Oregon Humanities Fall/Winter 2008

Cover of Oregon Humanities Fall/Winter 2008
Kathleen Holt
EDITOR
Jennifer Viviano
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Leigh van der Werff
PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANT
Allison Dubinsky
COPY EDITOR
Editorial Advisory Board
Tom Booth
Brian Doyle
Debra Gwartney
Julia Heydon
Marianne Keddington-Lang
Guy Maynard
Win McCormack
Camela Raymond
Kate Sage
Rich Wandschneider
Dave Weich
Curt Yehnert

Oregon Humanities, a journal of ideas and perspectives about the humanities, is published triannually by the Oregon Council for the Humanities, 813 SW Alder Street, Suite 702, Portland, Oregon 97205.

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Field Work: Using the Past to Shape the Future

Historian Bill Lang hopes a state encyclopedia will help Oregonians better understand each other.

Finding his calling in life came easily--and unexpectedly--to Bill Lang. Interviewing his great-great-grandmother when he was a teenager, Lang noticed that she wanted to talk about her grandfather and his era, and not her own. "What struck me was that the past was still absolutely alive in this person," Lang says. "I was fascinated by how it could reach out and still have all of this vitality."

"I recognized even as a teenager," he says, "that anything with that kind of power had to be important to our lives. That got me hooked on the idea that studying the past was interesting. I just threw myself into it and never looked back."

A professor of environmental history at Portland State University, Lang grew up listening to stories about his great-great-great-grandfather, Joel Palmer, who, from 1853 to 1857, was the superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory and negotiated nine treaties between the federal government and Northwest Native American tribes. Through those treaties, Palmer terminated Indian land title in Oregon, forcing tribes off their land and onto reservations. In 1862, Palmer served as Speaker of the House in the Oregon Legislature and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1870. Founding the towns of Lafayette and Dayton, Palmer also wrote a guide of the Oregon Trail in 1847. "He's a big-time guy in our family," Lang says. "I learned about him before I learned about Oregon."

Lang's interest in history is as much scholarly as it is personal, and for the last twenty years he's studied how nature and place affect human events and relationships, with a particular focus on the Columbia River Basin. A native Portlander and avid outdoorsman, Lang says that he was "prepared to be interested" in the discipline. "I began asking historical questions about these places I was engaged with."

Lang's passion for history is guided by his conviction that studying the past gives people a better understanding of the present. "The notion that [the past is] gone is not so much ignorant; it's unwise," he says. Additionally, he says, because we are so invested in the present, it is difficult to objectively analyze the present, and, ultimately, ourselves. Lang says that the past affords us the ability to ask "really hard questions" and get answers that inform our decisions and perceptions about our present time. "The study of history is the study of ourselves," Lang says. "It's an extremely introspective process, while being quite remote."

Lang is working to make the past interesting and vibrant to Oregonians as one of the three editors-in-chief of the Oregon Encyclopedia, an online project (www.oregonencyclopedia.org/) that came about through a series of meetings between the Oregon Council for the Humanities, the Oregon Historical Society, and PSU. The project has received support from OCH, the Oregon Cultural Trust, the Oregon Heritage Commission, and the Oregon Council of Teachers of English. When completed in December 2009, it will be a fundamental reference work about Oregon's history, culture, events, people, and places.

Lang says that the encyclopedia is a classic way of bringing history and academia into people's lives, and he has high hopes that the project will help Oregonians understand the state's sometimes exclusionary and intolerant past. In particular, he cites the removal of Native Americans from their land; the time period when it was illegal for African Americans to live in the state; and the current attitude of some Oregonians toward migrant workers, southern Californians, and other groups. Through learning about Oregon's past, Lang hopes that the barriers of exclusionism will break down. "Without history ... community and the notion of community are extremely compromised."

Lang hopes that the encyclopedia will help to welcome new populations settling in Oregon. "One of our principle goals is to make sure we have as much material in the publication as possible to reveal the participation, contribution, and history of individuals and groups that are not part of the majority population," Lang says. "I really hope the Oregon Encyclopedia is going to make it possible for Oregonians to understand each other."

--Amanda Waldroupe

Published in the Fall/Winter 2008 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2008 Oregon Council for the Humanities