Umatilla Medicine Living Culture Society
FISCAL SPONSORSHIP
A cultural preservation initiative safeguarding traditional medicine knowledge, ceremonial practices, and language through land-based programming and community education. The project strengthens cultural continuity while supporting holistic health outcomes grounded in Indigenous lifeways.
What is Medicine Dance
Cultural Infrastructure?
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A Place for Living Tradition
The Medicine Dance is a tradition of the Columbia River Plateau peoples carried through language, prayer, first foods, and intergenerational responsibility. This project builds long-term cultural infrastructure in tiičám of Umatilla so our ancestral lifeways can continue with strength for generations to come.
What This Is
Humanities in Place
The medicine dance is a living humanities practice where knowledge is carried through ceremony, language in use, and responsibility to land—not preserved as artifact, but practiced as life.
Cultural Infrastructure
Land and built space are the conditions that make ceremony, teaching, and continuity possible. This project creates a stable home for practices that cannot survive in temporary or borrowed spaces.
Community-Led Continuity
The work is guided by ceremonial leadership and community stewardship, with care taken to share only what is appropriate for public audiences.
“Songs come from the Earth—from rivers, trees, animals, and air—and are carried upward as prayer."
Why the Medicine Dance Matters
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The Medicine Dance carries tradition grounded in relationship—between people, land, water, animals, and future generations. Prayer centers first foods such as salmon, roots, berries, and game, along with the ecological conditions that sustain them.
Language is spoken and sung in ceremony, allowing knowledge to be transmitted through living practice rather than abstraction.Our tradition emphasizes care for people—elders, children, those who are sick, unhoused, missing, incarcerated, or far from home.
These teachings form an ethical system rooted in responsibility, balance, and collective well-being.This is not a symbolic practice. It is a living framework for understanding how to care for land and community in a time of environmental change and cultural disruption.
Why a Permanent Place Is Needed
For decades, Medicine Dance gatherings have relied on borrowed churches or rented halls—spaces not designed for the cultural, logistical, or ceremonial needs of multi-day gatherings.
At the same time, elders who carry knowledge are aging, and younger generations need consistent opportunities to hear language and teachings in practice.
The Movement for tiičám restores continuity, dignity, and long-term stewardship.
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Temporary spaces limit continuity
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Rentals strain community resources
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Language transmission weakens without consistency
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Cultural care requires appropriate infrastructure
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The Place and the Project
1. Gathering / Dance Hall
Primary space for ceremony, teaching, and community gathering
2. Dining Hall
Shared meals, feasts, and community care
3. Commercial Kitchen
Large-volume food preparation for gatherings
4. Youth + Family Space
Support for children and families during events
5. Bathrooms + Showers
Facilities for multi-day gatherings
6. Elders / Quiet Room
Rest, care, and privacy
7. Exterior Cultural Areas
Fire-based food preparation and outdoor gathering
8. Stewardship Infrastructure
Storage, access paths, and site safety