Tribal members bless and harvest parts of whale on the beach.
The carcass of a dead whale, washed up on the beach, would signal a boon to local indigenous populations prior to the time white settlers moved in. That’s according to Doug Barrett. He’s the chief of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians. “It was a big deal when we found one dead on the beach, so everybody went and harvested it.”
While they didn’t go to sea to hunt the giant mammals, when one was presented to them, they didn’t let it go to waste. “They probably harvested the blubber for oil; utilized all the bones. We made tools out of the bones. Actually, found a chair at one of our sites from a large vertebra. I’ve seen bone spoons, everything you could imagine probably.”
The 37-foot gray whale that washed up at Heceta Beach last week will be put to use as well. “I harvested like four chunks of blubber, some baleen, a couple chunks of a muscle just to have it checked to see if the meat’s able to eat or not.”
Barrett performed a “blessing” over the whale before harvesting parts of it. He said they will wait for results of a necropsy before using the meat.
Beached Whale II
No, they didn’t blow it up. The dead 37-foot Gray Whale discovered early Thursday morning on the beach at Driftwood Shores wasn’t left to decompose. Biologists helped tribal members cut the whale into pieces to be used for cultural and ceremonial purposes. Then, an excavating contractor was called in to drag the carcass to another section of the beach, away from the resort and other residences where it was buried. The concern was for what likely would have been an overwhelming stench. One representative noted that there were several small pieces left on the beach though. They would likely be cleaned up by crabs and seagulls.
WATERSHED COUNCIL
The Siuslaw Watershed Council is asking for community feedback to help them develop future projects and plans. Tim Moffitt, the director of the council, says one of the ways they accomplish that is with their CORE Program. “CORE is an anacronym for Community Outreach, Recreation and Engagement. and we try to do a community event every single month of the year. in January we had our annual meeting, in February we had our annual plant distribution that’s been going on for nearly 30 years now.”
He said this year’s event gave away over 10,000 native plants to local riparian and lakeside landowners. Another event scheduled for April will be estuary cleanup. More information is available at Siuslaw.org.
Tsunami Informational Workshops
A series of community workshops with information about how tsunamis are formed and their potential effects on coastal communities begin this week up and down the Oregon Coast. The Oregon Department of Emergency Management is teaming up with the Department of Geology and the National Weather Service, as well as local emergency officials. It’s part of an effort to provide more information about tsunami hazards. The “Tsunami 101 Community Roadshows” will be in Manzanita and Tillamook today and tomorrow: with Newport and Lincoln City on the calendar for Thursday. The South Coast will be represented Tuesday, April 7th in Gold Beach. Two sessions will be at Southwestern Oregon Community College in Coos Bay the next day. A session at noon that day will focus on business preparedness, another at 6:30 PM is aimed at residents. The series wraps up Thursday April 9th at the Lower Umpqua Senior Center in Reedsport at 7:30 PM.
