Author Archives: Emily West Hartlerode

Culture Keepers Roster updates requested

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by Emily Hartlerode

Each year we ask culture keepers to please review your personal artist page for accuracy. Here’s how:

  • Visit the Culture Keepers Roster
  • Type your name into the Name box and click Search. Your profile should come up.
  • Review your contact information, fees, and programming, then fill the roster survey to indicate your approval or request any updates or corrections.

Approving your profile keeps the Roster current and user-friendly, which helps all tradition keepers earn paid opportunities to support your collective work preserving Oregon’s rich cultural heritage.

I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve all accomplished. Thank you for participating in the Roster and giving us your feedback!

$700 for 2-hour presentations in Portland

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by Emily Hartlerode

OFN is helping Osher Lifelong Learning fill three dates with a few short programs (from 1-3pm) for retired professionals passionate about engaging with community and pursuing active learning. The program starts with a 30-minute introduction by OFN explaining our mission and how to use the Culture Keepers Roster. Your one-hour artist presentation or demonstration to follow can be informational, hands-on, or both. In the final 30-minutes I will facilitate an audience Q&A for the selected artist. $700 is all-inclusive of your artist fee, meal allowance, and transportation to their Portland (Tigard-area) facility.

Click this link to submit your brief proposal and indicate your availability. Please indicate every date you are available. Osher Lifelong Learning will review artist proposals for selection.

Funding for Native Artists: apply by Sept 30!

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In partnership with the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+), Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) is launching a dynamic six-month program that will empower, nurture, and celebrate 20 talented Native craft artists.For the purpose of this program, “craft artist” is defined as artists who create or reproduce handmade objects for sale and exhibition using a variety of techniques such as weaving, pottery, beadwork, needlework, jewelry making, and other forms.

Key Program Features:

  • Funding of $10,000 for each of the 20 chosen artists.
  • Tailored training sessions to enhance business practices, including the production of a business and marketing plan.
  • Access to a wealth of resources, including materials, workshops, and tools.
  • One-on-one coaching from artists with successful careers. Coaches will receive national recognition for their leadership and generosity.

Applications for Craft Artists and Coaches/Mentors are now open through September 30, 2023.  Accepted artists will be announced on October 26 at the ATALM conference. Questions may be directed to grants@atalm.org.

As always, we are grateful for our partners and funders who make these life-changing programs possible. Thank you, CERF+ and the Ford and Windgate Foundations, for believing in the power of Native artists to foster creativity, preserve and advance cultural traditions, and ensure the longevity of Native craftsmanship.

Apply by Oct 2, 2023 for Funds to Teach/Learn Traditional Arts

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by Emily Hartlerode

The University of Oregon’s Oregon Folklife Network is accepting applications until Monday, October 2, 2023 for the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP) for projects in 2024. The program offers traditional artists and culture keepers a $3,500 stipend to teach their cultural practices to apprentices from their same communities, Tribes, sacred or occupational groups. The stipend supports master artists to share their knowledge, skills and expertise with apprentices of great promise, empowering them to carry on and strengthen Oregon’s living cultural traditions. Apprenticeship teams agree to a video interview, and make a public presentation, which can be hosted at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at University of Oregon.

Oregon’s 2023 TAAP awards supported Kalapuya basketweaver, Stephanie Craig (Grand Ronde); South Indian vina and voice performer/teacher, Sreevidhya Chandramouli (Portland); Guinean master drummer/dancer, Alseny Yansane (Eugene), Mexican charro, Antonio Huerta (Springfield); and Hawaiian Hula dancer/teacher, Andrea Luchese (Ashland).

Oregon Folklife Network seeks a slate of artists in 2024 representing artists, demographics, and regions under-represented in the prior ten years of funding. All Oregonians practicing cultural traditions emerging from their heritage or Tribes are encouraged to apply. This program does not fund historic reenactments or cultural appropriation.

To learn more about application procedures and eligibility or to recommend a TAAP applicant, view our guidelines online, email ofn@uoregon.edu, or call 541-346-3820. Oregon Folklife Network staff members are available to provide application advice, and will provide feedback on draft applications up to one weeks prior to the deadline.

Completed applications are due no later than 5 pm on Monday, October 2 at the Oregon Folklife Network, 242 Knight Library, 6204 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-6204. NOTE: This is NOT a postmark deadline.  

