Nez Perce Return to Wallowa — Part 2

In Part 1 of Rich Wandschneider’s podcast on the Nez Perce, we learned their history in the Wallowas of northeast Oregon, and the tragic event that forced the Joseph Band, or walwa’a ma, from their homeland. Their removal led to the 1877 War with the United States, a 1,200-mile retreat, and their eventual return to three Reservations in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, but not to the Wallowas.  

In Part 2 of Rich’s podcast, we will hear stories of reconciliation and healing, as well as the repatriation of homelands and return to the Wallowa in significant ways. 

I was able to experience some of these memorable events, first in 1997 with their first land reacquisition in 120 years, called Hetewisnix Wetes or “Precious Land,” of 10,000 acres overlooking Joseph Canyon. Rich in natural resource values, the Nez Perce Tribe manages it as a wildlife reserve and it is accessible to the Native and non-native public. 

Then I was witness to two other major land purchases in the summer of 2021 — the Conservation Easement of land, described by Rich as the “… braided waters of the Wallowa River between Wallowa Lake and the century old Wallowa Lake Lodge.”  The river’s gravel beds now serve spawning Kokanee landlocked salmon, and await the return of the sea-going Sockeye salmon, a collaborative project between state wildlife agencies, Nez Perce Tribal Fisheries, and local irrigators. 

The second land purchase was not far from the rodeo grounds in Joseph and on the Lake’s west moraine. Coinciding with Chief Joseph Days, hundreds of Nimiipuu and visitors gathered for a land blessing at the site they call Am’sáaxpa, the Place of Boulders, nearly 150 acres along the Wallowa River. Rich explains, “Native people from as far away as Oklahoma, rode, walked, and reveled for a mile from town to a place where their ancestors had camped and fished for millennia—but not for the last 150 years.”

Then unexpectedly this past month, I gathered at the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland Longhouse with walwa’a ma band members from the Colville Reservation in Washington who traveled many hours to join their other Oregon and Idaho Nez Perce relations for their Seven Drum service followed by a feast of traditional foods: salmon, lamprey, deer, elk, many kinds of roots and many kinds of berries. At the Longhouse I met Jewie Davis, who I heard speak the summer before to the gathered crowd, along with tribal executive committee members from Lapwai, Idaho, at the blessing of Amsa’axpa. His words back then struck me as the most powerful and authentic call for reunification of the Nez Perce Tribe, perhaps because he was of the Joseph Band, the people who originally called the Wallowa home and whose desire to return is so very strong.

At the Precious Land dedication in 1997, elder Agnes Andrews Davis spoke with emotion about the stories that one of Young Joseph’s wives, who she knew as a child, told her about Walawa. I simply can’t listen to Agnes without tearing up myself.

And now, all these many years later, there remains a strong connection to place and the familial bonds that existed before the 1877 War. In his podcast, Rich shares the words of Jewie Davis, Agnes’ grandson, who was raised by his late grandmother, and who today works in the Nez Perce Language Department on the Colville Reservation. Jewie shares what it means to return to the Wallowas despite being an exile on the Colville Reservation. 

“…I can see why our elders wanted to come home.” He says, “But due to the settlers and farmers, the U.S. government, we couldn’t come back. They wouldn’t allow us. We’re still there—there’s still many of the Joseph Band, walwa’a ma, at Nespelem, Washington.”

There is so much healing and reconciliation needed to bring the people scattered like refugees on three different reservations, and I feel it deeply, even though it is not my story. But as I listen to Rich Wandschneider speak frankly about their plight, I can’t help but be empathetic and positive.

“One day,” Rich believes, “the people will return together to Wallowa Lake, and so will the Sockeye Salmon that have been gone so very long.” It is a hopeful story, after all.

Funding for the Voices of the Earth Podcast Series comes from the Idaho Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Jane Fritz

10/31/2022