Conversation Project: Preserving Our Culture and Traditions
This conversation explores the importance of cultural heritage and preserving the languages, customs, and traditions while living in places where they may not be present. This conversation is for people who have emigrated from another county or people who are descendants of immigrants (up to the third generation) and are interested in reconnecting with their culture. We'll share stories about our experiences and explore the connections participants have—or may not have—with their roots. And we will reflect on how we might reconnect with our heritage when we feel the desire to do so.
Borrowed Kitchens and Conference Rooms
Diana Marcela Cuartas writes about the challenges of finding cultural space in the Portland metro area's rapidly changing east side.
Conversation Project: Preservación de nuestra cultura y tradiciones
Reflexionemos sobre la Importancia de la identidad cultural latina, el uso de la lengua nativa y la preservación de las tradiciones y costumbres. Esta conversación es para personas que han emigrado de países hispanohablantes, o descendientes de inmigrantes (hasta la 3ra generación) que están interesados en reconectarse con su cultura. Aquí compartiremos historias y vivencias sobre el nivel de conexión que aún tenemos con nuestras raíces, y finalmente reflexionaremos sobre qué podemos hacer para reconectarnos en caso de que exista tal añoranza.
Hilda nació en Jalisco, México, y se mudó a Oregon en el año 2000. Desde entonces ha organizado eventos para la comunidad latina. Ha trabajado por más de siete años para asociaciones sin fines de lucro, en donde ha organizado clubs de lectura y grupos en español para adultos mayores lo cual le ha permitido estar cerca de su comunidad inmigrante. Así mismo ha estado a cargo de comunicación en plataformas sociales de diferentes organizaciones y es miembro de varios consejos que se enfocan en el enriquecimiento cultural. A lo largo de los años Hilda ha organizado talleres y seminarios para educar a la comunidad sobre diferentes temas que le apasionan como nuestra cultura Hispana , derechos civiles y justicia social. Su labor social la ha llevado a apoyar proyectos de ley que benefician a la comunidad hispana en el Capitolio de Salem. Hilda es una apasionada en promover la preservación de las tradiciones y cultura Hispana.
Every September in Pendleton
Olivia Wolf writes about people for whom the Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon show are about more than spectacle—they’re a family legacy.
Speaking in Tongues
Aleksandr Chernousov writes about the experience of hearing his first language turned to violent authoritarian ends and finding it anew in Oregon
Beyond Plunder
Minal Mistry on how plunder became the basis for our culture economy, and what might replace it.
Corazón de Fuego / Heart of Fire
La Comida de Nuestras Madres / The Foodways of our Mothers by Yanely Rivas
Consider This with Jelly Helm and Nataki Garrett
Join us on Wednesday, June 8, 2022, for a conversation about storytelling and yearning with Nataki Garrett, artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Jelly Helm, founder of the branding agency Studio Jelly. We’ll talk about how stories shape culture in advertising and theater alike. This program is part of our 2022 Consider This series, American Dreams, American Myths, American Hopes.
Doors will open at 6:00 p.m, and the event will begin at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $15. Click here to purchase a ticket.
No-cost tickets are also available for this event. Click here to register for a no-cost ticket.
Indigenous Culture Day
Culture Day is a celebration of the reclamation of traditional lands for Indigenous Peoples that provides an accurate cultural experience for the whole community. This free, all-ages event offers the chance to listen and learn from Indigenous educators in the culturally rich land now known as Tryon Creek State Natural Area.
From the Director: Old Jokes
Adam Davis on the personal and cultural legacy of cruel jokes
The Value of Your Story
Photographer Joe Whittle writes about his experience as a 2019–21 Fields Artist Fellow.
So Much Together: Shared Possessions
Patricia Vázquez Gómez is an artist whose practice investigates the social functions of art, the intersections between aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and the expansion of community-based art practices. She strongly believes that we all possess unique talents, knowledge, and perspectives that make us unique and unordinary, and that those special possessions are often obscured by the situations in which we find ourselves. In this workshop, Patricia will share some of her projects and guide conversations and quick activities to connect to the themes and methods of her artwork. We will learn about the unique cultural possessions that each participant brings in the form of sayings inherited from families and cultures and make a set of posters featuring those sayings.
