Columbia River Round Dance Invites Community to Advocate, Grieve, Dance, and Heal Together May 5th
The Columbia River Round Dance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women seeks to raise awareness, and promote community healing.
By Cole Goodwin
The 1st annual round dance in honor of missing and murdered indigenous people will be held on Friday May 5th, 2023 from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Wahtonka Community School, in The Dalles, OR.
The family friendly event is free to attend. All gorge community members, allies, and native people, are invited to gather, dance, raise community awareness, and promote healing together. Attendees are encouraged to wear red for National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Missing and Murdered Indigenous People and bring pictures in order to honor their lost loved ones.
Round dance may originate from the Cree First Nations and is a slow-moving, circular dance was used in healing ceremonies. In modern times it has been used in healing, and to promote community and togetherness. No tribal affiliation, prior knowledge or experience of round dance is necessary to participate in the round dance. (Although readers can click here to learn more about the historical and modern use of this dance, or here to learn a bit about how to participate prior to attending. Just keep in mind that some things might be different, and be sure to listen to directions prior to the dance. )
The first one hundred and fifty guests to arrive will receive a free t-shirt designed by Speakthunder Art. Those traveling to attend the event can receive a discounted rate at Cousins Country Inn, by using “Round Dance” as their group name when placing their reservations.
The event will feature the Black Lodge Singers, Iksiks Washana’lama’’ (Little Swans Dancers), guest speakers from Warm Springs, Yakama, and Umatilla, vendors such as indigenous artists, businesses, resource tables, round dancing, and a community dinner catered by Quartz Creek Concessions. MC Macky Begay and Stickman Gavin Begay will run the event. Charlieann Herkshan is the event coordinator and can be contacted at cherkshan@critfc.org.
An Interview with Charlieann Herkshan, Tribal Crime Victims Advocate
Charlieann Brunoe Herkshan, of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Klamath Modoc. Prior to working as a victim advocate Herksan worked as a service coordinator with children’s protective services.
Charlieann Herkshan, a Victim Advocate who began working for Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Police Department in 2019. Her job is to provide vital services and support to tribal members who have been victims of a crime and to respond to crises and crimes at the river in-lieu and treaty fishing access sites. She responds to crisis spanning domestic violence, sexual assault, child welfare cases, and burglary.
As the only tribal victim advocate in the entire region, she is tasked with serving with tribal members in Zone 6 (the Mid-Columbia Region) including the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Yakama Nation, Celilo Village, and the Nez Perce in Idaho. These four tribes share a commonality with the 1855 fishing rights treaties between the United States Government and the tribes.
“Prior to these four tribes being placed on the reservations, our people were from here, from the Columbia River and Celilo Falls,” said Herkshan. “That’s why CRITFIC became a commissions, to make sure that we’re advocating for those sovereign rights and that our treaty fisherman are being treated with respect by wardens on the river.”
Since 1982 Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission has had its own enforcement team, but it wasn’t until 2010 that the enforcement team was able to being responding to both fishing and non-fishing related crimes at the treaty fishing and in-lieu sites. A brief history of the agency can be found here.
While the department works hard every day to provide services to the tribes, Herkshan says issues facing local tribal communities are often outside of the awareness of the general public.
Herkshan said that raising awareness of the local missing and murdered indigenous people is the driving force behindColumbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s Victim Assistance Program along with The Next Door, Nch’i Wana Housing, One Community Health, PacificSource Community Solutions, Washington Gorge Action Programs and Oregon Healthcare.gov joined together to hold a round dance this year.
“The reason we wanted to bring more awareness to our area, is that not a lot of people even know that this is a crisis and an issue in Indian Country,” said Herkshan.
“Just yesterday, my colleague and I were shopping around downtown The Dalles to look for some door prizes for the Round Dance. We shared with one of the business owners what we are doing and why and we purchased some items from local small businesses because we wanted to support them with our event and one of them asked: if that’s even an issue here. And we explained that yes, it is,” said Herkshan.
“A lot of people here are still learning about the four Columbia Basin tribes,” says Herkshan. “They don’t know that there are people living here at the in lieu treaty fishing sites on the river. They think that the native people they encounter in the community are living in that city…that they moved away from the reservation. It’s not really taught about–our history of being placed on reservations and being taken away from the Columbia River, our home, where our ancestors thrived for years.”
Wanting to meet the need, the organizational partners have put together the event in hopes that the local indigenous community and non-indigenous community can come together to learn from one another and to seek justice for the missing and murdered.
“We just wanted to prove a community awareness event to bring everyone together, not just native people but everyone, to learn about this, learn about our culture and our history, and hear the stories from people whose families have been impacted directly,” said Herkshan.
“Two of our guest speakers have been doing this work long before MMIW was even a mission or there became a hashtag of MMIW or MMIP,” said Herkshan “One of the elders who is going to be speaking, her mother was murdered in Umatilla. I think it’s the stories that have a greater impact than seeing the numbers and the data.”
Herkshan says indigenous cases are often considered unfounded, or are labeled cold cases and closed and that their families are standing up to advocate for their lost loved ones.
Indigenous people are statistically more likely to experience being a crime victim of violence in their lifetime. Overall 1.5 million Native American women have experienced violence in their lifetime.
To make matters worse, there is almost no reliable count of how many indigenous people go missing or are murdered each year due to the ongoing issue of indigenous people being misclassified as Hispanic or Asian on missing persons forms. Although the Bureau of Indian Affairs, there are approximately 4,200 missing and murdered cases that have gone unsolved.
“This is a crisis that needs to be addressed not just by native people but by our allies,” said Herkshan.
The first way to start addressing it?
Herkshan says it all starts with education, awareness, acknowledging the problem and then working to heal alongside one another..that’s part of why this event will be a round dance that anyone can participate in.
“Round dance is just amazing, you know? Listening to the drum and to the singers, and seeing everyone dance together– I really believe in movement as medicine and I’m so excited to see everyone come together, especially after the long hard couple years of the pandemic and not being able to have any of our cultural gatherings or ceremonies or pow-wows. So I think it’ll be a really great event for the healing of our community and our people,” said Herkshan
A Brief History of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day
In 2009 The United States issued an apology to Native People’s acknowledging and apologizing for “years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies,” and the “many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States.”
According to the National Crime Information Center, in 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls, though the US Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database, but the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) had only logged 116 of those cases.
In 2017 Montana Senators Steve Daines and Jon Tester introduced a resolution recognizing May 5th, as National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls in response to the murder of Hanna Harris on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and other kidnappings and murders from across the United States
In 2020 Savanna’s Act, a bipartisan effort to improve the federal response to missing or murdered indigenous persons (MMIP), including by increasing coordination among Federal, State, Tribal, and local law enforcement agencies was signed into law following the horrific murder of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, of the Spirit Lake Nation.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed a proclamation declaring May 5th “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day.”
In 2023, CRITFIC Victims Advocacy Program hoss their first round dance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day in The Dalles, OR.
Herkshan said that she hopes the round dance will become an annual event and offered big thanks to all the participants, sponsors, and supporters.
“I honestly didn’t think it would happen this year…But everyone came together to help,” said Herkshan.
On top of this event, she has also been working on a number of other projects to help support tribal members in the region, including their first ever event addressing Native American Domestic Violence in October.
Her next project will be working to create a survivors support group for tribal members, starting in June.
Tribal members who have been a victim of a crime are encouraged to contact her at: 541-386-6363 or cherkshan@critfc.org.
