Laurie Danzuka (Warm Springs) is a designated food gatherer for her family and for the Simnasho Longhouse. An enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, she is responsible for gathering roots and berries, processing them, and preparing them with other women for Longhouse feasts. She is also involved in teaching her nieces how to take on this role in the future.
Bio
Laurie Danzuka is a designated food gatherer for her family and for the Simnasho Longhouse. An enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, she is responsible for gathering roots and berries, processing them, and preparing them with other women for Longhouse feasts. She is also mentoring her nieces to take on this role in the future. To become a Longhouse designated food gatherer, Danzuka learned from her grandmother, mother, and aunties how to gather, process, and prepare these First Foods for Longhouse feasts and family use. The Creator provided Indigenous peoples with First Foods; for Oregon Tribes, these are water, fish, game, roots, and berries, which are served in that order at feasts. Women are charged with gathering roots and berries, which they do on 10 million acres of ceded lands, which the US Government and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs specified in the Treaty of 1845. Gathering First Foods involves spiritual preparation before and when women and children go out to dig roots and gather berries in their different seasons. Danzuka says, "we want to make sure everybody has a good mind and a good heart while we're out there gathering for the people and we have our traditional places that we go." Families gather enough food for tribal members for the feast so that everyone has enough. They give thanks for the food before they go out, when they go out, and at the feast itself. After the feast, "then individual families can go out and gather for themselves." While some roots and berries are for preparing and eating immediately, others need to be preserved. Danzuka explains, "there's always going to be a need to have traditional foods, unfortunately, for celebrations or for funerals. So you always want to have those traditional foods on hand." Root digging involves kupns, special sharpened digging sticks once made of wood and now of iron, which local people make. Individuals often have a favorite stick to use and prefer different ones for different tasks; Danzuka notes, "where you're digging roots is really rocky. So that's why you have to have a really sharp tool so you can dig in." There are also hand-woven baskets of different sizes and shapes for gathering different roots and huckleberries. Families pass down both kupns and baskets to subsequent generations, though these tools can wear out or become damaged, so there is always a need for new ones. Being a food gatherer takes commitment; it's an honor but also a responsibility that everyone recognizes. "When we go to actual feasts, that's when we actually go out, and we dress up in our nice, nicer regalia. We put on what's called the patl’aapa. So it's a basket that you wear on your head," Danzuka explains. These special hats, which only food gatherers wear, honor their role for their Tribe. A special rite of passage recognizes a girl’s readiness to assume this role, though the process becoming a food gatherer involves years of learning and practice. The ritual involves a give-away, which honors teachers and family members. Danzuka held such a ceremony for her niece, which occurs "the first time they go out and dig, the first time they go out and pick . . . Everything she gathers, she has to give away to an elder in our family. She doesn't get to keep any of it. . . . [For] her giveaway she made all the necklaces that she gave away, and bracelets. . . . So it was that, at that time, I told her she was going to take my place in the line, and . . . at some point when I'm unable, then it'll fall on her and her sister to do that." Besides her role as a food gatherer, Laurie Danzuka works at the Warm Springs Economic Development Corporation and is also on the School Board of Directors.
