Steve Wilent
Special to ICT
YAKAMA NATION, Washington — The tribal people comprising the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation “have lived in this area since the beginning of time,” reads the history section of the nation’s website.
It goes on to explain that more than 600,000 acres of the nearly 1.4-million-acre reservation, situated along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountain Range in south-central Washington State, is forested
“All this for future generations yet unborn according to teachings by our elders.”
The Yakama Nation Tribal Forestry Forest Development Program is tasked with managing its timberlands today and for future generations. Among the handful of program employees are three young Yakama Nation citizens, Forest Development Technicians Amelia Andy, Landon Smartlowit, and Wayne Watlamet.
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Each is following in the footsteps of one or more members of their families. Andy’s father, Victor Andy, is a log scaler for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Branch of Forestry, someone who measures log lengths and diameters and calculates the amount of lumber that can be milled from them.
Smartlowit’s father Richard and brother Ryle also work within the Tribal Forestry program.
Watlamet’s father Shawn, his uncle Anthony Jr., aunt Sam and nephew Donavon also work in Tribal Forestry. His grandfather, Anthony, is a former program crew member and logger.
Watlamet said he started working on a crew right after high school.
“My dad has worked here for a long time, and he wanted me to join the crew,” Watlamet said. “From there, I started moving up, and now I’m a forest development technician, and I do a lot of the same work as my dad — timber marking, thinning, that kind of thing.”
Andy, Smartlowit, Watlamet and their colleagues are charged with carrying out the mission of the Forest Development Program: to protect, preserve, and enhance the Yakama Nation’s forests and other natural resources.
More than 630,000 of the reservation acres is forested, from ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir and white oak in the foothills to Pacific silver and subalpine fir on the slopes of the 12,300-foot Pahto, or Mount Adams.
In addition to water, food, medicine, recreation, and spiritual values, the lands produce logs for the two mills operated by Yakama Forest Products, one of several tribal enterprises that provides employment and revenue for the members of the Yakama Nation.
The three technicians mark timber for harvesting on Fee Lands, lay out thinning project units, collect cones for growing seedlings to plant on the reservation, conduct seedling survival plots, supervise contractors, thin young stands of timber, and fight wildfires when necessary.
Survival plots involve assessing seedling health and survival during the first year after planting, and additional surveys are conducted at three years and five years after planting.
“We look at whether the seedlings were planted properly and how well they’re growing, how many have died or been browsed by wildlife,” said Smartlowit. “We also look at the work of our contractors and also of our Yakama Nation crew that does TSI [timber stand improvement] work — thinning trees, taking out the weaker ones and the undesired species, such as lodgepole pine and grand fir, leaving the strongest of the favored species, usually ponderosa pine or Douglas-fir.”
Future leaders
These technicians are working toward earning associate’s and eventually bachelor’s degrees in the forest management program at Salish Kootenai College, a private tribal land-grant community college in Pablo, Montana, on the Flathead Reservation. As of June 2023, eight other Yakama students are also enrolled in the college’s forestry program. The . SKC is the only tribal college in the nation with a four-year forestry degree program.
Although the college is open to everyone, it primarily serves local tribes — the Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreille — and has students from 50 other tribes from around the U.S. and Canada. Three-quarters of all SKC students are Native Americans or their descendants, and about 80 percent of students currently enrolled in the forestry program represent 15 tribes.
Tia Beavert, Yakama Nation Tribal Forest Manager, said all three technicians have potential as future leaders in forestry.
“Wayne and Landon both strive to improve their skill set daily and often I forget they are student foresters,” Beavert said. “From the time I first met Wayne, he has demonstrated strong leadership skills, is willing to expand his knowledge, and overall has a great future within the Forest Development Program.
“Landon is a quick learner and also has great leadership potential. He has a great relationship with his peers and is amazing to be around. He is working on obtaining his CDL [commercial driver’s license] and can function independently within the program very well.
