Today to me is like the last day of civilization this trip was really fun, and I kind of don't want to leave. Anyways today was a good day to me and we did a lot today. We woke up me and Alyssa had to cook breakfest which was kind of fun in my opinion after we cooked we went to a place not to far from our campsite, we met Jennifer she told us about some stuff. It was nice some people brought us some coffee that I didn't get at all, after that we went to this place that we were going to build a dam. We went to a place where we were going to make the dam and we had some lunch then we went to go see one of the dams the youth built. After we went to go see the one the youth built we went to the site we were going to build our and going through this process Angelo the guy we met was telling us about everything we walked through. We walked through the field and we talked about the food the beavers eat and other stuff about them too.
Today is the last day of having fun with people I got to barely got to know and that makes me sad. I think I want to come back next year and hopefully meet either new people or see the same people I met this year. This is not going to be the same, I learned so much on this trip I took mental notes and actual notes but it won't help me learn it felt better learning hands-on. I think it would be more helpful doing this in the actual school and I could learn so much more this way. I want to thank everyone that helped me and the people that made this trip possible. I think that it was awesome that I got to build a dam, go hiking in a cave, and a lot more stuff we hiked a lot and it was tiring but it was still enjoyable.
There was no dull moment on this trip everyone always had a smile on their face and a laugh everyday with all of us together, we also did a lot of swimming we met a lot of people and it was awesome meeting these people it kind of made me want to change my major to stuff like natural resources or environmental law. This trip really made me think about all the jobs that were involved and all of the things they did for the tribes they had there and made me think since I love helping people I kind of want to do other jobs too. This trip really helped me starting to think about my future which is awesome most of the people we met on this trip had hard jobs and had been doing that job for years and it got easier on the way there as they progressed it made the job easier, although it was a hard job getting there but made it even if they didn't want to do that job or not.
Today was so much fun and I got to listen to music sitting here blogging which is even more awesome. Today I learned so much I couldn't really put it into words I guess I have to try to put it into words. We moved from Wellpinit to Coeur d' Alene which is awesome because I've never been off of the rez much. We talked to a woman today about some stuff I forgot what it was called but it is awesome, her name was Stephanie Hallock she works in the fisheries program. They got to work in a field on a like trench kind of thing and there was 91m of stream habitat which is very interesting, the area altogether is 36mi2. The people she worked with had to work with people who are not associated with the tribe there, which makes them stubborn in my opinion. She was mentioning that there were lots of bank erosion there in that spot that they were working on. They are currently working on things there that seem kind of hard to me probably only because I haven't done it yet.
We got to go to a traditional dinner they had at the longhouse here in Coeur d' Alene, which made me happy because it has been a while since I've had traditional food I was so used of it before. We had to go to our camp site but we were just suppose to just go to camp and set up then go to a camp to watch and swim and stuff but it got canceled sadly. We got to watch these girls from white swan (that's where we are from) do a welcome dance and the butterfly dance. I don't like that their language is slowly dying there is only one elder that fluently knows this language. They are trying their best to keep this language going in the community, they are working with the children and they are trying to get the adults into it also so the kids have someone to keep it going with but the adults here are stubborn I'm guessing.
The people we are talking with are saying that they are at a level 8 and the language is endangered and the people from white swan (besides us) were saying that our language is slowly getting to the endangered stage.
These past few days were really fun which was helpful only because when I'm home I don't get as much fun as I did on this trip. Yesterday we went top shock fish, sounds horrible but it just stuns the little fishies and then we caught them and find out what type of fish they were then the people we met there put them back in the water. I thought it was going to be boring but it eventually got fun by the minute. I only caught like one fish but it was fun just seeing the fish that others caught. After we shocked fish we came back to Wellpinit high and listened to a woman talk about air quality which confused me even more and after that I couldn't really understand it at all. We kind of put her in a hurry because we spent so much time shocking and finding the species of fish. After we did all of that we all went for a swim and Mr. Clintons car broke down so we had to leave from there as soon as the car was on; the thing I really wanted to talk about was meeting Warren he found swim spots for us he did so much for us as we stayed here in Wellpinit. I'm glad I got to meet Warren but I didn't really get to know him which I wish I could've done but didn't.
