A lifelong resident of Portland, Oregon, Congressman Earl Blumenauer is one of Oregon's innovative leaders. Raised in SE Portland, Earl attended Centennial High School. While still a college student at Lewis and Clark College, he led the campaign in Oregon to lower the voting age. He was a key player just two years later as one of the youngest legislators in Oregon's history in a landmark session for school funding, ethics reform and Oregon's groundbreaking land use laws.
As a Multnomah County Commissioner and member of the Portland City Council, Earl's innovative accomplishments in transportation with light rail, bicycles and the street car, planning and environmental programs and public participation helped Portland earn an international reputation as one of America's most livable cities.
Congressman Blumenauer strongly believes that our government has a special legal and moral obligation to Native Americans of this country given their sovereign status. This obligation is defined by treaties and statutes, and interpreted by the courts.
Sadly, the United States has failed at upholding this obligation repeatedly, and there have been many lost opportunities. The trust relationship requires the Federal Government to exercise the highest degree of care with tribal and Indian lands and resources.
Preserving Tribal Rights and Protecting Tribal Land
Congressman Blumenauer has been a leader in Congress to preserve the sovereign authority of Native American Tribal governments, supporting efforts to halt and reverse the erosion of Tribal sovereignty. He has also worked to protect and enhance Tribal rights, traditions, land, and resources. For example, he has strongly advocated for protecting Tribal lands from damage and development, and preserve access to traditional gathering grounds for First Foods and sacred ceremonies. He successfully fought to secure funding for Tribal transportation infrastructure in keeping with the National Congress of American Indians' recommendations.
Congressman Blumenauer takes every opportunity to learn more about the concerns of tribal and urban Indian leaders. He hosts annual roundtables in Oregon with tribal leaders and has attended drumming and fire ceremonies at urban Indian alcohol and drug programs. During Congressional recesses, he has toured the Columbia River Gorge with Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission law enforcement officers to investigate threats to cultural sites.
Additionally, he is pressing for increased access to services for urban Indians, including supporting the reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, and joining efforts to elevate the position of Director of the Indian Health Service within the Department of Health and Human Services to Assistant Secretary for Indian Health.
For thousands of years, numerous tribes based their entire livelihood and culture around the Columbia River, living on its shores and eating and trading the salmon they caused. Beginning in the 1930s, the construction of the three lower Columbia River dams created millions of jobs, economic growth, prosperity, and electricity throughout the region. But the dams inundated native fishing sites and villages, severely impacting their heritage and destroying the tribes' economic base.
The tribes and their citizens have never been fully compensated for these losses.
Today, 31 Treaty Fishing Access Sites and "In-Lieu" sites along the banks of the Columbia River provide the four Columbia River Treaty tribes – the Nez Perce, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation – access to the Columbia River to fish, compensating in a small part for lost access to the river.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designed the sites primarily for in-season fishing access and some temporary camping. However, many tribal members currently use these sites, the majority of which are now owned by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as permanent residences. These sites were not designed for and cannot accommodate this type of use. In fact, living conditions at these sites is unsafe, and unsanitary. For more information about current conditions, please read this story by The Oregonian.
Congressman Blumenauer has visited several sites and met with tribal leaders. He is taking action to address these inequities.
In 2013, the Corps determined that many tribal families who lived on the banks of the Columbia River prior to construction of the Bonneville and The Dalles dams did not receive relocation assistance. The Corps has conducted a legal analysis to determine its "unmet obligation" to build housing on the Columbia River for the four Treaty Tribes. Blumenauer, along with his colleagues, repeatedly urged the Corps to expedite and complete the analysis, particularly before the FY 2017 appropriations process began.
Blumenauer has fought for funding for the Corps to construct housing they have the authority to replace. Where the Corps does not have existing authority, Congressman Blumenauer is working to provide them that authority to fully address the unmet obligations. He is fighting for additional funding for the agency to meet these obligations.
In the short-term, Blumenauer is trying to help address current living conditions at the existing Treaty Fishing Access and In-Lieu sites. The Bureau of Indian Affairs' budget is insufficient to provide the necessary sanitation, safety, and related infrastructure improvements for these sites. To address this, Blumenauer introduced H.R. 5811 (with a companion bill, S.50, introduced by Senator Merkley in the U.S. Senate) that would authorize the Bureau of Indian Affairs to assess current sanitation and safety conditions at the sites, and construct temporary structures to improve those conditions, as well as provide upgrades to critical electricity, and sewer and water infrastructure. This legislation passed both chambers of Congress and was signed into law in 2019, and is currently being implemented to improve conditions at the sites.