Visit to Cow Creek completes Governor’s commitment to visit all nine federally recognized Tribal nations this year

Last week, Governor Tina Kotek and First Lady Aimee Kotek Wilson spent the day with the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. This marks the completion of Governor Kotek’s commitment to visit all of Oregon’s nine federally recognized sovereign Tribal nations in 2024.

“The First Lady and I are incredibly grateful for the hospitality and time of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians during our visit,” Governor Kotek said. “We appreciated learning about the forward-looking approaches the Tribe is taking when it comes to ecocultural forest management, sustaining fish on their ancestral lands, and supporting individuals and families with their basic needs, like child care and food insecurity. It was a wonderful day, and we look forward to returning.”

“We were proud to host the Governor and the First Lady in a day to show our history and culture of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. They were interactive, inquisitive and respectful of our role as a sovereign nation that resides within the State of Oregon,” said Chairman Carla Keene, “This day of immersing in our tribal community and way of life is crucial to a meaningful and productive government-to-government relationship. It is also important to our Cow Creek Umpqua people – to know that the Governor sees them and hears them. We look forward to more idea-sharing and collaboration in the future to benefit all people in Oregon, tribal and non-tribal.”

Their day started with a walking tour of the South Umpqua fish acclimation site which allows young salmon, or smolts, raised at the Rock Creek Hatchery to adjust to the temperature of the river before they are released into the South Fork of the Umpqua River.

The Governor and First Lady then traveled further into the Cow Creek Umpqua ancestral lands to Ash Creek Road, where the tribe is conducting a ecocultural forest management project, aiming to balance old growth with forest thinning. The area will eventually be a site for prescribed and cultural burning in an effort to both preserve mature forest characteristics and better prevent catastrophic wildfires. From a mountain lookout point on Ash Creek Road, the Governor and First Lady joined Tribal leadership, forestry and natural resources staff, as Cow Creek Umpqua Silviculture Forester Wade Christensen described the response, recovery and impacts from the Milepost 97 Fire, which took place in 2019.

They then traveled to the Tribal Community Center in Myrtle Creek. The center hosts the Yimìsa’ Preschool, which opened in 2019. Yimisa’ means “he or she dreams” in Takelma, the Tribe’s ancestral language. The preschool program was developed through the Preschool Promise program, which is managed by the Department of Early Learning and Care (DELC) and serves 3-to-4-year-old children in families living at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, children in foster care, and children from other historically underserved populations.

Following a lunch meeting in Roseburg with the Tribe’s Board of Directors and staff, the Governor and First Lady visited the Village Station, which houses Cow Creek Umpqua Tribal governmental services, including the Cow Creek Public Health and Behavioral Health and the Tribal Veterans Service Office (TVSO), among others. The visit to the Village Station included a tour with Tribal Veteran Services Officer Matthew Case and meeting social services, family services, case workers, advocates, and department staff.

After this tour, they visited the Cow Creek Tribal Food Pantry in Roseburg. The Tribe negotiates with various grocers to stock the food pantry and offers a free 20-pound beef allotment for each Tribal household each quarter from the cattle raised on the Tribe’s K-Bar Ranches in Douglas and Jackson Counties. The Governor and staff celebrated the growing success of the food pantry, including a record number of redemptions this quarter, from July through September.

They then traveled to Idleyld Park for the final visit of the tour, the Rock Creek Hatchery, to learn about the Tribe’s approach to habitat restoration and resiliency. There, Fisheries Manager Colby Gonzalez shared the challenges posed by rising water temperatures, lower flows, and sediment – all exacerbated by recent fires. Staff demonstrated fishery techniques, guided the tour through recent improvements and damage from the Archie Creek Fire in 2020, and expressed interest in working with the state as it considers the future of Oregon’s hatchery system, including Rock Creek.

Note to editors: The Cow Creek Umpqua people, the Nahánk?uotana, lived between the Cascade and Coast Ranges in southwestern Oregon, along the South Umpqua River. They hunted deer and elk and fished silver salmon and steelhead as far north as the Columbia River, east to Crater Lake, and south to the Klamath Marsh. Except for the purpose of the Termination Act in 1954, which called for the immediate termination of federal relations with more than 60 tribes in western Oregon, the Cow Creek Umpqua’s Treaty of 1853 was ignored by the U.S. government for over 128 years until federal recognition in 1982.

The tribe was restored without reservation land in 1982. The Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act of 2018 restored 17,000+ acres of ancestral land, and they have purchased additional lands since then. Seven Feathers Casino Resort in Canyonville, including hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues, is the tribe’s main income source. Other businesses, such as the K-BAR cattle ranch in Rogue River, have been acquired in their economic diversification program. Since recognition, the tribe has developed housing, education and social services programs, business corporations, a utility cooperative, charitable foundation and tribal court system. The tribe is one of the largest employers in Douglas County.