I’m Agnes Baker-Pilgrim, a registered elder of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, and a granddaughter of Chief George Harney, the first elected chief of the Siletz Nation. I live in Grants Pass, Oregon. I came from a family of nine children. I was the third from the last child, born September 11, 1924, near headwaters of the Siletz River at Logsden, Oregon. All of my siblings and parents are all gone and it’s just left me now of my family.
I’m alumni of Southern Oregon University and a lifetime member of Amacron Delta Kappa. I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in Native American Studies, a culture instructor to my tribe, my other, Mother Earth, being a voice for the voices trying to prevent spiritual blindness.
On May 27, 2000, I was chosen by my tribe as a living legend and was honored along with other elders throughout the Northwest. I’m an elder mentor of Konaway Nika Tillicum at the Academy for Native American Youth, who live on campus at Southern Oregon University each year at the end of July.
October 19, 2002 I was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award of the years 2002-2003. Also was selected for an Imagine Award by Mediator Works, a Community Dispute Resolution Center of Medford, Oregon on March 9, 2003.
October 11, 2004, at Phoenicia, New York Thirteen International Indigenous Grandmothers formed an alliance, the first time in history. We gathered from the four directions in the land of the people of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Amazon Rain Forest, the Arctic Circle of North America, the Great Forest of the Amazon Northwest, the vast Plains of North America, the Highlands of Central America, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the mountains of Oaxaca, the desert of the American Southwest, and the mountains of Tibet and the Rain Forest of Central Africa. We joined with all those who honor the Creator and to all who work and pray for children, for world peace, and for the healing of our Mother Earth.
I’ve been traveling the world and I am very concerned about our water. Water is a very precious thing. It is as native people call it, our Mother Earth’s blood. Never in my life did I think I’d grow to this age and have to buy bottled water. To me it’s frightening. I always tell people, “If you would jump in the bathtub and let me throw garbage in with you, you wouldn’t like that.” So I pray that this message will go to all people, to be able to teach their children and their children’s children, not to make a garbage dump out of rivers and streams. We need to start cleaning it up. Those swimmers in the water, have the right to live just the same as anything else.
Without the animal kingdom we are gone so we need to be the caretakers of our Mother Earth and to try to preserve the beautiful path that the Creator gave us to walk upon her. She sustains your life and we need to reciprocate by doing a better thing and keeping the beauty that we have here today so that our seven generations ahead can be able to have what we have here now. We need to work diligently, as I say, I will continue to keep on keeping on until my heart is on the ground, to try to get people to hear, and to try to do a better thing with our Earth Mother, for she sustains our lives.
We need to be able to do all things. We need to be able to walk our path and be able to understand that this was a gift of our Creator to put us on this earth and to breathe into us, each breath, we need to give thanks for our lives. We need to watch out for our animal kingdom that was created before us two-leggeds, and we need to take care of them and be the voice for the voices, for they don’t have a voice, as well as the green upon our Mother Earth. We need to be that voice.
We need to stop spiritual blindness. Our sacred grounds are being destroyed all over the continent. Because we don’t have a steeple in a building called a church, they don’t think these are spiritual places. We need to stop the spiritual blindness and to stand up and be that voice and try to preserve the things that Mother Earth has left here for us, and walk a better path.
I pray that those people out there will hear this message, and be able to try to do a better way for our water, for our air, and try to bring back the cool burnings to our earth so that we won’t have such awful hot fires anymore to clean off on the ground floor, and to put people hands-on back doing this kind of things. It would be, a far better thing for us if we could band together and be able to preserve the beauty that we have here today.
Down here in southern Oregon we have some plant life that grows nowhere else in the world and it needs to be preserved. We’ve already lost so much plant life that it’s frightening. We need to try to preserve our seeds for the future generations ahead.
I want to thank all those that have these words to be able to understand we’re all caretakers. We all need to join together for peace and to support and encourage one another, if we want to be able to stop and think about our women, our grandmothers, they are the natural nurturers of this earth.
I’m very proud to be the chairman of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers as we journey the world trying to preserve what we have here today and being that voice. I feel very honored to be able to be with the Thirteen Grandmothers from around the world to be able to get our heads of this country, to be able to tell nations all over that we have a right to gather the sacred medicines and end the violence against women and children.
Agnes Baker-Pilgrim
Tribal elder Agnes Baker-Pilgrim is the oldest living female, that is known of, that is a direct descendant of the Takelma Indians that once lived in southern Oregon for twenty thousand years. She is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. Her grandfather, Chief George Harney, was the first elected chief of the Siletz Nation. Agnes came from a family of nine children. She was the third from the last child, born September 11, 1924, near headwaters of the Siletz River at Logsden, Oregon, and is the last surviving member of her family. She now resides in Grants Pass, Oregon.
