(metal creaking, bending) - [Narrator] It's the end of an era for these old industrial buildings that used to be part of the Blue Heron Paper Mill in Oregon City.

This kind of destruction is a form of healing for Cheryle Kennedy.

- This is the third building that is going to be laid to rest.

Once all of this is down, we will be able to look at it differently.

- [Narrator] The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde recently purchased this land, buying their way back to this place hundreds of years after their ancestors were forced out by the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855.

- My great-great-grandfather was one of the treaty signers that signed.

Our village was right here.

- [Narrator] At the time, white settlers were claiming land in the Willamette Valley, spreading disease and violently harassing Indigenous people who lived there.

The tribes at Willamette Falls, like many others across the country, were promised safety and reservation land if they agreed to leave their homeland.

Many treaty promises were broken and after the tribes left the falls, industrial development took over the site.

- American flag.

When I look at that flag, I see that I'm not welcome.

Almost like keep out.

It's a place of ownership to a nation that decided that they wanted to rid this land of me and my people.

- [Narrator] The tribes plan to replace all these industrial buildings with a cultural site and a development of their own.

It's a prominent example of how the Grand Ronde are reclaiming their traditional lands acre by acre.

- It's been very difficult.

We used to be the owners from time immemorial of this place and so now it's back into our ownership.

(Indigenous people chanting in Chinuk Wawa language) Our role here is to heal the land as best we can, healing ourself because we are tied to the land.

(waterfall roaring) - [Narrator] After signing treaties with the U.S. government, dozens of tribes gave up their ancestral homelands across Western Oregon and moved to the Grand Ronde Reservation in the Coast Range.

(Indigenous tribal member chanting) Here, members of the newly-formed Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde were able to continue some of their traditions.

- You know, singing to these hazel trees here, you know, just giving them thanks for what they're giving us and offering something back to them for offering something to us.

- [Narrator] Today, Bobby Mercier and other tribal members are pruning hazel trees and gathering branches for basketry.

(Bobby and Jordan speaking Chinuk Wawa language) He speakings a native language called Chinuk Wawa.

- So we're just talking about what we're gonna do and we'll trim and do our cuts at the same time on each bush.

(brush rustling) The language is what ties us.

It ties us to our old people.

And they say that's how they recognize us, that's how they hear us.

We'll clip it right at the knuckle.

By pruning it, pruning it back, you get those really nice, straight shoots that come up.

Yeah, this is what we want.

Something nice and straight.

We've been doing this since the beginning of time.

(Bobby speaking in Chinuk Wawa language) Forever, we've been making baskets.

- [Narrator] The Grand Ronde haven't always had land like this to manage for their cultural traditions.

The tribes were terminated by the U.S. government in 1954.

They lost federal recognition and all of their land, except a cemetery.

It was part of a national effort to end tribal sovereignty and assimilate Native Americans into mainstream culture.

- I'm gonna come around over here.

These ones are awesome, right here.

- [Narrator] Losing their land put tribal traditions like this at risk.

- This is one thing weaving with hazel sticks that a lot of our grandmas did, and our great grandmas.

And it was actually the way that we survived.

And this is just something unique and special that we have.

And, you know, it almost went away.

- [Narrator] The tribes didn't let it go.

Without land of their own, they had to find other places where they could continue managing traditional plants and harvesting their first foods.

- Lots of Camas - woo!

- [Narrator] Tribal members Greg Archuleta and Chris Rempel work with the U.S. Forest Service to manage this Camas prairie in the Willamette National Forest.

Native people maintained this prairie for thousands of years.

- So right now the Camas is in bloom.

Kind of just checking out the landscape today, see how healthy the population is.

- Hey, it's a little froggy, right there.

Oh, there's another one.

The Camas is one of our first foods.

What's happened today is that you have fewer and fewer places that are like this, especially within the main Willamette Valley, which has been converted to farms and housing, roads, et cetera.

- [Narrator] When they spot a cluster of invasive blackberry, they get out their clippers.

- You've got a berry and it's competing.

And you don't see any Camas in here.

- Traditionally, it was thousands of people doing this work.

It's not just the land, that's only half of it.