So Much Together: Shared Possessions
Patricia Vázquez Gómez is an artist whose practice investigates the social functions of art, the intersections between aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and the expansion of community-based art practices. She strongly believes that we all possess unique talents, knowledge, and perspectives that make us unique and unordinary, and that those special possessions are often obscured by the situations in which we find ourselves. In this two-part workshop, Patricia will share some of her projects and guide conversations and quick activities to connect to the themes and methods of her artwork. We will learn about the unique cultural possessions that each participant brings in the form of sayings inherited from families and cultures and make a set of posters featuring those sayings.
Seeking Common Ground: Looking Past the Rural-Urban Divide
National political discourse has amplified a conflict between rural and urban interests, culture, and values that has resulted in a bifurcated reality: two “bubbles” of experience whose paths do not often cross in the media nor in our daily lives. This session will shed light on the potential common interests in these disparate experiences, toward consensus about what the future could be. This program is supported by a Public Program Grant from Oregon Humanities.
Cekpa
Leah Altman reflects on revolutionary decolonization, ownership, and power.
People, Places, Things
Chava Florendo's photo of her brother, Justice Florendo.
Clicking
After moving back to Portland, Marbla Reed looks for connection in online event organizing, but finds creating community without the context of preexisting relationships more challenging than anticipated.
Consider This with Jamelle Bouie
One week before Election Day, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie will talk with Oregon Humanities about democracy, moments of transition, and the significance of this particularly charged political moment. Bouie has been an observer of political culture and someone whose work has shaped culture—in print, on television, on twitter, and even through his photography—and as we talk about the political moment, we'll also explore the relationship between politics and culture.
Reciprocity of Tradition
Photographer Joe Whittle explores how traditional practices of Native Americans of the Columbia Plateau strengthen communities and preserve connections to the land.
Posts
Readers write about “Union.”
Black Mark, Black Legend
Intisar Abioto explores the legacy of Black artists in Portland and the meaning of that history for current creators in the community, as part of Oregon Humanities' Emerging Journalists, Community Stories fellowship program.
More than Words
Emilly Prado explores the stories of three families in the small rural border town of Nyssa, Oregon, and how immigration policy changes have affected their lives.
Conversation Project: Why DIY? Self-sufficiency and American Life
This conversation investigates why we strive to be makers and doers in a world that provides more conveniences than ever before. How might the “new industrial revolution” of tinkerers and crafters affect American schools and workplaces?
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: Ritual and Ceremony in Modern Life
Holly Pruett leads a conversation about the role of ritual and ceremony in participants’ family and cultural histories, the impact of life events that have passed unobserved, and the new ceremonies that people are creating to mark these milestones.
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Conversation Project: Does Higher Education Matter?
Join educator and activist Paul Susi in a discussion that will examine our assumptions and values around education and its impact on our lives.
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: What We Owe
Living With Debt
Conversation Project: Does Higher Education Matter?
Join educator and activist Paul Susi in a discussion that will examine our assumptions and values around education and its impact on our lives.
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: Ritual and Ceremony in Modern Life
Holly Pruett, a life-cycle celebrant who works with individuals, families, and communities to commemorate such occasions, leads a conversation about the role of ritual and ceremony in participants’ family and cultural histories and the new ceremonies that people are creating to mark these milestones.
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How do you know if a space is inclusive and accessible for all, and is such a goal even possible? What do you do about the tension between people who have different needs to feel included? Join Rachel Bernstein to explore what it takes to make the shift from invitation to inclusion.
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: The World to Come
How Our Fear about the Future Affects Our Actions
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: Ritual and Ceremony in Modern Life
Holly Pruett, a life-cycle celebrant who works with individuals, families, and communities to commemorate such occasions, leads a conversation about the role of ritual and ceremony in participants’ family and cultural histories.
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Facilitator Surabhi Mahajan will lead us in a conversation to explore cultural appropriation beyond who’s “allowed” to wear certain clothing or cook particular foods.
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Unresolved Issues of the Twentieth Century: The Quest For the Repatriation of Nazi Looted Art
Donald S. Burris, one of a small group of American lawyers who have dedicated their careers to assisting survivors and their heirs in regaining artworks stolen from them by the Nazis, will talk about his firm's successful retrieval of Gustav Klimt's "Woman in Gold."
SuperReal: Our Town, Onstage!
RiverStars Performing Arts presents a holiday comedy created by local youth through interviews with community members.
SuperReal: Our Town, Onstage!
RiverStars Performing Arts presents a holiday comedy created by local youth through interviews with community members.
Conversation Project: The World to Come
How Our Fear about the Future Affects Our Actions
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.
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
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: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: Does Higher Education Matter?
This conversation will examine our assumptions and values around education and its impact on our lives.