Summer 2023 Letter from the Director

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by Emily Hartlerode

It feels like Summer has been in full swing since May, when the damp Spring typical of Oregon’s Willamette Valley was chased off early by unseasonably hot temperatures. Weather comes through so many human senses that tug at memory in mysterious ways. Born and raised in Nebraska, I still sense an internal “tornado warning” when humid wind suddenly grows still, and all at once I’m a little girl in a silent prairie field looking up at the sky listening for the town whistle calling us to our cellars.   

Like memory, traditional arts powerfully root us to meaningful parts of our lives, and also uproot us from the present moment, transporting us to another time and place. Practicing our culture overloads our senses with memory.  Every day, Oregonians quietly weave plants from a homeland beneath our feet, and boldly dance the swirling colors and sounds from a homeland far away. Earlier this year, OFN hosted a spotlight series for six Ukrainian Artists conveying the importance of supporting their culture today. Coming up in August, we invite you to Eugene for Oregon Culture Nights to enjoy demonstrations by our Traditional Arts Apprenticeship teams. Know someone who practices their cultural traditions? Send them our guidelines (also in Spanish), as they may be eligible for a funded apprenticeship!  

Woman with long red hair and white dress stands on stage before a projected image of herself painting.

Maryna Malyarenko presents the Ukrainian art of petrykivka. (Photo by Iryna Stavynska)

 

Our staff, largely students training to strengthen future culture work, steward these projects while I tend the future of our organization. Funding from donors like you, plus grants from state and federal agencies, make our work possible. With our limited capacity we developed a modest slate of programming to support cultural sustainability across all Oregon, but we can do better! When asked if they prefer OFN to remain small or reach more deeply across the state and grow robust access across more cultural communities, the reply from our partners at the Oregon Arts Commission was clear. Thank you to OAC staff and commissioners for your challenge grant to develop a long-range plan for a larger annual budget. Please donate now and meet their challenge so OFN can unlock our goals and better serve you! 

Join the American Folklore Society conference in Portland!

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The American Folklore Society invites you to submit a proposal for its 135th Annual Meeting to be held virtually October 11-12, 2023 and in Portland, Oregon, November 1-4. The theme of the conference is Roots, Rootlessness, and Uprooting. The proposal window is March 1-31.

The 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society will bring hundreds of US and international specialists in folklore and folklife, folk narrative, popular culture, music, material culture, and related fields, to exchange work and ideas and to create and strengthen relationships and networks. Community participants are encouraged and welcomed!

AFS encourages participants, including community activists, allied professionals, and culture workers of all types to explore the full dimensions of their work. Prospective participants may submit proposals for papers, panels, forums, films, and diamond presentations, or propose new presentation formats. It is rare for this gathering to happen in Oregon, so please — JOIN US!

In Memoriam: Pat Courtney Gold (1939-2022)

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by Emily West Hartlerode

Amid the busy year-end holidays, OFN received sad news that 2007 National Heritage Fellow, Pat Courtney Gold passed away on July 11, 2022. We delayed our announcement to give space from holiday distractions to let this news to have its own time.

Wasq’u basketmaker and citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Pat Courtney Gold, grew up on her nation’s reservation where the Columbia River basin and high desert region meet in central Oregon. In her youth, she was taken to a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, went on to earn a B.S. in mathematics and physics from Whitman College, and became a professional mathematician and computer specialist.

Pat wears a white linen shirt with pink ascot scarf. In the palm of her left hand, she holds a basket in progress. Her right hand gestures, palm up. Sunlight highlights her hat and shoulders on an outdoor stage.

Pat Courtney Gold presents at OFN’s 2013 Arts in Parks series. Photo, Riki Saltzman.

 

Childhood visits with her mother to museums displaying traditional Wasq’u artwork inspired Pat to study and help revive the full-turn twining technique, unique to her community. The result was a resurgence of Wasq’u “sally bags,” twined root-digging bags with a traditional function for harvesting and storing traditional food. “The baskets were important because those were our containers,” Pat said. “We would catch the salmon, filet them, dry them and sell them as filets or we would pound the filets into a powder salmon-like pemmican. That’s what we traded. So the baskets were constantly being made because when we would trade the salmon we would trade a container and all. I always thought that was an interesting way to keep the skill of making baskets going” (11/11/2021 interview by Wisdom Of the Elders). It’s impossible to overstate the significance of awakening this sleeping tradition, which restores Indigenous wisdom and knowledge, revitalizes cultural form and function, and embodies Indigenous values and pride in ways that have therapeutic impact on intergenerational trauma.

