Salmon Camp Spawns Career Options | Native Students

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Salmon Camp Spawns Career Options

Spring 2004

PORTLAND, Oregon—It's early—very early—on a chilly Saturday morning and seven bleary-eyed teens pile into a van, clutching pillows and tossing sack lunches in the back. They're headed down the Willamette Valley, from Portland to Corvallis, on a road that could very well lead to their future.

Salmon campers tour OSU's fisheries and wildlife department.

OSU fisheries tour

The contingent of kids from Yakima, Eugene, Seaside, and Portland are members of Salmon Camp, a natural science and career training program for Native American youth run by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). During summer and spring vacations, campers can be found restoring streams in a Central Oregon watershed, collecting soil samples deep in Redwood National Park in Northern California, or tracking fish in Washington's San Juan Islands. On school-year weekends the activities tend to be more prosaic, though still geared toward introducing students to opportunities in fields like forestry, botany, archaeology, and fishery and wildlife management.

"The real key is getting kids out in the field, learning about science by actually doing science," says program director Joseph Jones. "We offer residential programs so kids are literally living with resource managers and scientists, and they get to know them not just as professionals but as friends."

"Today, reservations are in control of a lot of natural resources," adds Ben Muir, camp coordinator. "The Native Americans working there tend to be technicians while the managers, who make the decisions, are largely white. One of our goals is to interest kids in natural resources so they can get training and go back to the rez to make a difference."

That's where today's road trip comes in: Students will tour the Oregon State University campus on this busy homecoming weekend and get a sales pitch from faculty and students in the fisheries and wildlife program.

Tables heaped with elk antlers, beaver pelts, bonefish floating in jars of alcohol, and taxidermic porcupines await the group at the College of Agricultural Studies. "We have one of the most extensive museum collections in the U.S.," faculty member Rebecca Googans points out. "The best part is you can handle it, touch it!"

Googans, who's in charge of internships, shows the high schoolers an enticing presentation on where she's placed OSU students: working for a cheetah conservation group in Namibia, monitoring otters in Monterey Bay, and studying grizzlies in Alaska's Katmai National Park.

By the end of the session, excitement is running high among the salmon campers. Aron, a sophomore, sees himself coming back here to study forestry after taking a fire science course at Clatsop Community College. It's a career path that grew directly out of his camp experience. "Last summer we worked with a couple of 'hot shot' firefighters at Olallie Lake," he explains. "I did my presentation (at the end of camp) on how fire lines are used for controlling fires and how things grow back after a burn. I didn't know anything about it before camp, but boy, it really turned me on!"

OMSI recruits middle and high school–aged tribal members from around the region for the free camps, which are underwritten by private donations, contributions from tribes and government agencies, and a National Science Foundation grant. Applicants are selected based on an application, personal essay, and recommendations.

"It's a diverse student population," notes Jones. "Some are excellent students, while others are on the edge. They need to be given a concrete reason for applying themselves academically."

Once in the program, OMSI helps the students find academic and professional mentors: university, tribal, and agency scientists; researchers; and natural resource managers. Much of the work focuses on salmon recovery efforts but the students learn to use sophisticated equipment and computer modeling to examine other complex ecological issues. At the conclusion of the one- to three-week residential sessions, students present their research findings at a public gathering. Often they're able to get school credit for their work, and sometimes the experience has a more lasting impact.

"At the end of one camp, about eight years ago, an elder sat with us around the fire and shared an oral history about the Warm Springs tribe," recalls Jones. The elder related his story to a site where campers were doing an archaeological dig that summer. When the land came up for sale soon after, Salmon Camp approached the tribe and jointly worked to get 35,000 acres protected through federal funding.

Jones observes, "It was the first title land ceded back to the tribe in the John Day Basin since the 1850s. We were there this spring with elders and our students collecting roots for the first time in 150 years that it's been back in Indian hands—all because of a story around a campfire."

FYI: For more information about the Salmon Camp program, contact salmon@omsi.edu or check out www.omsi.edu/education/camps/salmon.cfm.