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Restore ecosystems and the sustainability of communities, cultures, and economies.
CULTURE NIGHT
November 14, 2023 | 5-9pm
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Monica Super
Hammawi Band of the Pit River Tribe, and Klamath descendent
Program Description
The Tribal Summit opened with Culture Night and a shared dinner featuring traditional and cultural foods. Participants then gathered in the Great Hall for a welcome ceremony to honor the cultures, the people, and the landscapes that the event was designed to elevate and benefit. The evening featured a keynote address by Monica Super, storytelling facilitated by Dan Wahpepah, traditional drumming and song by Mountaintop Drum Group, and a performance by Klamath tribal dancers Aiyana Reyes and Candi Lane Usesarrow. A traditional round dance allowed all participants to meet and helped cultivate a spirit of collaboration and inter-cultural exchange for the gathering.
Highlight Video
Opening
Belinda Brown, Lomakatsi Tribal Partnerships Director and enrolled member of the Kosealekte Band of the Pit River Tribe welcomed participants with opening comments.
Myra Johnson-Orange, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Cultural Programs Elder and Coordinator, and Loyette Meza, Northern Paiute Elder, shared the opening prayers.
Presentations
Monica Super • Hammawi Band of the Pit River Tribe
Monica Super described an evolution through her life of cultural understanding and leadership, reconnection to her homelands, and learning about the power and significance of aboriginal cultural sites for healing and vision. She gave an example of how an annual event, the Modoc Ancestral Run, serves as an invaluable time of reconnection between the Modoc people and their homelands. She spoke to the challenges that Native American people face today trying to defend and protect natural resources while healing their communities, unearthing buried knowledge, and attempting to transcend the deep-rooted impacts of historical wrongs. She expressed gratitude for the allies and relationships that are part of a collective responsibility to care for the land and uphold the rights of indigenous peoples to home, culture, and lifeways.
“I’m a firm believer in right time, right place, right people…you are called to this work, you are called to action, you are called to repair, and you are called in your lifetime to heal landscape, to heal history, to repair what has been fractured.”
About Monica
Monica Super is an enrolled member of the Pit River Tribe and a Klamath Tribes descendant. She grew up in the homelands of the Klamath and Modoc people and comes from a long line of notable cultural leaders. Monica has spent nearly the last two decades working in the field of behavioral health. She attended Haskell Indian Nations University and entered the behavioral health field in 2003, working alongside Modoc and Paiute elders with vast experience of the connection between culture and mental health. Focusing primarily on substance use and its impacts, she became a certified Prevention Specialist and Substance Abuse Counselor. In 2022 she graduated from the American Indian Alaskan Native Leadership Academy. In addition, Monica works for Kauffman and Associates, Inc. as a Tribal Technical Assistant, serving Tribal and Urban Indian programs throughout California.
Dan Wahpepah • Anishinabe, Kickapoo and Sac & Fox tribes
Dan Wahpepah shared about the composition, meaning, and origin of storytelling to illuminate cultural ways, traditions, teachings, and how to respond to the present climate crisis. He talked about the power of stories to entertain, provide humor and spiritual understanding, and connect natural processes and elements.
“When we realize that we are all interconnected, and all one person, looking at each other through different eyes, then we’re going to realize that we’re not looking at bodies, we’re looking at spirits. When we realize that we’re looking at spirits, this world will change.”
About Dan
Dan Wahpepah is from the Anishinabe, Kickapoo and Sac & Fox tribes. He grew up with his community’s cultural ways and has been politically active with the American Indian Movement and spiritually active through tribal ceremonies. Locally, Dan started the Rogue Valley Pow Wow, the American Indian Cultural Center, Red Earth Descendants and is also a board member of Natives of One Wind Indigenous Alliance. As part of his tradition, he is a Drum Keeper and Drum Chief. Dan’s efforts are focused on the preservation of this Earth for future generations.
Jefferson Greene • Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs
Jefferson Greene told a story about grasshoppers and the origin of the gift of fire to renew the landscape, then welcomed attendees into the round dance.
“A long time ago, everybody was The People, even those little grasshoppers.”
About Jefferson
Raised in a time when language and culture were already fading, Mr. Jefferson Greene of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation was groomed to teach for generations to come. Culturally and academically educated, Mr. Greene has remained involved in several arenas related to spirituality, education, entrepreneurship, music, culture, fatherhood, community development, and the arts. He is currently an Ichishkín Language Instructor as the Executive Director of the Columbia River Institute for Indigenous Development (CRÍID) Foundation providing community education through cultural harvesting, songs, dances, and stories.
Resources
- Lomakatsi Restoration Project: Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge [Link]
- Native American Round Dance History, Music & Meaning [Link]
- Oregon Public Broadcasting—Modoc people sleep on ancestral lands for first time in almost 150 years [Link]
- Essential Understandings of Native Americans in Oregon [Link]