The People and the Public: 2024–25 Consider This Series
In 2024 and 2025, join us for a series of onstage conversations about all things public.
Conexión con Nuestro Territorio
A hike and conversation in Spanish, presented in partnership with Vámonos Outside and Bend Parks and Recreation District.
En este espacio haremos una actividad de senderismo mientras te invitamos a que converses con otros participantes sobre tu relación con el territorio, y descubras nuevas formas de explorarlo. Conectémonos a través de nuestra cultura y experiencias compartidas. Tendremos alimentación y transporte incluído para quienes lo soliciten. Vámonos Outside estará a cargo de actividades para niños.
Conversation Project: Does Nature Have a Purpose?
Oregonians have long struggled to balance cultural, political, and values-based differences tied to our use of land and resources. As we enter an age of accelerating environmental change and scarcity, it is important to understand what drives these differences. In this conversation we will explore our attitudes and assumptions about the purpose of the environment in our lives and how those attitudes and assumptions shape our perception of environmental issues and policies.
Conversation Project: Does Nature Have a Purpose?
Oregonians have long struggled to balance cultural, political, and values-based differences tied to our use of land and resources. As we enter an age of accelerating environmental change and scarcity, it is important to understand what drives these differences. In this conversation we will explore our attitudes and assumptions about the purpose of the environment in our lives and how those attitudes and assumptions shape our perception of environmental issues and policies.
Finding Common Ground Speaker Series: High Desert Partnership
Learn about the many ways the High Desert Partnership in Harney County supports a community of diverse perspectives to collaboratively solve the complex challenges facing rural America. Speakers include Brenda Smith, executive director of HDP; Mara Polenz, communications director; Josh Hanson, forest and range ecological coordinator; Kaylee Littlefield, community involvement and monitoring coordinator; Melissa Petschauer, Harney Basin ecological coordinator; Camille Torres, collaborative project coordinator; and Denise Rose, Harney internship coordinator.
This event is supported by a Minigrant for Rural Libraries from Oregon Humanities.
Tonalidades de la Vida / Shades of Life
Ana Maria Rodriguez on family, field work, and the many meanings of "green."
Losing the Forest for the Trees
Juliet Grable writes about how a massive die-off of white fir has unsettled the mountain community in Southern Oregon where she lives.
Trip to Richland
Laura Feldman writes about trying to make sense of a secret history.
The Toxins Beneath Us
Ruby McConnell on the long legacy of groundwater contamination in Oregon
Adventures on the Turtle's Back
Joe Whittle writes about hiking canyons in the Wallowa Mountains with people whose ancestors traveled those lands since time immemorial.
Mëshatàm Lënapehòkink: I remember the land of the Lenape
A photoessay by Joe Whittle about finding joy and mourning on four journeys home.
Re-Beavering a Monument
Scientists, activists, and government officials are working to bring beavers back to the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
Not a Circle, Not a Line
Susan DeFreitas writes about Ursula K. Le Guin's long view of the American West
Burn Down Valley
Theo Whitcomb writes about the 2020 fires in Southern Oregon, cooperative land management efforts, and finding hope for the future.
Bringing Otters Back to Otter Rock
Heather Wiedenhoft talks with Robert Kentta about how the Elakha Alliance and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians are working to return a lost population of sea otters to the Oregon coast.
Art and Activism in Modoc Point
Contemporary Klamath Modoc artist Ka'ila Farrell Smith on receiving a 2019–21 Fields Artist Fellowship
Consider This with David Treuer
On July 15, David Treuer (Ojibwe), author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, will join Oregon Humanities for a conversation on land, possession, and justice. The history of the Americas is inextricable from the theft of land from Native people. How should we, in the present, deal with this fact?
So Much Together - The People’s Park: Reclaiming Spaces for Our Communities
Lauren Everett is a Portland-based artist, community activist, and researcher. In 2020, Lauren led the creation of the People’s Park, a temporary community space created on a vacant lot in the St. Johns neighborhood. In this two-part workshop, she will share the story of how the park came about, framed by a discussion about the ideology of property in the United States. Participants will collaborate to design their own community spaces and learn some of the basic practical aspects of doing this kind of project.
