Potato Hill & Huckleberries.

Blog #3

Monday. 

Potato Hill & Huckleberries. 

I have just spent three days on our People of the Big River field trip with 18 other individuals, 13 of which are in school – students of all personalities, differences, and talents. What has stood out for me today is our inner strength and a true connection with nature that I felt with all of them. On this trip, the first task that we did was collect 10 different species of flowers to press them and reserve them. The idea is so that we can all have a little book that we can keep with flowers from the Yakama Nation. Two important factors to keep in mind while we collected them were to not pull them by the roots and to not touch the huckleberries. So as we collected the flowers we climbed to the top of Potato Hill. The top of the hill had a beautiful view of Mt Adams and the rest of the land. After our long days' journey, we gathered at the campfire and discussed some of the factors that impact the huckleberries because the number of quality of huckleberries is in decline. This made me think of the impact that I have on this situation as well as the other impacts that we often don’t think about. Our conversation kicked off with the history of some of the individuals' families growing up. Some families would set fires to the fields so that the tress and the bear grass would decrease the underbrush so that the huckleberries were not competing with them. Now what the tribes are doing is restricting those fires even though huckleberries are fire-dependent. Huckleberries prospered in the sunlight caused by these natural openings. But the forest constantly tries to reclaim its lost territory. Today scientists are trying to determine the best method of maintaining huckleberries as a valuable forest resource. According to some articles, a berry crop retails upwards of $10 per pound. That is because they are dependent on their ecosystems that make them notoriously hard to grow anywhere else. They grow in the mountains at elevations between 3,500 to 7,200 feet. As we continued our conversation, we determined that it's not the way that it used to be. We then came with the idea that the amount of water that runs through the rivers has decreased. We mentioned that the irrigation that is being shared amongst communities has decreased. For example, The Junior Water Rights people were at 75% and now are at 67% of the water because there is not enough water. The things that we can do to research on the water is looking at where it's coming from such as rain, down-water, surface runoff, and test the aquafer levels are, rain gain and groundwater. We determined that is would however take several years to gather reasonable data. It was also mentioned that historical data would be one of the best resources to gather some information. Other thoughts that could be impacting the berries would be the people in the ways that they pick. Some locations reserved for natives and others where anybody can pick. In those areas, some people use rakes. Using rakes is a pretty huge issue because they can damage them or even pull the full roots out of the ground. I think that even though the huckleberries are important for the Native Americans, they are important to animals living in the lands. I think that just going out to have a conversation with the community would impact the way we think about the future of these huckleberries for the community and the animals. It would be a mare of teaching them about the decline in huckleberries and the importance of their participation to our future. 

​