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10/25/2008 5:54:00 AM

Discovery Channel comes to reservation
Film crew examines American Indian culture

By KATHY ANEY
The East Oregonian

Kara Cooney, a UCLA professor and Egyptologist, was out of her element.

She grimaced slightly as she struggled to heft a teepee pole into place.
The heavy pole refused to cooperate, bending at the top.

Two Discovery Channel cameras focused on Cooney as she wrestled with the
pole. A producer followed the action on handheld monitor, switching between
cameras and looking slightly amused.

A woman standing next to Cooney offered some advice.

"Grab it in the middle," said Marjorie Waheneka.

Cooney adjusted. Using leverage, she smoothly maneuvered the pole into
place.

Waheneka smiled her approval. Dressed in traditional Indian dress with a
battery pack and microphone tucked invisibly inside, the member of the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation instructed Cooney as
the pair affixed a canvas outer shell onto the pole frame.

Cooney is hosting a Discovery Channel television series called "Out of
Egypt." She and Waheneka stood on a piece of ground directly behind the
Tamastslikt Cultural Institute as they conversed.

Cooney spent Friday morning and afternoon interviewing Waheneka and other
local members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation. The footage will appear in an episode entitled "Sins of the
City."

The filming schedule includes trips to Turkey, Sri Lanka, Peru, Cambodia,
Mexico and other locations.

"Out of Egypt," is the brainchild of Cooney and her husband Neil Crawford.
This episode examines the reasons humans moved from the hunter-gatherer way
of life into farming in one spot and living in cities.

"It seems like a logical progression, but it isn't necessarily better,"
Crawford said, as one of the camera operators exchanged batteries.

Crowding together brought disease, lower life expectancy and a host of
other negative lifestyle changes. The tribal way of "following the food" is
a starting point for the episode.

Earlier in the morning, tribal member Bobbie Conner stood with Cooney in
the doorway of an igloo-shaped "pit house," shaped with red and silver
willow branches formed into ropes.

"Let's roll people and ... action," said Chaz Gray, one of the co-executive
producers.

Gray watched his monitor and brought filming to a halt when a car alarm
going off in the nearby Tamastslikt parking lot seeped into the scene.

Conner and Cooney chatted informally about the Indian lifestyle. It
involved traveling hundreds of miles on horseback, hunting deer and elk and
gathering roots and berries for survival.

"Our culture teaches us, never take more than you need," Conner told
Cooney.

Though Indians generally traveled in small groups, certain locations such
as Celilo Falls attracted hundreds at a time for trading and dip-net
fishing.

"It was the Wall Street of the West," Conner said.

During a break in filming, Gray described his crew's lifestyle during the
past two weeks. It started in Italy, where the crew filmed in front of the
Roman Coliseum.

"We went from there to Ephesus in Turkey," he said, "went back to L.A. for
a few days to do our laundry and came here."

His job, Gray said, means a constant flow of new experiences around the
globe. So far, his enthusiasm for travel hasn't ebbed.

"When I get jaded," he said, "It's time to hang up my cleats."

His crew's cameras focused on other tribe members as the day sped by. Linda
Jones explained the specifics of root gathering, with the help of her niece
Kathy Fegan and Fegan's three daughters. As a cameraman crouched low in the
fescue and filmed, Armand Minthorn and Cooney walked along a path and
talked about burial practices. Ken Hall and Brian Conner led the film crew
on a hunting expedition.

The documentary will likely air sometime this spring.