Former National Park Service Director Chuck Sams to Address Whitman’s Class of 2025

Whitman College is pleased to announce that Charles (Chuck) F. Sams III will speak at the college’s 139th Commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 25. Sams, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), is a distinguished conservationist and public leader, who served as Director of the National Park Service (NPS) from December 2021 to January 2025. Sams was the first Native American appointed to this national leadership role.

“I am thrilled to be welcoming Mr. Sams to Whitman for commencement,” says President Sarah Bolton. “The expertise, passion and community-mindedness he has developed over many decades of service, which contributed to his important federal appointment to lead the national parks, will speak volumes to our graduates as they take the next step in pursuing lives of purpose.”

A commitment to seeking the common good for people and the Earth has motivated Sams throughout nearly four decades of executive leadership in conservation and tribal land management. He has had a variety of roles with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, including as Executive Director, and is widely recognized for building trust and collaboration between tribal nations and the federal government. During his tenure directing the NPS, the land units co-stewarded by tribal communities more than quadrupled, promoting the use of Indigenous knowledge to improve understanding of the natural world.

After leaving the NPS in January 2025, he became one of Oregon’s representatives to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, which seeks to ensure an affordable and reliable energy system while enhancing fish and wildlife in the Columbia River Basin.

Sharing the Past to Create a Better Future

The 2025 commencement ceremony will not be Sams’ first act of encouraging Whitman students to pursue lifelong learning and purpose. He has spoken several times at the Home in Pášx̣apa session during Whitman’s New Student Orientation, introducing first-year and transfer students to the history of regional tribes and the college. In Spring 2020, he co-taught an Indigenous Politics course that included students from both Whitman and the CTUIR, sharing wisdom gained from years of tribal leadership and management of national land programs.

“I am very honored to be speaking with the 2025 graduates of Whitman College,” Sams says. “Education, both formal and informal, is a lifelong pursuit to better oneself in order to be of service to each other and the world we steward.”

Sams was instrumental in building the relationships that eventually led to the development of the first Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the college and the CTUIR in 2017. The current MOA, signed in 2022, continues to guide the educational partnership between the two organizations.

Building a Life of Service

With Walla Walla and Cayuse ancestry, Sams grew up on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeast Oregon. He received his Master of Legal Studies in Indigenous Peoples Law (University of Oklahoma School of Law) and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Management, Communications and Leadership (Concordia University). He is also a graduate of the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center “A” School and served as an lntelligence Specialist with Attack Squadron 155 Silver Foxes, the Joint lntelligence Center Pacific Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters.

Sams has over 35 years of executive leadership experience with tribal and conservation organizations, including the CTUIR, the Community Action Program of East Central Oregon, the Earth Conservation Corps, Community Energy Project, the Columbia Slough Watershed Council, the Tribal and Native Lands Program of the Trust for Public Land, the Umatilla Tribal Community Foundation, and the Indian Country Conservancy.

He lives with his wife, Lori, and daughter, Ruby, in Pendleton, Oregon.