So Much Together - The People’s Park: Reclaiming Spaces for Our Communities
Lauren Everett is a Portland-based artist, community activist, and researcher. In 2020, Lauren led the creation of the People’s Park, a temporary community space created on a vacant lot in the St. Johns neighborhood. In this two-part workshop, she will share the story of how the park came about, framed by a discussion about the ideology of property in the United States. Participants will collaborate to design their own community spaces and learn some of the basic practical aspects of doing this kind of project.
Land Conservation: Roots, Realities, and Reimaginings
Join Katie Voelke, executive director of North Coast Land Conservancy, as she discusses NCLC’s work to protect Oregon's coastal lands. In this two-part workshop, Katie will walk participants through the organization’s own path of relearning the racist history of land conservation in the US and the ways that conservation, through the land trust’s tools of ownership, has perpetuated Indigenous land loss.
Land Conservation: Roots, Realities, and Reimaginings
Join Katie Voelke, executive director of North Coast Land Conservancy, as she discusses NCLC’s work to protect Oregon's coastal lands. In this two-part workshop, Katie will walk participants through the organization’s own path of relearning the racist history of land conservation in the US and the ways that conservation, through the land trust’s tools of ownership, has perpetuated Indigenous land loss.
Lies of Discovery
Sal Sahme explores the doctrine that enabled European colonization and argues for it to be revoked.
Can the Land Make Us One People?
An excerpt from Jacqueline Keeler's book Standoff contrasts the standoffs at Malheur and Standing Rock.
Cekpa
Leah Altman reflects on revolutionary decolonization, ownership, and power.
Rekindling Our Ancestral Relations through Food with Michelle Week
In this So Much Together workshop, Farmer Michelle Week will talk about what inspires her and what fuels her hope as she builds food sovereignty and connection through Good Rain Farm. Throughout the event, participants will have the opportunity to explore their unique heritages through activities, dialogue, and reflection, reconnecting to practices of reverence for place and for all those we share our homes with.
Consider This on the Klamath Basin
A discussion on the history and future of settlement and water use in the Klamath Basin with panelists Russell Attebery (Chairman, Karuk Tribe), Mark Bransom (CEO, Klamath River Renewal Corporation), Don Gentry (Chairman, Klamath Tribes), Becky Hyde (Klamath Basin rancher), and Joe James (Chairman, Yurok Tribe).
Steelhead
An excerpt from Tina Ontiveros's memoir, rough house.
People, Places, Things
Gwen Trice in Maxville, Oregon
Connect in Place: Are You Safer Outside?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, outdoor spaces have taken on new significance as we struggle to address the need for connection without the health risk that now comes with enclosed places. While some of us may be rediscovering parks and trails that we took for granted before, others may be feeling the stressors of unwelcoming or inaccessible outdoor areas more than ever before. Join facilitator Mareshah “MJ” Jackson to discuss what makes an outdoor space a “safe” space.
Connect in Place: This Place Now
Each Tuesday evening, we’re hosting virtual conversations with communities around the state. Our aim is to create spaces, in this physically separated moment, for Oregonians to gather, connect, reflect, and talk with one another. This conversation will explore what COVID-19 means for us and our local communities with people living on the Oregon Coast, in Eastern Oregon, and around the Columbia River Gorge.
CANCELED - Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest and the Trees
We live in a state with abundant forests, and yet we don’t all see the same thing when we look into the woods. Oregon is known for both its timber industry and its deep environmental values. For many decades now management of our public forests has made headlines and driven apart neighbors. Facilitator Mariah Acton will lead this conversation to explore the values, identities, and beliefs we each have about our forests and what we, as a state, do to steward, manage, and protect this special resource. This event will take place in the large meeting room.
This event has been postponed and will be rescheduled.CANCELED - Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Stewarding Our Public Forests
We live in a state with abundant forests, and yet we don’t all see the same thing when we look into the woods. Oregon is known for both its timber industry and its deep environmental values. For many decades now management of our public forests has made headlines and driven apart neighbors. Facilitator Mariah Acton will lead this conversation to explore the values, identities, and beliefs we each have about our forests and what we, as a state, do to steward, manage, and protect this special resource.
