Charles Hudson
Emily Washines
Deb Davis
LeRoy Adams
RIVERS, CONNECTIONS: Charles Hudson is Director of Government Affairs for the Columbia River
Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, where he has served since 1999. In this role Charles handles legislative matters and facilitates Federal-Tribal relations. He’s a member the Mandan/Hidatsa tribe of Fort Berthold, North Dakota, and has spoken throughout North America on treaty rights, natural resource management and environmental justice. His passion for tribal issues is derived from his family’s multi-generational fight for treaty rights and justice on the Missouri River, a fight chronicled in the 2004 novel “Coyote Warrior” by Paul Vandevelder.
Charles is the founder and administrator of the Many Dances Family Fund, a charitable fund within the Oregon Community Foundation. Charles’ hobbies include hunting, fishing, hiking and gardening. He is a 1984 graduate of Washington State University. Charles has three sons, and one beautiful granddaughter.
Yakama War: Ayat (Woman), is a a short film Emily Washines made about the Yakama War, which includes a historical account of her people. She grew up in a family of seven on the Yakama Reservation. She began film in high school and has made a few short videos focused on Yakama people and the environment. Her family taught her to gather foods, dance, sing traditional songs, Yakama language, culture, beadwork, and weaving. She passes these teachings on to the 
younger generation including her two daughters and son. This film was sponsored by a grant from The Evergreen State College Native Creative Development Program. Emily gave another presentation at Oyez Roslyn!, with her husband Jon Shellenberger, Return of the Wapato.
Deb Davis will be reading an essay, “Wonder as a Survival Skill.”
Deb grew up in a family of farmers and loggers in southwest Washington and began working seasonally for the Forest Service in 1980. She joined the trail crew at the Cle Elum Ranger District in 1991. Deb earned a Master’s in painting and drawing from CWU in 1993 and spent the next ten years teaching and exhibiting art around the Northwest.
Deb’s past 23 seasons have been devoted to trail work around the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Her creative work explores images and stories about natural history, art and life. Currently, she is working on a series of illustrated essays.
Oyez Roslyn! invited LeRoy Adams to come and share with us some of his understanding and outdoor experiences relating to the Yakama Nation’s “ceded lands.” More than twelve million acres were ceded to the federal government under the 1855 Yakama Nation Treaty. Tribal leaders reserved the right to fish, hunt and gather all of the tribe’s traditional foods on the reservation as well as the ceded area, which includes all of Kittitas County and much more.
LeRoy is program manager of the Yakama Nation Wildlife Program, and has served in this capacity for about three years. An enrolled member of the Yakama Indian Nation, he graduated from Oregon State University in Forest Products. LeRoy is an avid hunter, fisherman, and outdoor person. He and his wife have a daughter and a new son.
He started with some basic history about the Yakama Nation’s ceded lands and then was generous enough to share stories, remembrances, and considerations of his own experience being raised as a Yakama hunter, and passing this tradition on to others, as they come of age. A privilege to listen.