“My first interaction with Amelia was last year when she came to my office and expressed interest in the field of forestry,” Beavert added. “She is a dedicated, hard worker and is on her second season with our Forest Development crew. She is gaining experience both in forestry and in wildfire management while learning academic forestry. Over the last year, I have seen her thrive and excel both inside and outside the workplace. She is quiet and shy, but has a bright future that I am looking forward to seeing.”
After she earns her bachelor’s degree in forest management, Andy plans to seek a second bachelor’s degree in wildland fire management.
“When I was in high school, I was kind of interested in my science classes and I joined in the environmental club,” Andy said. “During the summer we got credit for going on a trip to visit other reservations in the region, where we saw their different forestry programs, how they’re managing their forests. And we went to Redmond, Oregon, to see the [US Forest Service] smokejumper base. That’s kind of where it started. I knew I didn’t want to sit in an office — I wanted to do outdoor work. My dad told stories about working in forestry, and that helped me make the decision. So I started the forestry program at SKC, and I like it.”
Virtual education
Because most Yakama students cannot move to Montana to attend SKC, SKC comes to them via virtual classes including live or recorded videos through an agreement between the college and the Yakama Nation.
Subjects range from general education classes to forest ecology, timber-harvesting systems, geographic information systems and other forestry classes.
“It’s a pretty special hybrid program — I’m not sure there are any others in the country like it,” said Robert Kenning, chair of SKC’s Forestry Department. “Students who are not on campus have audio and video access, so it’s like they’re sitting in the classroom and can interact with instructors and students — they take part in discussions and ask questions.”
Hands-on, field-based labs are indispensable elements of forestry education. At SKC, one-quarter to one-third of forestry classes, depending on the quarter, occurs outdoors. In forest measurements, for example, students learn to use diameter tapes, clinometers, laser rangefinders, and other instruments for measuring tree diameter and height.
For distance-learning students, SKC works with local experts to provide field-based instruction.
“With our Yakama students, we coordinate with Tia Beavert to provide basically the same labs with the same learning objectives that we have here on or near campus. She or other Yakama foresters give them that field experience,” Kenning said. “It’s great that Yakama Tribal Forestry gets to participate in their students’ education and focus on what they want their future employees to learn. That’s worked out really well as part of our hybrid approach to education.”
When not in the field, the Yakama students gather for virtual classes in a Yakama Nation Higher Education Program classroom.
“We find it valuable when they can gather together in the higher education classroom,” Kenning said.
Learning alongside students from many tribes and with diverse backgrounds is a big plus for all students, said Kenning, who has taken classes in Salish to better communicate with SKC’s Salish-speaking students.
“I think students benefit from having these diverse perspectives on tribal culture and forestry,” he said. “We try to incorporate tribal history, cultural values, and language into every class that we have.”
“We’ve had language classes in our own language, Sahaptin, taught by Yakama elders, classes that we got college credit for,” said Watlamet. “It’s pretty cool. Instead of learning a foreign language, we learn our own language. It’s a pretty big deal.”
Kenning and his colleagues aim to have graduates leave SKC with a well-rounded understanding of tribal forest management.
“Our program is steeped in a tribal experience of forestry, but our students also get a lot of exposure to professional land management,” he said. “Traditionally, tribal forests have been managed by non-tribal members, and now there’s a drive to have tribal forests managed by the tribes’ own members. I think our forestry program is an important part of that. In the Yakama Nation’s case, we’re making an associate’s degree and a bachelor’s degree accessible to non-traditional students with families and jobs who can’t travel to other places to get a degree. I think our program gives these folks some new opportunities for moving up in their careers.”
Working in the woods
Although thinning a stand of young trees is strenuous work, Watlamet appreciates the importance of giving the strongest trees more room to grow.
“It helps keep us in good shape,” Watlamet said. “You’re walking around in the woods all day and packing a chainsaw. That keeps us in condition for fighting fire. One day a big lightning storm came through and we were chasing fires all over the reservation. It was a long day, but it was fun.”
