Celilo Village, Oregon is an unincorporated Native American community on the

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook language, Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin language, Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river headwater ...

in northeastern

Wasco County Wasco County is one of the 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,213. Its county seat is The Dalles. The county is named for a local tribe of Native Americans, the Wasco, a Chinook tribe ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. It is near

Lake Celilo Lake Celilo is a long reservoir on the Columbia River in the United States, between the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. It was created in 1957 with the construction of The Dalles Dam near The Dalles, Oregon, and stretches upstream to the J ...

, the former site of

Celilo Falls Celilo Falls (; , meaning "echo of falling water" or "sound of water upon the rocks," in several native languages) was a tribal fishing area on the Columbia River, just east of the Cascade Range, Cascade Mountains, on what is today the border bet ...

; it is just south of the community of

Wishram, Washington Wishram is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Klickitat County, Washington, Klickitat County, Washington (state), Washington, United States. The population was 366 at the 2020 Unite ...

, across the Columbia River. In 2003 about 100 permanent residents lived in 14 dwellings. The site was once a major cultural and trading center, until

was inundated by

The Dalles Dam The Dalles Lock and Dam is a concrete-gravity run-of-the-river dam spanning the Columbia River, east of the city of The Dalles, Oregon, United States. It joins Wasco County, Oregon, with Klickitat County, Washington, upriver from the mouth o ...

in 1957. The 2000 census reported a total resident population of 44 persons living on a land area of 102.11

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s (0.4132 km). The

United States Army Corps of Engineers The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil wo ...

provided funding for construction of a new tribal long house in 2006. The Corps of Engineers built and maintains the dams that have annihilated the salmon runs upon which Native ceremonial, commercial and dietary life depend. Most residents of Celilo are members of either the

Yakama The Yakama are a Native Americans in the United State, Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in Eastern Washington, eastern Washington (state), Washington state. Yakama people today are enrolled in the federally rec ...

Nation or

Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs is a federally recognized Native American tribe made of three tribes who put together a confederation. They live on and govern the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of Oregon. Tribes Th ...

. Some may be members of the

Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are the federally recognized confederations of three Sahaptin-speaking Native Americans of the United States, Native American tribes who traditionally inhabited the Columbia River Plate ...

, or the

Nez Perce tribe The Nez Perce (; Exonym and endonym, autonym in Nez Perce language: , meaning 'we, the people') are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who still live on a fraction of the lands on the southeastern Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwes ...

. Many residents are fishers engaging in ceremonial, subsistence, and commercial fisheries for

salmon Salmon (; : salmon) are any of several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the genera ''Salmo'' and ''Oncorhynchus'' of the family (biology), family Salmonidae, native ...

steelhead Steelhead, or occasionally steelhead trout, is the Fish migration#Classification, anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or Columbia River redband trout (''O. m. gairdneri'', also called redband steelhead). Steelhead are native to cold-wa ...

, and

sturgeon Sturgeon (from Old English ultimately from Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European *''str̥(Hx)yón''-) is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the ...

in the Columbia River. While the historic fishing site at Celilo Falls is gone, there is an "in lieu" fishing site provided by the Army Corps of Engineers after litigation with the Tribes against the COE, that maintains access for tribal members to the river. Most tribal fishing is done currently with

gillnets Gillnetting is a fishing method that uses gillnets: vertical panels of netting that hang from a line with regularly spaced floaters that hold the line on the surface of the water. The floats are sometimes called "corks" and the line with corks is ...

or from platforms built along the river.

References

Celilo Village, Oregon
United States Census Bureau

External links

Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
Native American history of Oregon Columbia River Gorge Unincorporated communities in Wasco County, Oregon Unincorporated communities in Oregon {{WascoCountyOR-geo-stub