OCH News: October 2007

OCH lecture explores the challenges faced by urban Indians

Pulitzer-Prize finalist Mark Trahant will deliver the Fall 2007 Commonplace Lecture in Portland on October 26

Journalist Mark Trahant will deliver OCH Fall 2007 Commonplace Lecture, "Roads, Interstates, and the Oregon Trail: The Urban Indian Experience in the Rural West," Friday, October 26, at 7:00 p.m., at Portland State University's Native American Student and Community Center, 710 SW Jackson Street. The event and the reception that follows are free and open to the public.

According to Portland's Native American Youth and Family Center, 38,000 Native Americans who reside in the Portland area comprise the nation's ninth-largest urban Indian population. Trahant, the editorial page editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, explains that many of these urban Indians find themselves torn between the opportunities available in the cities and the history and culture of the reservations. He notes that this group is a significant--and perhaps unplanned for--population that faces specific challenges in the fields of education, employment, and health care.

As an example, Trahant, who is a member of the Shoshone Bannock tribe of Idaho, says, "In recent years the Bush Administration has been trying to zero out programs funding urban Indian health care programs. That means many Indians choose to return to the reservation for care, which adds to the financial pressure on the Indian Health Service."

Trahant was a finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting as co-author of a series on federal-Indian policy. In 1995, he was a visiting professional scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Pictures of Our Nobler Selves, a history of American Indian contributions to journalism published by The Freedom Forum, and The Whole Salmon, commissioned by Idaho's Sun Valley Center for the Arts. His most recent work is in the anthology Lewis & Clark Through Indian Eyes, edited by Alvin Josephy.

OCH's Commonplace Lectures are offered three times a year throughout the state and are also published as chapbooks. Past presenters include University of Oregon geographer Susan Hardwick, who spoke about Russian and Ukrainian refugees in the Willamette Valley; the Oregonian's architecture critic Randy Gragg, who discussed the past and future of planning and architecture in Oregon; Portland writer Matthew Stadler, who talked about rebuilding communities; Whitman College professor Don Snow, who spoke about "rurban" development; and University of Puget Sound professor Mott Greene, who discussed science and democracy.


The First Oregonians on sale now

OCH's partnership with Oregon's nine federally recognized tribes comes to fruition with the second edition of a beloved book.

After six years of planning, fundraising, writing, editing, and production, The First Oregonians: Second Edition is now available for purchase at the OCH online bookstore, as well as local bookstores throughout the state. OCH is pleased to republish this one-of-a-kind book in a newly revised and expanded format.

Originally published in 1991, this collection of essays written primarily by members of Oregon's nine federally recognized tribes was a crucial educational tool as well as valuable documentation of personal histories that was unavailable in traditional textbooks and scholarly journals. By 1996, after two reprintings, every copy of the book was sold.

In 2001 the Tribal Education Cluster of the Government-to-Government Task Force sent a resolution to Governor John Kitzhaber asking that First Oregonians be revised and used as a resource in Oregon schools. The governor signed the resolution and forwarded it to OCH. Thus, the council began the revision process, allowing for greater detail and artwork within the chapters and an added focus on the tribes' recent accomplishments and current life in Oregon.

With this revised edition, OCH seized an opportunity to reflect a shift among historians, anthropologists, and ethnographers to honor the inherent rights of native people to tell their own stories, rather than to be studied as passive objects. In addition to having the bulk of the book written by tribal members, OCH restructured the book so that those native-told histories and stories made up the heart of the book. Tonally, the book also focuses on continuity of Indian people rather than decline, which is, again, reflective of a shift in scholarship about native cultures.

The publication of this revised edition inspired OCH to embark upon the "Borders and Boundaries" theme that will guide much of the council's programming in the coming two years. As noted above, the Commonplace Lectures in 2007-08 will focus on issues important to native communities in the hopes of encouraging conversation and reflection around these issues.

For more information about the book or to purchase a copy, please visit our website or call us at (503) 241-0543 or (800) 735-0543.


Oregon Humanities Spring 2008 Call for Submissions: Strangers

The Fall 2007 issue of Oregon Humanities on the theme of "Domesticity" will be available by early November. We're now looking forward to the Spring 2008 issue, which will explore the theme of "Strangers," particularly the ways that people, experiences, and ideas may be perceived as foreign and strange, and how these perceptions limit and/or expand our sense of the world around us. We are interested in submissions that consider this theme through both the traditional disciplines of the humanities (e.g., history, literature, jurisprudence) and in contemporary culture. For example, how do the notions of stranger and other play out in recent public debates about marriage, immigration, land-use policies, and the urban/rural divide?

For this issue of the magazine, we are currently soliciting the following types of work:

Feature articles and essays: Please visit the Oregon Humanities page to read the writers' guidelines and download the call for proposals. Proposals of features and drafts of essays are due on November 13, 2007.

Posts: Reader submissions should be no longer than 500 words. Please send them by January 7, 2008, to Oregon Council for the Humanities, Attn: Posts, 812 SW Washington St., Suite 225, Portland, OR 97205, or posts@oregonhum.org. Submissions may be edited for space or clarity.

Photos and art: Please download the photo/artwork entry form and guidelines, and include it with your submission by January 7, 2008.


Message from the Executive Director

October is the first official month of OCH's "Borders and Boundaries" programming. This theme will help define our work for the coming year, and there are a number of opportunities for you to engage with the topic and participate in the humanities this month. Please consider joining OCH as we explore this compelling theme by attending Mark Trahant's lecture about the complex challenges faced by urban Indians in Oregon, by reading about the history and contemporary culture of Oregon's native people in The First Oregonians, or by submitting writing or artwork for the "Strangers" issue of Oregon Humanities.

I hope that you will also make a donation to OCH to support our many programs and publications--including Oregon Chautauqua, Teacher Institutes, and Humanity in Perspective. Your gift will help OCH provide Oregonians statewide with opportunities to engage in provocative public conversations where we question what we care about and why, engage with issues that confront us as human beings, and begin to develop understanding of and appreciation for the experience of others. Your gift can help OCH use the humanities to transform lives.

And by making your gift today online you'll help OCH save resources in printing, paper, and postage. You can also use your credit card to make a donation by calling the OCH office at (503) 241-0543 or (800) 735-0543. Gifts to OCH are tax-deductible, and if you also make a gift to the Oregon Cultural Trust, you can receive a tax credit. Please visit the Trust's website for more information and while you're there, you can download a copy of the Trust's annual report.

Sincerely,

Cara Ungar-Gutierrez

© 2007 Oregon Council for the Humanities