Agnes is a historian, storyteller, and cultural instructor. She teaches how her people lived in southern Oregon. Agnes was instrumental in getting one of the first pit houses put in Kirby, Oregon. She shares the history of the tribe starting with the Trail of Tears of her people that begins down by the Table Rocks on the Rogue River. The people then go to what is called Agness, Oregon, and then to the stockade in Port Orford, Oregon where they were put on a ship. The people left behind at Agness walked north to Siletz and endured many hardships along the way.
Storytelling was always done in the wintertime and it was a time for the children to gather around and listen to the elders. Some of the animal stories tell of the dragonfly – dal dal. The dragonfly is a transformer of the people because they believed they went to the Star Nation and came back as dragonflies. Dragonflies were born in water like us and like us they when they are born and come out of the water they can’t go back to where we were all water babies. Water will always attract the two-legged people of this earth. Another story Agnes likes to share is ‘Blackbird’s Red Breast’. The blackbird wanted a red breast and he didn’t tell the truth to the Creator about keeping his eyes shut so he didn’t get his red breast and it’s black to this day. The story tells you to be honest. The Creator knows all things.
Agnes is alumni of Southern Oregon University and a lifetime member of Amacron Delta Kappa. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in Native American Studies. On May 27, 2000, she was chosen by the Siletz tribe as a living legend and was honored along with other elders throughout the Northwest. She’s an elder mentor of Konoway Nika Tillicum Academy for Native American Youth. October 19, 2002, I was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award for the years 2002-2003. She was selected for an Imagine Award, which is a Peace Makers Award by Mediator Works, a Community Dispute Resolution Center of Medford, Oregon on March 9, 2003. October 11, 2004, at Phoenicia, New York Thirteen International Indigenous Grandmothers formed an alliance, the first time in history. They gathered from the four directions in the land of the people of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Amazon Rain Forest, the Arctic Circle of North America, the Great Forest of the Amazon Northwest, the vast Plains of North America, the Highlands of Central America, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the mountains of Oaxaca, the desert of the American Southwest, the mountains of Tibet and the Rain Forest of Central Africa. They joined with all those who honor the Creator and to all who work and pray for children, for world peace, and for the healing of Mother Earth. Agnes is proud to be chairman of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. The journey to the world, trying to preserve what we have here today, and being a voice for the voiceless and to stop spiritual blindness. June 2005, Agnes and four other international grandmothers went to Mapia, South America to bless the people and their native grandmother of all the natives, Marina Rita. Agnes went into the government at Bricilia, Brazil, and joined them to pray for peace around the world. September 11, 2005, she went to Zaracdsa, Spain as a speaker about the thirteen grandmothers, where they are today and what they will be doing in the next couple of years. October 14, 2005, Agnes will be speaking at Portland State University Native American Center in Portland, Oregon about the reawakening of spiritual connections to Mother Earth; our duties, our prayers, and the International Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. The grandmothers speak for the next seven generations. This month, October 2005, Agnes will be going to New Zealand, where the movie “Whale Rider” was filmed, to speak to the Maori Nation and the government, meet their prime minister, and ask the government to pray for peace. She is also being carved in a huge tree in Ashland, Oregon. It will be in honor of the First Nations people of that land. Next, a mountain is going to be named after her with her native name, Tao-Why-Wee, which will probably be done in October 2005. She lobbied in Washington D.C. to save the Siskiyou Mountains as a sacred place because there are so many beautiful plants, wildlife, and things that don’t grow anywhere else.
Agnes talks about holistic healing. She talks that way to people that are sick. For the elders, one of the most precious things we have for our body is water, pure water, not fluoride and chloride in it. Pure water is what we need to oil our joints especially when we get older. We need to drink plenty of pure water. It’s lubricating and blessing all through our intestinal system.
Environmentally Agnes is very concerned for the waters of the world, the forests, and the animal kingdom.
Aggie Baker-Pilgrim
5229 Redwood Ave
Grants Pass, OR 97527
541-474-0334
Wisdom of the Elders 2026 Summer NewsletterA paid internship, now enrolling. Plus elders' voices, mapped to the land they came from.
The summer season has a way of moving fast, and this season has been no exception. Between fieldwork, new partnerships, and the everyday work of listening and preserving, our community showed up for each other and for the land we share.
