Bernice Jim, 83, attends the Pi-Ume-Sha celebrations in Warm Springs with her family. The event, also known as Treaty Days, celebrates the Treaty of 1855, executed between The Wasco and Warm Springs Tribes and the United States.
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Zola Jack (Jim), 53, has been attending Pi-Ume-Sha since she was a little girl.
The event, also known as Treaty Days, marked its 55th year on the Warm Springs Reservation. It celebrates the Treaty of 1855, executed between The Wasco and Warm Springs Tribes and the United States.
The treaty created the Warm Springs Reservation on a small fraction of the tribes’ original 10 million-acre territory, while reserving tribal members’ rights to fish, hunt and gather plants at their “usual and accustomed stations.” In the 1870s, the U.S. military forced members of the Paiute Tribe onto the same reservation, and in 1937, the three tribes organized as the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon.
Over the weekend, tribal members celebrated the 1855 treaty with a powwow, endurance horse race, rodeo, stick game, softball game and parade from the schoolhouse to the powwow grounds.
Dancers at the 55th Pi-Ume-Sha celebration take to the grass for the evening dances on Saturday, June 29, 2024. An announcer at the event says the point of the events is to teach children community traditions in the hopes that they continue to practice and teach their children in the future.
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Dancers participate in an intertribal dance on Saturday, June 29, at Pi-Ume-Sha in Warm Springs. Intertribals allowed people to warm up before competition dances and as well as dance together in unity.
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Zola Jack (Jim), left, brushes Eric Culps' hair, 11, before the dances began on Saturday night. Jack (Jim) has been coming to Pi-Ume-Sha since she was a little girl.
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(Left to right) Sunny Hollenbeck, 14, can't pass Alyssa James, 13, and James goes on to win the junior category of the endurance horse race at Pi-Ume-Sha on Saturday. The endurance horse race requires riders to pace their horse over long distances and challenging terrain in order to complete the course.
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A medicine wheel with eagle feathers decorate horse tack on Goldfish, one of the horses Jessie Walker brought from Oman, Wash. to the Pi-Ume-Sha rodeo.
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Preston Tom, 39, left, and son Waukeen Tom, 10 months, drum together before the Saturday afternoon dances begin at the Pi-Ume-Sha powwow. “(Drumming) is what we do,” says Tom.
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Sunny Hollenbeck, 14, leads a girl on a pony to the front of the 55th annual Pi-Ume-Sha parade in Warm Springs. The parade started at the schoolhouse and ended at the powwow grounds.
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Children wave to the Jim, Andrews, George, Culps and Martinez family members as they drive down the parade route on Saturday morning in Warm Springs.
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Children run to grab candy during the Pi-Ume-Sha parade in Warm Springs, Ore., June 29, 2024.
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Franklin and Cynthia Takeshorse, center, attend the Pi-Ume-Sha parade on June 29, 2024. The couple, members of the Crow Nation, are from Montana, and found the event while looking for something to do while traveling for Cynthia’s job as a union pipefitter.
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(Left to right) Edie Stwizler, Qui’yup Martinez and Persia Sloan watch the Pi-Ume-Sha parade on Saturday morning. Stwizler, who is part of the Warm Springs, Wasco and Yakima tribes says with a laugh, “we all speak the same Chinook Jargon.”
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Children sit atop a car decorated with the Palestinian flag, the Strong Woman Mohawk flag and the AIM flag bearing the “She Who Watches” design for the Pi-Ume-Sha parade in Warm Springs.
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Sonya Jim, 37, center, sets up the tent with the help of her children and family members at the powwow grounds in Warm Springs, Ore. on Friday, June 28, 2024.
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Cecil Bettles, Wasco and Klamath, 35 from Chiloquin ties on beaded wrist cuffs for Zahnive George, Lemhi and Shoshone-Bannock, 24, just as grand entry starts on Friday Jun, 28, 2024 at the Warm Springs Pi-Ume-Sha powwow.
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Dancers gather as U.S. military veterans stand at the front of the procession just before the grand entry on Friday, June 28, 2024, in Warm Springs at the 55th annual Pi-Ume-Sha Treaty Days celebration.
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People line up to serve themselves dinner on Friday at the Pi-Ume-Sha powwow in Warm Springs, Ore.
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Children eat snow-cones as night falls on Saturday at Pi-Ume-Sha celebrations in Warm Springs, Ore.
Kathryn Styer Martínez / OPB
This was the second year that Pi-Ume-Sha had been held since being canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the first year that the event spanned three days instead of two.
Vendors like Elsie Stanley and her husband Bahe arrived as early as possible to set up their tents. Vendor spaces are first come-first served at Pi-Ume-Sha, Elsie said.
The couple drove overnight from Arizona to make it to Warm Springs in time to get a good spot. They were at the SIR-Powwow in Susanville, California the weekend before and needed to head home before coming to Oregon.
Vendors like the Stanleys make a significant portion of their income at powwows and will travel many hundreds if not thousands of miles throughout the summer.
Many attendees at Pi-Ume-Sha either live on the Warm Springs Reservation or were part of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, while some came from out of state.
Jessie Walker, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, hauled her two horses, Peaches and Goldfish, nearly 400 miles from Omak, Washington to compete in the barrel racing and break-away roping rodeo events. She said she likes the spotlight on Native Americans who participate in rodeo because it’s becoming a uniquely rural experience.
Jessie Walker walks around her horse, Goldfish, keeping a hand on the hindquarters at the Pi-Ume-Sha rodeo in Warm Springs on Saturday. Walker, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation says doing rodeo isn’t common for Native Americans today—most of whom live in urban areas.
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About 70% of all Native American people live in urban areas, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute.
Anson Begay, 56, grew up in Warm Springs. He said keeping and riding horses used to be more common. The rising cost of keeping and transporting horses, and young people who are more interested in smartphones and video games, have carved away interest from equestrian hobbies, he said. Begay’s children competed in the endurance horse race. His daughter, Joletta, won third place in the junior category and his son, Atcitty, won the senior competition.
At the powwow, one of the dancers in the under-six-years-old category won a piece of regalia and immediately put it on.
That’s the point, said the announcer: To teach their children the traditions of their community in the hopes that they continue to practice and teach their children in the future.
For Jack (Jim), she said she continues to come to Pi-Ume-Sha to watch the dancers, and to be with family and relatives. She said she mainly “danced traditional” and “some fancy” categories when she was young, but stopped dancing after her cousin died when she was a teen. She looks forward to getting out onto the grass again someday and dancing once more, with all her relations.