The Ghosts of Celilo, a production named for Celilo Falls, the place where Pacific Northwest tribes fished for centuries, returns to the stage tonight.

The musical theater debuted to sold-out crowds and favorable reviews in September 2007. It's back for a second run at the Newmark Theatre in Portland, Oregon, where patrons will hear about boarding schools, fishing rights and cultural conflict.

"When you spend time around the elders and many other Native people, you find there's still such a well of strong emotions about this issue," Marv Ross, who developed the production, told The Oregonian. "There's a weight to it that I think for non-Natives it's impossible to feel in the same way. For them, this isn't just something that happened 50 years ago, this is something that's still an open wound."

Celilo Falls was inundated by the opening of The Dalles Dam on March 20, 1957.

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Native American musical 'The Ghosts of Celilo' returns to Portland's Newmark Theater (The Oregonian 3/4)