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Club Meeting: Grand Ronde: A Modern Day Tribe
Thursday, May 20, 2021 at 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Chris Mercier, vice chair of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, will give a presentation entitled, “Grande Ronde: A Modern Day Tribe.” He will give an overview of the tribe and its activities, taking questions at the end.
The Rotary Club of Wilsonville meets every Thursday at noon, living out the club’s main objectives of service and fellowship. Guests are always welcome. Meetings take place on Zoom. Contact President Joe Schwab at president@wilsonvillerotary.com, or any member of the club for details.
Chris Mercier was born in McMinnville and grew up in Salem, graduating from North Salem High School in 1993. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1998 with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism. During his undergraduate time, he took part in an overseas exchange program and attended Pontifica Universidad Catolica del Ecuador in Quito. After more than a decade off of school he attended one year at Michigan State University’s College of Law and is currently on leave from his studies there.
Chris has worked as a bartender, librarian, cage cashier, in Seattle coffee shops and even had a very short stint working for a fertilizer company. He also worked at Spirit Mountain Casino three different times over an eight-year span. He has been a contributing writer to the Tribal newsletter, Smoke Signals, and has also written for the Eugene Daily Emeraldand the McMinnville News-Register. In 2001, he won an award from the Native American Journalists Association and three more NAJA awards in 2002. He was elected to Tribal Council in September 2004 and re-elected in 2007, 2010 and 2014. He served as Tribal chairperson during the 2006-07 Tribal Council sessions.
Chris likes to travel in his spare time, having backpacked in Europe for six months and traveled Southeast Asia for eight months, visiting Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. He’s gone to South America as well. He enjoys reading, hiking, watching movies, kayaking, cooking and surfing the Internet.