When Warm Springs tribal elder Linda Meanus ’16 was a young girl, a friend of her grandmother’s wrote a book about her called “Linda’s Indian Home.” The book called attention to the Columbia River tribes and their ways of living before the 1957 construction of The Dalles Dam destroyed their center of fishing and trading.
More than six decades later, Meanus, who is 73, has published her own book, “My Name is LaMoosh,” chronicling her childhood in the fishing village near Celilo Falls. The title comes from her Indian name, which she shares with her late Grandma Flora.
“Since I was named after my grandma, I figured I might as well carry on her name and tell my story,” Meanus said.
The words in the book are her own — but it was a collaborative storytelling effort with fellow alum Lily Hart ’18 and Katy Barber, a PSU history professor, that helped bring it to life. “My Name is La
Moosh” was among the finalists for the Oregon Book Awards’ Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children’s Literature.
WHEN HISTORY GETS PERSONAL
“My Name is LaMoosh” is as much a memoir as it is a history book. Meanus shares her childhood memories of home life with her grandparents and fishing at Celilo Falls. She writes of learning how to dig roots, pick berries and bead as a young girl, as well as the trauma of losing the falls to the dam.
Meanus was the first person in her family to graduate from high school — an Indian boarding school in Oklahoma. She enrolled in college because education was important to her grandma, but life had other plans.
After years of working, caring for family members and fighting her own nine-year battle with cancer, she returned to community college. She decided to continue on to her bachelor’s and enrolled at PSU, graduating in 2016 with a degree in liberal studies and a minor in Indigenous Nations Studies.
Linda with her diploma from PSU on the Warm Springs Reservation. (Photo Credit: Lily Hart)
It was at PSU where the seeds for the book collaboration were planted.
In Meanus’ final term, she took Barber’s “Oregon History” class, which covers Celilo and the building of The Dalles Dam. She says she was drawn to the class, in large part because Barber had written a book, “Death of Celilo Falls,” in 2005 that featured her grandmother.
At the time, Barber was working on her second book, “In Defense of Wyam: Native-White Alliances and the Struggle for Celilo Village,” about the alliance between Flora Thompson and Martha McKeown, the white author and educator who wrote “Linda’s Indian Home,” as they worked together to protect Celilo Village.
“I had to do a history class and I told my counselor that I want to know this lady because she wrote a book about my grandma,” Meanus said. “It made me feel good — I know someone who knows something about me and my family.”
The following term, Hart, a history major, had the opportunity to learn more about Meanus’ life story when she took Barber’s “Oral History” class. The class partnered with Confluence, a Vancouver-based nonprofit that works to elevate Indigenous voices along the Columbia River, to transcribe a collection of interviews, including one done with Meanus in 2012.
Hart’s work during the class led to an internship — and eventual job — at Confluence, where she now serves as editorial and content manager. At Confluence, she got to know Meanus through their school visits as part of the nonprofit’s educational programming.
“I got to do some great road trips with Linda, so later down the line when she asked us to work with her, it was such an honor,” Hart said.
WEAVING A STORY
For Hart and Barber, the project was unlike any other they had worked on — and they learned as they went, from navigating copyright laws to embracing a new approach to interviewing and editing.
Hart, who’s now a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia, credits her time in PSU’s public history program with learning the skills to do what she calls ethical community work.
“It’s been amazing to watch the way in which Lily has taken some things that she learned at PSU about ethical public history and ethical oral history work and has really taken that to heart in how she designed this project,” Barber said. “She was the one who was figuring out how we’re going to do these things and lead us in this project, and it’s been beautiful to be a part of this.”
The group, which also included Colin Fogarty, Confluence’s executive director at the time, first worked their way through the transcript of Meanus’ oral history. Then during conversations over Zoom, they talked about which stories she wanted to include in the book. She’d share, they’d ask questions, she’d share more, they’d transcribe the interviews and then come back with more questions.
From left, Lily Hart, Linda Meanus and Katy Barber. (Courtesy of Lily Hart)
“It was really meaningful to talk with Linda about different aspects of her life,” Barber said. “In the between times, Linda was doing some writing and using that to spark memories and then we’d come back. We always had questions from the conversations we were having, ‘Oh, what happened next?’ It was really iterative.”
Hart says it was something she looked forward to every few weeks.
“It felt very natural, like the four of us were hanging out and talking about Linda’s life and learning,” she said. “I know, for me, that was so special because it was COVID and it was such a grounding type of experience to have.”
Meanus says the process was hard in the beginning as she relived the trauma from her childhood, but it was also cathartic.
“Every time I talk about it, it makes me feel stronger,” she said. “It makes me feel good that thanks to Confluence and everybody that I can share my story. And hopefully people understand what it was like for something to be taken away and to relive it over and over again in my heart.”
During their conversations, major themes began to emerge: survival, education, Flora Thompson’s legacy, elders and the next generation. When it came time to write, the group worked to edit the transcripts into a single, cohesive narrative.
Often Meanus had shared a story multiple times in different sessions, so each tried their hand at weaving together a single story with content from multiple versions. They then shared their drafts with Meanus who provided feedback — and the process repeated, with each story.
They took a similar approach with the photo captions, driving to Warm Springs to record Meanus as she went through her photos and shared stories about them. In the book, she shares the story behind a now-famous photograph of her and her grandparents in regalia at Celilo Falls before its inundation. She also includes the version that was never published, in which she’s desperate to hold a nearby dog for the photo. That’s why, in the better-known photo, she looks like she’s about to cry.
The previously unpublished version of the famous photo of Linda with her grandparents, Flora Thompson and Chief Tommy Thompson — and the dog she wanted to pet. (Courtesy of Linda Meanus)
“I really wanted that dog but looking back now, I see it was something I needed to learn, that I don’t take somebody else’s things without asking,” Meanus writes in the book.
Meanus’ voice is on every page of the book. She spoke, and her collaborators listened and recorded. Factboxes accompany Meanus’ personal story throughout the book, providing readers with additional historical, cultural and environmental context.
“I wanted to share my story to the kids who are hungry,” Meanus said. “I’m glad that they’re willing to know who we are and learn about whose land it is.”
Meanus says she’s honored her book is a finalist. And if she wins? She’ll speak from the heart — the only way she knows how.