Conversation Project: What Does It Mean to Be American?
Given the differences of race, ethnicity, place, religion, wealth, language, education, and ideology that exist in the US, what are the things that unite us a nation?
Conversation Project: The World to Come
How Our Fear about the Future Affects Our Actions
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Conversation Project: What Does It Mean to Be American?
Given the differences of race, ethnicity, place, religion, wealth, language, education, and ideology that exist in the US, what are the things that unite us a nation?
Conversation Project: The World to Come
How Our Fear about the Future Affects Our Actions
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: What Are You?
Mixed-Race and Interracial Families in Oregon’s Past and Future
Conversation Project: Beyond Invitation
How Do We Create Inclusive Communities?
Conversation Project: What Is Cultural Appropriation?
Issues of cultural appropriation and identity are complicated. Power dynamics influence who benefits from certain cultural experience, and—given the global nature of our world—parts of our individual and cultural identities are shaped by cultures other than our own. How do we make sense of this and what effect does it have on us as individuals and as Oregonians?
Conversation Project: What Does It Mean to Be American?
Given the differences of race, ethnicity, place, religion, wealth, language, education, and ideology that exist in the US, what are the things that unite us a nation? How do we understand what it means to be American and what we hold valuable?
Conversation Project: Ritual and Ceremony in Modern Life
How do we make meaning out of the big milestones in our personal and community lives?
Making Woodburn History
Gustavo Gutierrez-Gomez makes it his mission to get people together.
What Is Mine
Editor Kathleen Holt on looking for identity in the post-colonial welter of midcentury Hawaii.
Your Cultural Attire
Conversations about appropriation sometimes miss the complexity of culture. An article by Zahir Janmohamed
Arts & Cultural Equity: Current Examples and Relevant Strategies
Arts and cultural workers, managers, educators, and students share current insights, experiences, and practices around equity and leadership within arts and culture organizations. Oregon Humanities is a cosponsor of this event.
Posts
Readers write about Carry
2017 Humanity in Perspective Commencement
A commencement ceremony to celebrate the graduating Humanity in Perspective class.
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Slow Ascent
A Chinese American woman searches for belonging in the country of her grandparents. An essay by Jessica Yen
Between Ribbon and Root
Hope and a history of tragedy live together in a Cowlitz woman's son. An essay by Christine Dupres
Conversation Project: Keeping Tabs on America
Surveillance and You
Mothers to Daughters
Mothers give advice to their daughters about living bravely in an unsafe world in this film produced by Sika Stanton for Oregon Humanities.
This Way through Oregon
Illustrating the systems that move salmon, waste, traffic, and legislation
So to Speak
Novelist Laila Lalami on moving between languages to find her voice
Group Therapy
Copping out at an uptown slumber party. An essay by Dionisia Morales
A Temporary Insanity
Torn between the pull of family and the pull of home. An essay by Gail Wells
Magazine Podcast: Quandary
Talking about Ferguson, feminism, and filling out forms with Oregon Humanities magazine contributors
Feel-Good Feminism
Bitch Media cofounder Andi Zeisler wonders if feminism's pop-culture cachet has doomed the movement.
One Giant Step
Coming of age during the hopeful days of American space exploration. An essay by Dmae Roberts
Burning Bushes
When it comes to attention-getting spectacles, God is no longer the only game in town. An essay by Dan DeWeese
An Anecdotal Glossary of Spectacle
M. Allen Cunningham sorts through our landscape of scandal, show, and distraction
Rodeo City
Pendleton has built its identity around a dogged loyalty to tradition. An essay by Sarah Mirk
Being More Human
Intel's resident futurist, Brian David Johnson, on how the steampunk culture offers clues to building a better tomorrow
Soldiers' Stories
Photographer Jim Lommasson collaborates with war veterans on a gallery exhibit and book project that look at life for soldiers after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Olde Towne Team
For sports fans, it's more than just a game. An essay by Guy Maynard
Uprockin' the Rose City
The community that hip hop built in Portland. An article by Walidah Imarisha
The Artist as Worker
Rilke would never have understood the current desire to merge commerce and creativity. An essay by M. Allen Cunningham
Abnormal Beauties
Portlanders don't fair well in a national magazine's beauty ratings. So what? An essay by Karen Karbo
Designing the Good Life
Beauty is a desirable bonus when design improves our lives. An essay by Lisa Radon
Seen Though Not Heard
In the designs on a Klikitat basket, a woman finds an unspoken link to her past. An essay by Christine Dupres