Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Grand Entry kicks off 30th Annual Wildhorse Pow Wow

Dancers entered the arena for Grand Entry at 7 p.m. Friday, July 3, opening the first night of the 30th Annual Wildhorse Pow Wow on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR).

Friday evening featured the Mens Grass vs. Womens Jingle special, drawing dancers from across the region and country, including world champion jingle dancer Acosia Red Elk, an enrolled member of CTUIR.

Emcees Thomas Morningowl, Jerry Meninick and Hodge Slickpoo led the evening's program. The three-day event, hosted by Wildhorse Resort & Casino, continues through Sunday, July 5.

Photos by CRITFC/JM. Gavin

Willamette Falls, Oregon — June 24, 2026

Yakama Nation youth join Yakama Nation Fisheries staff to harvest Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) at Willamette Falls, continuing a practice their families have exercised at this site since time immemorial.

For the youth participating, the lamprey harvest is legacy and destiny as much as it is technical and educational. The youth scaled the same rocks, maneuvered through the same currents and falls, as well as exercised the same right their grandparents and great-grandparents exercised, a tradition unbroken since the beginning of time.

As they came together to practice their rights and cultural ways, they laughed and prayed on the same rocks where their ancestors’ voices echo amongst the spray and roar of the Willamette Falls, to this day.

Using specialized sucker-mouths to cling to rock and pull themselves up the falls' 1,500-foot span, lamprey are among the oldest surviving vertebrate lineages, having evolved roughly 450 million years ago. The fish spend three to 10 years as larvae burrowed in streambed silt, one to seven years in the ocean feeding on host fish, and finally return to freshwater to spawn and complete their life cycle, a journey largely unchanged for millennia, but now imperiled by dams and habitat loss throughout the Columbia and Willamette basins. Pacific lamprey are often misidentified or construed with sea lamprey, which are invasive to the Great Lakes. Pacific lamprey are native to the Columbia River Basin and tributaries.

Each year, Yakama Nation Fisheries invites media to accompany one harvest, typically held the day of the annual Willamette Falls Lamprey Celebration held at Clackamette Park. This year's harvest was moved up a day ahead of the celebration. Because the harvest fell late in the season, timing that shifts annually with weather, water temperatures and levels, as well as fish runs, only two lamprey were taken during this specific outing.

According to words shared by Yakama Nation Tribal Council member and CRITFC Commissioner, Jeremy Takala, during the Lamprey Celebration, Portland General Electric's placement of flashboards atop the falls each late spring, intended to maximize hydropower output, raises the pool behind the dam and strands lamprey attempting to pass.

Fish caught below the boards at that point are largely unable to continue upstream, making much of the harvest a salvage effort rather than a traditional harvest, a reality Yakama Nation Fisheries staff say underscores why every fish gathered, including those released above dams to reintroduce spawning pheromones into blocked habitat, matter.�

Photos by CRITFC/JM. Gavin

CRITFC joined the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs for the Pi-Ume-Sha Treaty Days Parade, with CRITFC Enforcement Officers Rojas and Howell representing the commission alongside tribal elder Wilbur Slockish and his grandchildren. CRITFC participates each year in all four member tribal parades, Warm Springs, Yakama Nation, Umatilla, and the Joseph Days Parade honoring the Nez Perce, affirming the shared treaty rights the commission was founded to protect.