This event has been postponed and will be rescheduled.Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest and the Trees
We live in a state with abundant forests, and yet we don’t all see the same thing when we look into the woods. Oregon is known for both its timber industry and its deep environmental values. For many decades now management of our public forests has made headlines and driven apart neighbors. Facilitator Mariah Acton will lead this conversation to explore the values, identities, and beliefs we each have about our forests and what we, as a state, do to steward, manage, and protect this special resource.
This Place Is Beautiful, This Place Is Gross
Sarah Cook writes about learning to see beauty and perseverance while living in The Dalles.
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest and the Trees
We live in a state with abundant forests, and yet we don’t all see the same thing when we look into the woods. Oregon is known for both its timber industry and its deep environmental values. For many decades now management of our public forests has made headlines and driven apart neighbors. Facilitator Mariah Acton will lead this conversation to explore the values, identities, and beliefs we each have about our forests and what we, as a state, do to steward, manage, and protect this special resource.
Oregon Shorts
The Northwest Film Festival's program of Oregon short films includes Sika Stanton and Donnell Alexander's "An Oregon Canyon," produced as part of Oregon Humanities' This Land project.
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest and the Trees
We live in a state with abundant forests, and yet we don’t all see the same thing when we look into the woods. Oregon is known for both its timber industry and its deep environmental values. For many decades now management of our public forests has made headlines and driven apart neighbors. Facilitator Mariah Acton will lead this conversation to explore the values, identities, and beliefs we each have about our forests and what we, as a state, do to steward, manage, and protect this special resource.
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest and the Trees
Stewarding Our Public Forests
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Oregon boasts a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy that includes both industrial agriculture and small-scale efforts such as community supported agriculture memberships, farmers markets, and community gardens. These smaller, community-based efforts are on the rise as means to nurture community and create local and autonomous food systems. In this conversation, author Kristy Athens will ask participants to think about the impact of their food choices. Are these choices as consequential as consumers would like them to be? Does “voting with your dollars” significantly shape our agricultural systems?
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Oregon boasts a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy that includes both industrial agriculture and small-scale efforts such as community supported agriculture memberships, farmers markets, and community gardens. These smaller, community-based efforts are on the rise as means to nurture community and create local and autonomous food systems. In this conversation, author Kristy Athens will ask participants to think about the impact of their food choices. Are these choices as consequential as consumers would like them to be? Does “voting with your dollars” significantly shape our agricultural systems?
Relearning Home
Mark Putney writes about finding belonging in a Willamette Valley hazelnut orchard after leaving the wilds of Kodiak, Alaska.
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Oregon boasts a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy that includes both industrial agriculture and small-scale efforts such as community supported agriculture memberships, farmers markets, and community gardens. These smaller, community-based efforts are on the rise as means to nurture community and create local and autonomous food systems. In this conversation, author Kristy Athens will ask participants to think about the impact of their food choices. Are these choices as consequential as consumers would like them to be? Does “voting with your dollars” significantly shape our agricultural systems?
Conversation Project: Race and Place
Racism and Resilience in Oregon's Past and Future
Exploring Sovereignty
The treaty that established the Warm Springs Indian Reservation returns to Oregon in a new exhibit.
Deep Roots
Samantha Bakall writes about how Mudbone Grown, an urban farm in North Portland, offers celebration and community in the face of Oregon's white-dominated agriculture industry.
A Lot to Ask of a Name
Natchee Blu Barnd on how Native American names are used as symbols in white spaces
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
White Man's Territory
Kenneth R. Coleman writes about the exclusionary intent behind the 1850 Donation Land Act in this excerpt from his book, Dangerous Subjects: James D. Saules and the Rise of Black Exclusion in Oregon.
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Stewarding Our Public Forests
Unclaiming the Land
Melissa Madenski writes about leaving her home of forty years and what binds us to the places in our lives.
Film screening: No Man's Land
The High Desert Museum presents a screening of David Byars' documentary about the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, followed by a facilitated discussion. This program is made possible in part by a Responsive Program Grant from Oregon Humanities.
