Wallowa and the Tamkaliks Celebration

After the war of 1877 and the band's surrender in Montana, the survivors of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce were scattered: some to the reduced Nez Perce reservation in Idaho, some to the Colville reservation in Washington, some to the Umatilla reservation in Oregon. None were allowed back to the valley that carries their name, and for more than a century the band had no formal presence in Wallowa County at all.

In 1991 descendants of the band gathered at the town of Wallowa for the first Tamkaliks Celebration, a powwow named for the Nez Perce word for the place from which you can see the mountains, held with the intent of welcoming the Nez Perce back home. It has been held every summer since, with dancing and drumming in view of the Wallowa Mountains. A nonprofit, the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland, has bought more than three hundred acres in the area so that tribal members can return to their ancestral land year-round rather than for one weekend.

Wallowa is a small ranching town on OR-82 between La Grande and Joseph, under the north end of the Wallowa Mountains; the pin marks the town. Come as a guest: the celebration is a homecoming before it is anything else, and whether dancers and ceremonies are photographed is for them to say.