From Fire to Song: The Story of the Grand Ronde Plankhouse
After visiting communities up and down the coast and seeing what they have done to bring back the plankhouse and our kids keep asking why we don’t also have one we asked the same thing to ourselves.
History:
When we first started looking at building a plankhouse we started talking about the different styles of houses that we all come from and that was the first task was to find all the styes of houses that we came from. After deciding on what we were going to build it was time to look for money for the project and find a company to work with on engineering plans and locating a place to build and looking for lumber. The first plans that had been drawn up and model built did not work and we began looking for different help even the first place that was picked out to build did not work after awhile which is where the culture site is now. We looked for a new site after looking for awhile we talked about across the road from where our new pow-wow grounds was being built walked up on the hill and like it was meant to be there was an elk rib bone stuck in the ground, and we said that’s the spot.
We had been working with Willamette national forest for awhile and had established a MOU with them and while working with them they had herd we were looking for cedar. One of the forester’s named Tony Farque reached out to us and said they might be able to help finding cedar.
Story:
Back in 1913 there was a fire that had happened in the Sweethome area and because of that fire it had scorched the huge old growth cedars. The fire swept through there so fast that it did not burn the trees just scorched the outside of the trees and kept moving. In 1933 the forest service had decided to cut a lot of these huge burnt cedar trees down they were not growing just blocking the sun and nothing was really growing around them. There is also a story about how the fire got started but that is a different story. So, one of our cultural resource workers and one of our forestry workers went out to look at these cedar logs that had been lying in the hills almost 100 years and see if there was anything we could use of them. We then cut into the logs it was like they just fallen beautiful western red cedar the fire had helped preserve them. So, we made a plan to bring as many logs as we could get back home.
Getting the huge cedars home:
Most of these cedars that we were trying to bring home were hundreds of years old and were huge. We had to have some help and had our forestry and a logging outfit help with getting the logs home. We had to cut them into a manageable length because we were not going to be able to cut in any roads down in these canyons to get them, they were going to have to be helicoptered out of the forest. Some of these logs could only be brought 1 or 2 at a time because they were so big, and we had to find a place to deck them. After getting the logs home we started working on these logs we had someone with a big portable mill come and begin sawing the logs for construction. Some of the logs had to be sent to a mill in Woodland where they could cut the huge boards for the ends of the house other than that it was all the cutting was done here at home.
Looking for the logs to do the framing:
We had been working with our forestry program to locate some big fir logs for the structure of the plankhouse. We found out there was going to be a small clear cut on the reservation where we had some old growth fir logs and had asked if we could have them for the build of the plankhouse. So, we went up marked all the trees we were going to need for the structure of the build and sang for them to come help us. The stand of trees came from a place we call the cut over road to coast creek the 690 road. We had brought the fir logs down and laid them out on bunk logs so that they could be scraped clean. We had tribal members and programs helping scape all the fir logs it was all done by hand and prepared the logs for construction. We also had brought in another portable mill and had started cutting all the lumber that we would need for the build. We cut about 70 percent of all the lumber for the construction ourselves,
Celebrating the plankhouse:
Since the return of the plankhouse one of the things that we wanted to do was to honor the plankhouse and the return to our people. One of the ways that we decided to honor the house was to have a birthday for it treating the plankhouse like a living being that would help take care of our community. This is the way we decided to honor it once a year, the birthday celebration is held the third weekend in October every year. We invite community members and people from all over the northwest to come and celebrate the day with us. We invite several guests to come and speak share songs, dances stories, and good words. We host a big meal for the community and our guests. after all of our guests have shared then our community takes the floor and shares words, songs and dances, and at the end of the night we have a big giveaway to honor those that have come to share this night with us.
Other uses:
Other Tribal events that are held at The plankhouse are some of our traditional story nights that we have with the community and also literacy night with our preschool in k-5 programs. These events are usually held in the winter time when it is the time for us to tell traditional stories, Some of our other events are held in the summertime where we have a summer program that we work with Northwest native wellness institute and have a warrior camp, where we invite youth from all across the country to come here and spend a week in our community sleep in the plankhouse or at the powwow grounds and have a week of festivities and learning traditional knowledge. We also bring local schools to the plankhouse and do talks about the things that we use the house for share songs, and the history of how the house was built.
Other tribal uses that are usually done by families of the community are naming’s, coming of age, ceremonies, weddings, funerals, memorials, solstice gatherings and other events that are requested by Tribal members for their families. We also hold our first foods ceremony there to honor the foods the coming year.
Other uses for hosting our cultural resources, Summit. We also host dignitaries from across the world and do cultural exchange there when we have guests from other tribes or countries.