Astoria Call to Life: An Earth Day Ingathering
Clatsop Community College Foundation presents a collaborative performance and discussion by philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore and pianist Rachelle McCabe. This program is made possible in part by a Responsive Program Grant from Oregon Humanities.
Whose Land?
The High Desert Museum presents a community conversation about public lands. This program is made possible in part by a Responsive Program Grant from Oregon Humanities.
Malheur Reflections, Two Years Later
A discussion of the Malheur occupuation, restoration, and public lands in Oregon. This program is made possible in part by a Responsive Program Grant from Oregon Humanities.
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Stewarding Our Public Forests
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Stewarding Our Public Forests
PLAYA Presents: Calligraphy of the Wind
A discussion with PLAYA resident and novelist Leslie Schwartz about the ways that specific places and communities shape the creative process.
PLAYA Presents: Earth Shaking News
A discussion with noted vulcanologist Katharine Cashman about how our landscape got here and how we live on it now. This program is made possible in part by a Public Program Grant from Oregon Humanities.
What's Brewing?
The Crook County Foundation hosts this public forum on current events and issues happening locally, regionally, and at the state level. This is an Oregon Humanities grant-funded event.
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Stewarding Our Public Forests
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Stewarding Our Public Forests
Conversation Project: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Stewarding Our Public Forests
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
The Orphan and the Oxbow
Matthew Minicucci writes about searching for the origin of a tiny sliver of public land in Marion County.
Posts
Readers write about Claim
History in the News
A panel discussion putting the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse in social and historical perspective with other monumental natural phenomena. This event is funded in part by a grant from Oregon Humanities.
Stake Your Place
The Cully neighborhood of Portland offers a glimpse at the complex racial, ethnic, and economic factors at play in a community trying to resist the forces of gentrification, displacement, and change.
Pollination Power
Join Jenifer Ferriel, Forest Botanist with the US Forest Service, to learn more about pollinators and their host plants. This program is funded by a Responsive Program Grant from Oregon Humanities.
Who is Not at the Table?
Filmmaker Ifanyi Bell reflects on the making of “Future: Portland 2”
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
The Numbers
As Portland's urban core has gentrified, thousands of residents have been displaced to neighborhoods east of 82nd Avenue, an area that locals call "The Numbers." In this video, young people living in The Numbers talk about their hopes for their community.
Vanport Mosaic Festival
Theater, documentaries, historic exhibits, lectures, and tours will explore will explore the history and legacy of Vanport. Oregon Humanities is a cosponsor of this event.
The Opposite of What We Know
Writer Putsata Reang reflects on the project "Bitter Harvest"
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
Bitter Harvest
Writer Putsata Reang and filmmaker Ivy Lin explore the stories of Chinese laborers in the 1900s who helped establish the state's reputation as an international beer capital, despite exclusion laws that kept them from owning the hop farms where they worked.
Bitter Harvest Screening and Discussion
Video screening and panel discussion about This Land's Bitter Harvest project
Sanctuary in Name Only
Undocumented Oregonians are only as safe as the policies that protect them. An essay by Elliott Young
Conversation Project: What We Want from the Wild
In this conversation, Oregon Humanities Executive Director Adam Davis will help participants step back from policy decisions and consider more basic questions about our relationship to the mountains, air, trees, animals, and streams around us. What do we want from nature? What do we understand nature to be, and how do we see ourselves fitting in?
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
Conversation Project: What We Want from the Wild
Oregonians across the political spectrum place a high value on the diverse natural resources of our state, but we are divided about how these resources should be used and talked about. In this conversation, Oregon Humanities Executive Director Adam Davis will help participants step back from policy decisions and consider more basic questions about our relationship to the mountains, air, trees, animals, and streams around us.
Gaining Ground Film Screening and Discussion
This is an Oregon Humanities grant-funded event.
Race & Place: Old Town's Chinatown and Japantown through Chinese American and Nikkei Eyes
Chinese and Japanese American elders explore Old Town's multiethnic and multiracial past. This is an Oregon Humanities grant-funded event.
Think & Drink on the Future of Urban Development in Portland
A conversation about the future of housing and urban development in Portland with civic leaders and developers poised to make it happen.