Smartlowit added, “Just about everyone in our Tribal Forestry department is red-carded [trained and qualified as a wildland firefighter]. We get our red cards through the Fire Management Program.”
Andy enjoys working with chainsaws on thinning projects and in fighting wildfires.
“Last year was my first on the crew and I started out with a small saw,” she said, “but this year I moved up to a bigger saw. I like cutting — it keeps me busy and keeps me outdoors.”
Smartlowit’s father is a lead heavy equipment operator with the Yakama Nation’s Fuels Management program, which has a goal of reducing the amounts of live and dead woody materials that could burn in a wildfire. Reducing the amount of fuel reduces a wildfire’s intensity and ability to spread.
“My dad used to work on the Forest Development crew along with Wayne’s dad, Shawn. So my dad and his dad worked together, doing the same work we’re doing now. That’s pretty cool,” Smartlowit said.
Their connection to the land and Yakama culture is important to the future foresters.
“There are so many resources that we’ve used throughout our history, whether it be traditional foods like huckleberries and other plants, hunting deer and elk, fishing,” Watlamet said.
Fish have been an integral part of the Yakama peoples’ lives and culture for millennia. The Yakama Nation Fisheries department website notes that “the relationship between the People, the Salmon, and the Columbia Basin is the foundation of the time-honored laws of the Yakama people.”
The Yakama Tribal Forestry Program collaborated with the fisheries department through a timber sale, during which stumps, logs, and other woody debris was placed in streams to enhance the fish habitat in waters that flow across the reservation.
“I like thinking about our ties to the land; how everything comes about,” Smartlowit said. “We like to do huckleberry enhancement projects, where we thin out the overstory trees to give the huckleberries more sunlight. We’ve seen pictures from many years ago of open hillsides covered with huckleberry plants, and now you can barely walk through the lodgepole because it’s so thick.”
Removing some of the lodgepole pines will stimulate the huckleberry shrubs to produce more berries.
The Yakama Nation usually practices selective harvesting. Clearcuts are rare, and prescribed fire, rather than herbicides, is used to control brush that competes with trees. The Forest Development staff plans to plant about 160 acres with seedlings this year.
The Yakama Nation’s forest management practices are certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting sustainable forest management. It works with conservation groups, Indigenous peoples, local communities, resource professionals, landowners, and others who have a passion for responsible forest management.
Through its commitment to the SFI Forest Management Standard, the Yakama Nation demonstrates that its forests, wildlife, watersheds and other natural resources are responsibly managed.
Yakama Forest Products holds an SFI Fiber Sourcing certificate, which shows that the company purchases logs from landowners who use forestry best-management practices to protect and enhance forest health, biodiversity, water quality and other resources.
Looking ahead
As they carry out their work, the three technicians often think about the past, present and future of forest management on Yakama Nation lands.
“Last year, I found some photos of forested areas taken years ago, and compared them to what those areas look like now.” Andy said. “I sometimes take photos of areas that I worked on so I can go back and see what those areas look like later on in my life.”
Smartlowit said he, too, has noticed the changes over time.
“Before I started in Forest Development, I worked on a thinning project that looks pretty nice now,” Smartlowit said. “We recently drove through one area we planted when I first started with the crew, and now there’s a lot of ponderosa pine out there, growing strong, and they’re taller than me now. I thought that was pretty cool.”
Two of the three are parents: Smartlowit and his wife, Jonet, have three boys. Watlamet and his wife, Samantha, have a four-year-old son.
“I wouldn’t mind showing him how we do our work when he’s a little older. Maybe that’ll spark him to come out and do what we do when he grows up,“ Watlamet said.
“It comes down to leaving it better than we found it. In the future, I want my son’s kids to be able to come up here and do the things I do — hunt, fish, gather huckleberries and other foods. We take care of the land because it takes care of us.”
Steve Wilent is director of sustainability communications for the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting sustainable forest management.
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