6-19-2026 

             Today the day seemed more chill than any other. We didn't do much just went to the Umitilla tribe museum. It was pretty fun; they had so much stuff on display and had a lot of interactive audio stations. I think out of the whole place, my favorite area was this little storytelling room with this fake-looking fireplace thing in the middle to imitate a real one. Now that I am reflecting on my day, I should've taken some notes while I was wandering around the museum. Anyway, that little area was circle-shaped but had projectors across the room, and it was telling us these childlike campfire stories. I only stayed for one, and it talked about a coyote and how it saved all the other animals from this evil force. The story started out with the coyote wanting to see everything in the sky like an eagle, so he would take his eyes and throw them up into the sky, hoping they would stay up there, until one day a bird flew by and stole them, and he was left blind. Until he stumbled upon these yellow buttercup flowers and used those to replace his eyes and went into this deep sleep. While he was asleep, this dark force started swallowing up all the other animals in the forest, and when he woke up, he too was swallowed. While they were in this thing's stomach, or whatever, the coyote noticed a small light and figured it was the way out. So he hatched a plan to free all the animals. He began with a small fire, and it opened up a little, so he made an even bigger fire in his stomach and let it spread. The small hole of light began to open bigger, and one by one all the animals escaped this monster's stomach, and the coyote became the hero and legend. I really enjoyed the museum, and some of the art they had on the walls in between some of the exhibits there was this one that was like a collage with the smaller pictures of different beadwork. 

                There was this other part of the museum that kind of left a mark on me, which was the section of the boarding school, and they had a wall with a picture of these children looking at you, and I don't know, it felt like they wanted to say something, and their faces looked like they had stories to tell. I don't know; it was really impactful. Being Native American, I was looking at them and was thinking to myself that some of my relatives probably went there and had to endure what these kids went through, and had the same faces: no joy, no emotion, and looked as if they were robots. In this section of the exhibit, they had a section for the Chemawa Boarding School, and during this, I was thinking about my dad; he went there when it became a little more modernized. 

              After this, we went and showered up, and at Wildhorse Resort and Casino's RV park, I had a temporary Zoom meeting with a PhD student from Portland State University, and we just introduced ourselves and went over some of the things I need to do for my internship this summer. Afterwards, we went back to our camp to finish up soil analysis from the second site (Harris Park Campgrounds). We as a team found out that our "Control" soil was filled up to the wazu with nutrients and had high traces of Nitrogen, potassium, and Phosphorus. We found it ironic that this soil was our control soil when it had high traces of nutrients, but that is to be expected from soil from the nursery. Then the rest of the day went on as normal; we had dinner, cleaned up, and afterwards we did this thing where we reflected on the week and essentially talked about our goals for ourselves or just the future. It was kind of nice; I got to get a better understanding of my classmates. Oh, and we finally got to do s'mores. 




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