Anyways after we talked to that lady we went to go eat lunch which I am very thankful for everything they gave us but we went and eat lunch then we went for a swim. Once we were there we went swimming for a certain amount of time then we started to doodle, sketch, or whatever you call it we sat there and did that then Mr. Clinton got the car to start so in that moment we had to leave. I really got into drawing but I guess we couldn't stay there any longer. So we went back to camp and that artist I talked about before he came by and had some art work for us to look at so we drew a while before we ate which I thought was helpful then we looked at his art as he talked about his work. I was tired yesterday and kind of in a bad mood for a bit but I got to manage to listen to the people we met after we listened to the lady that talked about air quality. I thought we had so much fun yesterday because Warren took us to a special place and it was awesome and we smudged so that made me feel so much better, especially after we started to get emotional then I got people to kind of laugh after we were crying so much.
I enjoyed being here in Wellpinit for as long as we could be now were heading to another place to camp then after that I guess we leave but I don't want to I just want to camp a lot more and go different places but we leave because we are only here for 2 weeks. I hope everyone else had fun and will have fun as we leave and go back home to civilization. That's one person I would like to thank is Warren for making things possible for us here I'm kind of sad that we have to leave him here.
On Sunday we got to go canoeing and I thought it was awesome especially for my first time canoeing. When we went canoeing it was fun we got to go swimming at one point and the boys the ones I usually talk about Sully and Tarrel, they were paddling and Tarrel automatically fell off the canoe. We once again came to the Wellpinit high school and middle school doing our blog. Today we went to the school so we can learn about what we have to do to go to the Midnight Mine here around Wellpinit and I think this town is pretty small. We had to learn about radiation I took notes on the things I didn't know, such as there is different types of radiation they are Cosmic, Terrestrial, Internal, and Indoor Radon. Some of this was kind of complicated to me but I started to get it, the U.S average of Cosmic was 26, Terrestrial was 28, Internal was 40, and Indoor Radon was 200 just in the U.S. The Eastern Washington average is Cosmic was 35, Terrestrial was 46, Internal was 40, and Indoor Radon was 600 which I thought was crazy. There is also man-made radiation such as T.V, Luminous dials, Smoke detectors, Fallout from nuclear sets, etc. but it was kind of complicated to think about.
We also started to learn about world wide radiation things like as you know Cosmic 35, Earth 46, Internal 40, Radon 600, Medical 280, and others 10. Thinking about this made me want to learn more about radiation and more about stuff like it. As soon as we were finished at the school they took us to go see a part of where the people we met worked it was an awesome view, then after that they took back to camp and gave us subway then we left. This guy I didn't catch his name but the guys he worked with called him Lou so I'm guessing that's what his name was but anyways he took us to the place we were talking about which was scary because I don't like heights. When we got to the point we wanted to get to he started to tell us about the place we saw one part of it was 25 ft deeper than the whole thing itself, which was 5 ft deep so adding 5 more ft to it made it 30 you know already but I just wanted to do math. We didn't get to go anywhere but there only because some of us are under 18 so we didn't get to do much after that so we came to blog.
Also before we went canoeing we met this awesome native artist George Hill he helped me with drawing. I told him that I couldn't draw shapes and couldn't shade them like I wanted to so he helped me and told me to go closer and draw it better that way. So I got to get helped with my drawing and it kind of helped but I'm not drawing places maybe behind animals I can draw I only draw objects and stuff like that but it helped I guess.
Today was a lot more interesting than yesterday we got to go to a museum and I got to look around I got feather earrings, then we went and saw some birds I thought they were awesome. This day was a very good day I really liked it, I learned so much that I kind of knew but now much. Finally took good pictures today I loved how good they looked took pictures with Jessica and Mr. Black and surprisingly sully too.
