The Pendleton native is back after a three-year stint as National Park Service director

PENDLETON — Even when he didn’t know it, Charles “Chuck” Sams always was going to come home.

“Salmon do the same thing,” he said.

Salmon start their lives in small tributary streams until they mature, he said, at which point they venture out into the ocean before eventually returning to their place of origin. Like a salmon, Sams, whose Indian name is Mockingbird with Big Heart, went into the world as a young man, but has repeatedly returned home with new knowledge and insight to support the land of his ancestors.

Sams said his grandfather told him at 14 to “bring back the good” after he leaves.

His grandfather told him: “You’re going to have to have a big heart for that because you’re going to see things that are going to be very disturbing. But leave those where you found them and only bring us back the good things that can help us as a people.”

That idea stuck with him.

‘A covenant that never goes away’

Sams is Walla Walla and Cayuse and is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, where he grew up. He credited his family with ensuring he was knowledgeable in the local, traditional knowledge of the land, animals and plants.

The lessons he learned as a child in Pendleton have become a thread woven through the many roles he’s held since graduating high school.

After serving for about seven years in United States Navy intelligence, Sams went to school for a business leadership bachelor’s degree, which he wanted to use to find funding paths for conservation projects on his ancestral land. He also eventually earned a master of legal studies in Indigenous peoples law.

The creation story of his people, he said, explains that “we were made up of all the things that were on the lands before we showed up.” It includes the responsibility of humans to “protect, preserve and enhance” the natural world around us.

“It’s a covenant that never goes away,” he said. “I’m always drawn back to that ethic, that ethos, to be a good steward of the resources.”

Much of his career focused on watershed and salmon restoration around the Pacific Northwest, though he also helped reintroduce bald eagles to Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Throughout that time he returned periodically to Pendleton, working for the tribes as communications director, environmental health and safety officer, planner and special sciences analyst, and, eventually, as deputy and executive director of CTUIR.

Changing the culture

President Joe Biden in 2021 appointed Sams to serve as the 19th director of the National Park Service, and the Senate confirmed him. He is the first fully Native person to hold the position.

Sams said his work protecting land, flora and fauna with CTUIR prepared him for the role, but he still expected it to be challenging to make changes. Over the course of the three years he led the Park Service, Sams said he had a lot of freedom to make the choices he thought were best, as long as they aligned with the president’s goals.

Sams said the agency needed to undergo a bit of a cultural shift, putting emphasis on empowering people to figure out how to best implement policies at their individual parks.

“ It’s important to protect the parks. Absolutely,” he said. “But if you’re not taking care of your people, who’s going to take care of the parks?”

He said when he was growing up, elders would emphasize the interdependence of people on each other and the planet.

“ All of my training, both here at home and in the military, was if you take care of your people, they’ll take care of the mission,” Sams said. “ I’ve always learned that the people on the ground, they know what’s best.”

Part of taking care of the Park Service staff came from encouraging Indigenous employees to embrace their identities.

“ What I wanted to bring to the Native staff is that you don’t need to shy away from your identity of who you are as a person and as a political entity,” he said. “Native Americans are political entities. You bring your people with you wherever you go.”

Many parks overlap on the historic lands of various tribes, Sams said, and his work encouraged park staff to reach out to their Indigenous neighbors and partner with them. He said he noticed cultural shifts toward better relationships with tribal nations.

“ I’ve seen these changes happening in parks,” he said. “Will they continue? I don’t know. My hope is that they do.”

Leaving a legacy

Sams said it was “a huge honor” to be the first Native director of the National Park Service, but he hopes that he’s not the last.

He’s worried about the effects of federal employee reductions on the staff members who lost their jobs, he said, as well as the effect losing staff will have on the parks and visitors’ experiences.

Sams said he hopes employees remember “until they’re happy and healthy, the Park Service can’t be happy and healthy,” just like elders used to tell him of their people.

“It’s always going to come back to having a healthy and strong workforce,” he said.

But making that happen isn’t up to him anymore.

Many of the changes he made while director should endure. He said the regulations and policies he created reference federal laws as well as the court cases related to them, “so that the staff knew that they were (legally) empowered to work on these issues.”

The dream job

Now Sams is back in Pendleton with his wife and youngest child. In February, Oregon Gov. Tina Kote appointed Sams to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. The Oregon Senate approved the appointment.

The council works to develop long-term energy plans as well as to promote fish and wildlife in the Columbia River Basin with a generational perspective. It consists of eight members — two each from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

When he was young, Sams said, he met someone on the council and realized it was the kind of work he dreamed of doing. Decades later came his first chance to make it a reality.

Sams’ 2025 appointment marks his second time on the council; former Gov. Kate Brown appointed Sames in April 2021, about eight months before he took on the National Park Service director position. This time around, Sams started in his role March 3, alongside fellow new council member Margaret Hoffman. Their first meeting will be March 11-12 in Portland.

“ I still want to keep that covenant that I’ve had since I was born,” Sams said of his new position.

Balance is central to his role on the council, he said. It’s vital to ensure an “affordable abundance” of energy to meet domestic, industrial and business needs while also safeguarding habitat for wildlife, such as finding ways for salmon to safely return to the river.

Overall, Sams said, “It’s just been an honor to serve, but it’s always humbling to come home.”