The Life of Chief William Burke

wetyétmes tılaylá·kapıt (Chief William H. Burke)

David Quemps, Courtesy of Tamástslikt Cultural Institute

wetyétmes tılaylá·kapıt (Chief William H. Burke) 1930-2025

On June 17, 1999, Bill Burke was interviewed by Michael O’Rourke for the Hanford Health Information Archives. This article contains excerpts from that interview. Edited and compiled by Tamástslikt Institute, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

The story I like to tell is that, during the 1930s, the Great Depression times, there was no depression on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Because there were very few dollars. We didn’t understand the dollar and our economy at that time was that of gatherers. We had fish in the river, there was still salmon in the river. Then there were wild animals to hunt. There were roots and berries to dig and gather, and all kinds of other foods and medicines that were available in the mountains of Eastern Oregon. And so everything was okay.

…So our Tribe had people documenting our lands and our concerns about the effects that Hanford might have upon our homeland as we have it today, and our previous homeland which was ceded in the Treaty of 1855, which was a part of the nuclear reservation at Hanford and how it could affect our graves, and things like that. How it might affect the Columbia River and the fisheries.

-wetyétmes tılaylá·kapıt (William Burke), 1999

After growing up on the Umatilla Reservation, átway Chief Bill Burke went to college and later served in the US Army in Alaska. He became a teacher, with students from elementary through high school and across Oregon. After his career in education, he was elected to the Tribe’s governing body, the Board of Trustees, wherein he served as Vice-Chairman. He was recognized as Chief of the Walla Walla people, one of the four hereditary chiefs of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR).

His relationship with Hanford began in the years following the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, in which the CTUIR was identified as an “affected Indian tribe” requiring the federal government to consult with them. Over the years, he was an instrumental part of each of the multitudes of projects and committees dealing with interactions between Native people and Hanford— so many, in fact, that it is challenging, now, to recreate that history. As he himself noted, “I guess if I had a vita that I could reference, it would be better. I could remember those things that I have done and document that.”

He was a founding member of the Tribal Advisory Board of the Hanford Health Information Network (HHIN), serving as Chairman from 1994-1996, a period during which many of its most important projects were undertaken.

Even after leaving the HHIN, Burke continued working to bring awareness to health issues stemming from the radiation releases at Hanford. In 1999, he noted:

Today I am on the Tribal Health Commission on the Umatilla Reservation and the thing that we are really looking at is the cancer registry. And the high incidence of cancer on our reservation. A lot of people have died from cancer. The knowledge stemming from the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction project and the Thyroid Disease Study has brought a lot of this to the public eye on the reservation. The Indian people on the reservation are just certain that some of the kinds of things that are happening to the people on the reservation are probably caused by Hanford. And, you know, unless we continue to look, we’re not going to know.

Bibliography

William Burke, Oral History interview by Michael O’Rourke. June 17, 1999, Hanford Health Information Archives collection, AR69-2-0-21, Series 1: Donor Materials, Donor 634. Washington State Archives.