The other half is our community and culture.

It's a living culture being out here on the land.

It's not "Let's protect the land," but the land also protects the culture.

- [Greg] We're using the clippers right now, but ideally, we'd want fire on the landscape.

That's why I keep saying fire, fire, fire.

(dry grasses burning) - [Narrator] Controlled fires like this clear away brush and kill invasives while helping native plants like Camas to thrive, because its bulbs are underground.

It's a tool Native American tribes have used throughout their history to manage the landscape.

- Here's a good one.

We're looking for these seed pods.

- [Narrator] Greg returns to the Camas prairie in the fall with his sister, Lisa Archuleta, to dig for those bulbs.

- [Lisa] Do you want a patch of them, brother?

- Yeah, like right here.

- [Narrator] Having access to land like this is part of how the tribes have held on to their first foods gathering traditions.

- See, there he is.

- A smaller one.

- Yep.

There's my dinner, where's yours?

- [Greg] Treats me well.

(Lisa chuckles) - [Narrator] Exactly what this food tastes like is debatable.

- [Lisa] They're kind of like a potato.

It tastes like a potato.

- [Greg] More like onion, I think.

- The longer you cook 'em, they crystallize and they turn into like, sugar.

- [Greg] Caramelize.

- Caramelize, yeah.

I think he's the biggest one yet.

- [Narrator] Federal recognition of the Grand Ronde tribes was restored in 1983.

- So then we pretty much been working on restoration and rebuilding the tribal community since then.

- [Narrator] The U.S. government returned about 10,000 acres of reservation land back to the tribes.

But over the years, much of the land had been converted to agriculture.

So now, it was dominated by non-native species.

To re-establish native plants, the tribes built a nursery.

- [Jeremy] And this is a little serviceberry that started from a cutting.

- [Narrator] Jeremy Ojua cultivates the plants here so they can be re-established on tribal lands.

- We have a slender-leaf onion.

This is a native onion.

We're growing yampa and this is a native carrot.

Salmon berry here, all the willows.

All these plants will end up going to our different properties.

And what we really wanted to do with the nursery here is focus on culturally significant species, so plants that are important to the tribes for foods, medicine, tools, basketry, things like that.

So, hopefully over time with us growing these plants and then putting them back into our restoration sites, we'll have places where tribal members can go and do traditional gathering.

- [Narrator] The tribes have also purchased some land like this oak prairie to maintain and restore traditional foods like flour made with acorns from oak trees.

But the land is riddled with invasive daisies and tansy ragwort.

And it was planted over with commercial timber that now needs to be removed to restore the oak savannah and prairie habitat.

(heavy machinery humming) - So right now, I'm just twining up the wall of the basket.

This has been soaked for a long time.

And so that makes the hazel, the tukwila sticks, makes them pliable.

- [Narrator] A year after we saw Jordan Mercier gathering hazel shoots from reservation land, he can start weaving with them.

- I'm running out right there, so that's where you add in.

So you're doing that a lot as you go.

You're always having to add in new sticks.

So this is Martha Jane Sans, my great-great-great-grandma.

She walked to Grand Ronde when she was 11, or so.

- [Narrator] She was one of hundreds of Indigenous people who had to walk from Southern Oregon to the Grand Ronde Reservation on a route that became known as the Rogue River Trail of Tears.

- That's her sitting there with a hazel basket she's working on.

- [Narrator] For Jordan, basketry is a family tradition tied to the hazel trees and the landscape in the Willamette Valley.

- There's a lot that goes into it and a lot of different things that you have to know and do.

We all help each other with that.

And I think in the same way a basket comes together we come together.

We're able to maintain that connection that honestly, people have tried to take away from us for a long time.

There's been a lot of things trying to break us up as a community and as a people.

And we've overcome all those things.

And it really comes back to the strength of our ancestors, their brilliance, their survival.

(Indigenous man chanting) It's just a matter of honoring our ancestors and also taking care of the land.

(Tribal members chanting) (Tribal members continue chanting) (Tribal members chanting fades) - Great people just doing their thing in their own north-westy way.

We love bringing you stories like this.

Support what you love: OPB.org/video.