April 24, 1997 Copy machines are running at top speed at the University of Oregon Knight Library this month reproducing 60,000 documents that make up the known written history of the Coquille Indian Tribe. Elders from the Coquille Tribe and four other West Coast tribal councils will receive the copied records at a historic potlatch, a Native American gift-giving ceremony, on the UO campus May 17. The potlatch is part of the May 15-18 UO Native American Literature Conference, itself a historic gathering of the world's top Native American scholars and writers. Coquille tribal members, two of them UO graduate students, uncovered the documents--written records of early contacts between South Coast Indians and early Oregon white settlers--in the Smithsonian Institution archives in Washington, D.C., during a 1995 research project. The Coquille Indian Tribe, the University of Oregon Graduate School and the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History American Indian Program, who funded the research project, and the Knight Library are presenting copies of the historical documents as gifts to the elders for their tribal archives. Jason Younker, UO graduate archaeology student, Coquille Indian and research team member, explains the cultural significance of the gifts. "You grow up wondering about who your ancestors are," he says. "The history books tell a different story than what is passed down from your elders. It makes you wonder. We went to D.C. to confirm what we knew in our hearts, that Oregon was once home to many Native peoples. The Coquille's and many other Indian tribes were rounded up and marched to the Coast Reservation, where they were basically eliminated from history. Our ancestors lived through Oregon's own Holocaust. We are remnants from that experience. Hopefully, through this gift, our Native youth will not have to grow up wondering about their ancestors' history. In honoring the memory of our ancestors with this gift, we can start the healing process on a 150-year-old wound." SOURCES: Jason Younker, doctoral student in the UO Department of Anthropology, (541) 747-8589; e-mail, miluk@darkwing.uoregon.edu; and Bernard McTigue, director, Division of Special Collections and University Archives, UO Knight Library, (541) 346-1904; e-mail, bmctigue@oregon.uoregon.edu NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE QUOTES UO EXPERT ON HOW TO SELL TO KIDS UO marketing professor Carla Meeske and her take on how to sell merchandise to kids is the focus of an article in a special edition of Newsweek magazine due out this week. The magazine focuses on the development of babies from birth to three and the article addresses the things television teaches children. "One thing TV teaches kids," Meeske says, "is loyalty to particular brands. The beauty of young children," she says, "is that they are more receptive than any other young audience to brand consciousness. They become brand-loyal immediately." Meeske contends television is one of the most powerful tools merchandisers have to sell products to children. "Johnny and Susie get what they want, from Sesame Street merchandise to Disney characters," she explains. Marketers use television to appeal to brand-loyalty so children ask for the toys and products marketers want to sell. SOURCE: Carla Meeske, instructor of marketing, UO Charles H. Lundquist College of Business, (541) 346-3310; e-mail, meeske@oregon.uoregon.edu -30- #T-1148/Day