liberty’s face as it exits the city. Its journey back to Oregon is marked by brief encounters with other tribal objects and artifacts in other museums along the way.

Such historically informed ideas, such – communal – creativity, such teaching of history on the verge of loss with the passing of elders, through art. Filled head and heart.

Some days are happier than others. Yesterday was one of them!

And here is Kronos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj4jO1iv_HI with Terry Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector