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47106 Wildhorse Blvd., Pendleton, 541-429-7700, tamastslikt.org. 10 am–5 pm Tuesday–Saturday. $12, $5 students, children 5 and under free.
For a visitor raised on textbooks strewn with wagon trains and manifest destiny, a visit to this museum tucked behind the Wildhorse Casino on the Umatilla Indian Reservation could be a revolutionary couple of hours. Tamástslikt (pronounced “tah-MUST-slickt,” it means “interpret” in Walla Walla) is the most fully realized depiction I’ve experienced of what the American colonial campaign felt like to the people whose land and lives were invaded. If the past 200 years have felt like a bad dream to Oregon tribes, as one elder has said, the museum’s achievement is that it drops you into the nightmare. The exhibit winds through a re-creation of a prairie church—the killing of missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman makes a lot more sense seen from the viewpoint of people who were dying of a strange new illness after interlopers demanded they abandon their traditions—and a boarding school. But the unifying image of that of horses, which once provided the Cayuse people with autonomy before white settlers slaughtered them for canned dog food. It’s a devastating story, deftly told. This is the best museum most Oregonians don’t know about.
Don’t miss: The main exhibit is the draw here, but we won’t judge if you pair it with the huckleberry cinnamon roll in the cafe.
Will kids like it? The exhibit starts with a Coyote story presented in a theater in the round. It feels like a planetarium show, but with a crackling electric campfire in the center. Kids who are too young to understand that the folktale is a parable of outlasting a genocide will enjoy it, and teens who aren’t will think about it for a long time.