Conversation Project: What We Want from the Wild
Oregonians across the political spectrum place a high value on the diverse natural resources of our state, but we are divided about how these resources should be used and talked about. In this conversation, Oregon Humanities Executive Director Adam Davis will help participants step back from policy decisions and consider more basic questions about our relationship to the mountains, air, trees, animals, and streams around us.
Conversation Project: Good Food, Bad Food
Agriculture, Ethics, and Personal Choice
Dry Years, Wet Years, Tradition and Change: An Evening with Patricia Nelson Limerick
This is an Oregon Humanities grant-funded event.
Future: Portland 2
Grappling with values, change, and nostalgia has shaped—and continues to shape—the largest city in Oregon. A film by Ifanyi Bell
A Pollinator's Plight
A discussion and screening on the importance of native bees. This is an Oregon Humanities grant-funded event.
Supporting Pollinators
A panel discussion on ways to support native pollinators in our communities. This is an Oregon Humanities grant-funded event.
Facing the N-Word
Writer Donnell Alexander reflects on the making of “An Oregon Canyon”
Words Have Life
Filmmaker Sika Stanton reflects on the making of “An Oregon Canyon”
Within Makeshift Walls
Author Eric Gold on the Portland Expo Center’s era as a prison for Japanese Americans during World War II.
Feeling It All
Oregon Humanities magazine editor Kathleen Holt on the complicated and blurry lines between private rights and public good
The Farmers of Tanner Creek
Writer Putsata Reang on the little-known history of Chinese farmers and vegetable peddlers in Portland
Wonder, Bread
Seeking the sacred in the mundane world. An excerpt from Great Tide Rising: Toward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change by Kathleen Dean Moore
Bum Count
An excerpt about searching for lost sheep in the wilderness of Hells Canyon from Joseph author Pamela Royes’ book, Temperance Creek
"I'm Not Staying Here Another Day"
A conversation about the Great Migration with Isabel Wilkerson and Rukaiyah Adams
A Tremendous Force of Will
A conversation about the Great Migration's and the civil right movement with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson
Not Built for Ghosts
Writer Helen Hill on consequences she faced after leaving her beloved home in the hands of others
Stolen Land and Borrowed Dollars
Creative resistance bloomed in the lead up to the Vancouver Olympics. An excerpt from Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics by Jules Boykoff
Between Ribbon and Root
Hope and a history of tragedy live together in a Cowlitz woman's son. An essay by Christine Dupres
Posts
Readers write about Root
Whose State Is This?
Journalist Brent Walth on how legal measures targeting Latino Oregonians reflect fears of change.
A Return Passage
Reporter Putsata Reang and photographer Kim Nguyen share their stories of leaving their home countries as refugees, meeting as students at the University of Oregon, and returning to Southeast Asia as journalists. A film produced by Dawn Jones for Oregon Humanities.
Life's Winter
The opportunities seem endless, but the season is not. An excerpt from Building a Better Nest: Living Lightly at Home and in the World by Evelyn Searle Hess.
Future: Portland
Civic leaders describe the loss of Portland's strong black communities and the hope of restoring them in the future in a video by Ifanyi Bell.
Another Life
I think often of the taste of my grandfather's grapes and of the meat from my father's knife. An essay by Hanna Neuschwander
Into the Welter
Editor Kathleen Holt on cities as more than just places
This Land Planned for You and Me
J. David Santen Jr. on what Oregon's communities look like forty years after the passage of Senate Bill 100
Imaginary Metropolis
What do the cities of science fiction books and films say about the way we perceive the cities we live in? An essay by Dan DeWeese
Design for a Crowded Planet
Cynthia E. Smith, the curator of socially responsible design at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewett design museum, talks about innovative solutions by and for city dwellers.
In-Between Place
Brian Doyle argues that life in the suburbs is far from the bland prison it is made out to be.
Belonging and Connection
Bette Lynch Husted on imperfect small-town life in Pendleton.
Where We Live Now
Abandoning the tragedy of the city for a new way of thinking and talking about place. An essay by Matthew Stadler
Drown
Two rivers; two Western tales of hubris