Center for Columbia River History Sponsors Celilo Falls Anniversary Conference

Vancouver, Wash. – March 2007 marks fifty years since the inundation of Celilo Falls by The Dalles Dam. “Celilo Stories: New Conversations About an Ancient Place” is a free public conference held March 17-18 in observation of this important event.

Held at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center located in The Dalles, Ore., the conference is presented by the Center for Columbia River History with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the James B. Castles Endowment, the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Maryhill Museum of Art.

This conference will bring together more than twenty scholars, artists, elders and authors for panel discussions and informal conversations on the meaning of Celilo Falls. The conference is free and open to the public. Some seating will be reserved for those who pre-registered.

For thousands of years, Celilo Falls was at the center of a vast trade network linking the coastal and plateau peoples of the Northwest to the buffalo hunters of the Great Plains and the foragers of California. Native people gathered at this meeting place every year to trade, socialize, exchange arts and ideas, and participate in ceremonial rites such as the First Salmon ceremony, an event still held today.

By the 20th century, Celilo Falls was a tourist spot famous for the sight of Indian salmon fishers dipnetting from wooden scaffolds above the roaring rapids. But the region’s more recent residents saw the river’s powerful currents as a source of energy to fuel a new economy. The remade river now supports more barges and windsurfers, fewer Native fishers, and remnant salmon runs. Celilo Falls, although gone, continues to evoke stories about our relationship to our land, our history, and each other that remain powerful and contested.

The conference will conclude with the Confluence Project’s Blessing of the Land Ceremony at Celilo Falls which begins on Sunday, March 18 at 3 p.m. at Celilo Falls Park, and will include the Confluence Project Board of Directors, renowned sculptor and architect Maya Lin and tribal partners.

The Confluence Project is an initiative to reclaim, transform and reimagine seven places along the historic Columbia River Basin. Through Maya Lin’s creative interventions into their history and terrain, each site will offer new points of encounter between the natural world and the built environment, the past and the present, for people of all backgrounds.

The Center for Columbia River History is a partnership of resources from Washington State University Vancouver, the Washington State Historical Society and Portland State University.

WSU Vancouver is located at 14204 N.E. Salmon Creek Ave., east of the 134th Street exit from either I-5 or I-205. WSU Vancouver offers 14 bachelor’s degrees, nine master’s degrees and one doctoral degree and more than 35 fields of study. Visit us on the Web at https://www.vancouver.wsu.edu.

Related links:
– Center for Columbia River History, Celilo Falls Conference, https://www.ccrh.org/calendar.php
– Maryhill Museum of Art, https://www.maryhillmuseum.org/
– Columbia Gorge Discover Center, https://www.gorgediscovery.org/
– Confluence Project, https://www.confluenceproject.org/