We're grateful for every hand that helped make this season count, and we're glad to share a bit of it with you here.
Our Wisdom of the Elders archive continues to grow, with new conversations from our tape collection making their way online – elders speaking in their own words, no interruptions, no filters. There is something about hearing a story the way it was actually told, at the pace it was actually told, that no summary has ever managed to hold.
We've also been out in the field this summer with our Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) crew, capturing the land stewardship and ecological knowledge work that grounds so much of what we do.
We spent time with Stephanie Craig, a 7th-generation Kalapuya weaver and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, documenting her basket-weaving practice for an upcoming series, Seven Generations of Knowledge, carried in a pair of hands.
We're also proud to be part of the BRANCH Coalition, a group of organizations working together on invasive species removal, native plant restoration, watershed stewardship, and care of urban green spaces across the Portland area.
Our partners in this work include Portland Parks, Urban Forestry Project, Connecting Canopies, The Blueprint Foundation, Depave, Friends of Trees, Verde PDX,Columbia Slough, POIC, APANO, BPI PDX, and the City of Gresham. It takes many hands to care for this land well, and we're grateful to do so alongside organizations that share the same commitment.
Multimedia: Putting 30+ years of Archival footage on the Map
Behind the scenes, we're preparing our full video library for a larger public home so more people can access this work. Our web team is also building out a major piece of our Digital Archive Initiative: an interactive online story map that will let visitors explore our archive by place, connecting oral histories, video, photographs, and traditional ecological knowledge directly to the land they come from.
The stories will no longer live in a list. They will live where they happened so that someone can open the map, find a place they know, and hear an Elder speak about it. It's one of the more ambitious projects we've taken on, and we can't wait to bring it online.
Board of Directors and our Wisdom Radio Program
We're also working closely with our Board of Directors on a full relaunch of our Radio Program, with plans to bring it to every major platform, making it easier than ever to listen wherever you are. Stay tuned; this one's been a long time coming, and we're excited to share more soon.
Fall 2026 Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge Internship Enrollment is Now Open!
We're excited to announce that enrollment is officially open for our Fall 2026 ITEK Internship, and we can't wait to welcome our next cohort! We're accepting applications from anyone passionate about Environmental Conservation & Restoration and how Wisdom integrates Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) into our work.
This paid 12-week program combines hands-on fieldwork with partner organizations, along with in-person and online sessions covering ITEK, STEAM-related concepts, and Native American cultural arts and plant knowledge. Interns earn $19.00 an hour. It's a hands-on, heart-forward opportunity to build real skills while deepening your connection to land and community.
There's one more thing we've been building toward, and we're glad to finally share it.
Later this year, we'll gather in person for Seeds of Wisdom, our end-of-year fundraiser, hosted at Wieden+Kennedy here in Portland. Wisdom of the Elders is creating an event centered on Indigenous storytelling, environmental stewardship, and workforce development the same three threads that run through everything you've just read. It felt right to bring them into one room.
We're looking for partners who want to support meaningful community impact while helping amplify Native voices and leadership in Portland and beyond. If that sounds like you, or like an organization you're part of, we would love to hear from you. We're building our partner roster now, which means there's still real room to help shape what this evening becomes.
***As a note for those who have supported us through Willamette Week's Give!Guide in past years, we're not part of Give!Guide this season.
We've Joined Earth Gives
Earth Gives is a nationwide platform connecting donors with organizations advancing solutions for people and the planet.
It is a natural fit for us: our work has always lived where cultural preservation and ecological stewardship meet the archive and the watershed, the storyteller and the seed, and Earth Gives puts that work in front of people across the country who care about both.
Our end-of-year giving runs through Seeds of Wisdom and Earth Gives and we hope you'll join us there instead.
If you've been looking for a simple way to support what you've read about here, this is it.
Want to stay closer to what we're up to day-to-day? Find us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube; more is coming there soon, including TikTok and Threads.
There's more coming this fall. Thank you for being part of it.
We are growing our digital community and want to stay connected with you! Follow us for updates on our latest films, internship applications, and environmental restoration projects across the Portland Metro area.
Copyright @ 2026 Wisdom of the Elders, Inc, All rights reserved.
I’m Agnes Baker-Pilgrim, a registered elder of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, and a granddaughter of Chief George Harney, the first elected chief of the Siletz Nation. I live in Grants Pass, Oregon. I came from a family of nine children. I was the third from the last child, born September 11, 1924, near headwaters of the Siletz River at Logsden, Oregon. All of my siblings and parents are all gone and it’s just left me now of my family.