I learned things I didn't know about raptors today I learned what raptors meant I didn't think I would ever learn stuff like this. It was really easy to learn today, I think I was fun to see those birds ha ha I think it was really easy to figure out what the birds names were. I don't really know what to say just it was easy to remember things about the birds. I learned that raptors meant to cease or take something which made me kind of confused, and I also learned Red tailed hawks are the second largest hawk that I did not know. The red tailed hawk can also do a 120mph dive down to catch like a fish that they prey on. They can also do a 100mph dive down to get a mouse or another land animal that they prey on. An osprey nest can be up to 250lb there's something I really didn't expect.
A condor is a part of the vulture family, the condor no longer flies in the sky only because of what humans do to them. The American Castrol has black under its eyes to protect from sun rays as in sun rays don't get in their eyes, in my opinion something humans need other than that sunglasses. Also the American Castrol can see a urine trail that a mouse leaves as ultraviolent rays. Most birds the females are larger than the male birds which I thought was kind of interesting. Most people would think that the horns on the Great horned owl is its ears but its ears are actually holes on the side of its head. Well that was that anyways.
That day was a good day we got to talk to these people when we showed up at the Celilo longhouse this guy his name was Paul and we talked about sturgeon and fish they had. It took a while for him to really explain what he meant for the conversation. I think that it was a very interesting conversation I liked it but I couldn't really pay attention but I got interested when they started to talk about what experiments they wanted to do with the fish. I got so interested when he said that the fish could climb up anything if they really tried to do it. We mainly talked about what happened when the river stopped flowing back then and I guess it got complicated but there was a lot to learn during that conversation. This is one of the pictures that i got when we left the next day when we went on that hike that I loved so much.
I really want to know more about what happened when the treaty was made but we didn't really talk about the treaty. I liked staying in a longhouse especially in Celilo it was like the one we have in White Swan so I really got used to it there. Around the longhouse was a neighbor hood which was kind of not clean but not bad to the point where I didn't want to be around there. I was used to those kinds of places it would seem sad or really dirty to people who haven't really been around places like that but to me that was kind of like home. At first we did kind of community service and pulled weeds outside of the longhouse, and after left we took care of the longhouse on the inside and cleaned it well Jessica was really proud that we did that. This may sound weird but I kind of loved cleaning the longhouse it felt like I was back into tradition but that was an idea that I had was to go back and kind of help the community out on s=this tuff. I felt like I was home again.
Through the past few days we could talk to people that were giving us a place to stay and telling us about stuff that happened. We stayed up late last night trying to get work done so we could do a few things I love it last night we had bagel pizzas which made no sense whatsoever we get to spend time with each other which means I get to spend time with Tarrel and Sully oh yeah Alyssa to we have fun with each other. I got to take pictures on a hike to see She Who Watches and it was a very nice view from where she can see. We took little breaks now and then to catch our breath so this is one of those pictures that I got seems like we love hiking I know I do.
I'm guessing there is a story to all of this but I'm not sure what it is. I honestly hate blogging but I get to do this to tell people what I learned or what I did that day. I don't think it is that interesting until we go on a hike or something else. Today we got to take a little break from some of this stuff we went swimming. The only thing that I like is that we get to take hikes to interesting places I'm having a lot of fun on this trip but I'm sad that it is going to end sooner or later. I thought that it was fun going the places we go it gets interesting when we go somewhere new or a place we want to go. This is a really fun trip so far. We get to go to another Native Reservation it seems really interesting going to another place and learning more stuff about things I thought I knew about. I think its fun hanging out with each other we get to listen to music until we have to eat at least the new stop, I hope I will do this next year I thought this trip wasn't going to be fun but no it turned out pretty fun better than just staying home.
This was a really interesting place to be is on the hike and we went through a really nice place this isn't the picture that I was hoping to post for it but I barely got to take pictures on the day we went to go and see She Who Watches and the picture above is on the day we went to Wellpinit witch is really fun so far.