Indigenous woman's hands hold a small, cup-shaped basket of natural brown and black weave.

Pat Courtney Gold presents at OFN’s 2013 Arts in Parks series. Photo, Riki Saltzman

By 1991, Pat was following a new career path dedicated to the preservation of her cultural heritage. She became a participant in Oregon Folklife programming in 1995 during Oregon Historical Society administration by folklorists Carol Spellman and Nancy Nusz. Pat’s work was widely recognized for artistic excellence and merit. She was a 2001 recipient of the Oregon’s Governor’s Art Award; a 2003 honoree of the First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Award and their 2004 Cultural Capital Fellow; and the National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her the highest honor given to traditional artists, the Heritage Fellowship, in 2007. She accepted numerous speaking and exhibiting opportunities in the Pacific Northwest, nationally (including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian), and internationally (China, New Zealand, Canada, and England). She also helped found the NW Native American Basket Weavers Association.

Two Indigenous hands hold a basket mid-creation with cordage. An amber ring on her right thumb and her left fingers are nestled among the weavers.

Pat Courtney Gold presents at OFN’s 2013 Arts in Parks series. Photo, Riki Saltzman

Like so many of our nation’s finest traditional artists, Pat explored her creative boundaries beyond traditional structures. During Pat’s 2009 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native Artist Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research (Santa Fe), Pat utilized SAR’s collections to research and gain inspiration for what became her two-dimensional wall hangings. One of these weavings is proudly displayed in the IARC vaults. SAR’s documentary video of Pat’s time in residency provides a heart-warming glimpse of the thoughtful way she explored her culture, her relationship with the land, and her expressive creativity.

Pat has shoulder-length black hair held back by a white, brimmed sunhat, and tinted eyeglasses. She stands in the foreground, circled by four women watching attentively. Hanging in Pat's left hand is a basket in-progress and her right hand points to the strands. Tall evergreen trees tower in the background.

Pat Courtney Gold presents at OFN’s 2013 Arts in Parks series. Photo, Riki Saltzman

 

Pat was engaging audiences through Oregon Folklife Network programming as recently as 2016, and giving interviews as recently as Nov 2021. In her public presentations, Pat married the skills of a trained mathematician and traditional artist, describing baskets as spirals and twining as binary computation. She captivated Indigenous and non-Native audiences alike, weaving left- and right-brain perspectives like cordage. Many have been blessed by Pat’s gifts of time and talents. We celebrate her life and trust that her invaluable impact on culture in what is now Oregon will endure.

Oregon Folklife Network to Receive $45,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

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Eugene—Oregon Folklife Network is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $45,000. This grant will support Culture Fest 2023 in Southern Oregon, and support access to decolonization trainings by Live Oaks Consulting. This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling nearly $28.8 million that were announced by the NEA as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “Projects such as this one with Oregon Folklife Network strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.”

“Oregon Folklife Network is thrilled to receive this support,” remarked OFN acting director, Emily West Hartlerode. “NEA funding is critical to our twofold mission—to help communities and Tribes sustain their cultural practices; and to create opportunities for Oregonians to celebrate our state’s many rich cultures.”

Funding will support OFN’s Culture Fest invitational, which awards artist sponsorships to select organizations hiring culture bearers into their public programs. Sponsored organizations also gain access to a toolkit of resources to support their success. NEA funding will improve the toolkit with decolonization trainings to facilitate cross-cultural sensitivity, especially for non-Native people reaching out to hire Indigenous artists. Culture Fest awards are regionally specific, and this year focus on Southern Oregon.

For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

Letter from the Director, June 2022

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It is hard to celebrate the good work that Oregon Folklife Network has accomplished in the first part of 2022 while violence in the U.S. and globally reveals tremendous suffering caused by intolerance. When asked how America appears from the outside, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis replied, “we lose the ability to step forward, be an example to the world, if we cannot solve these problems of disorder in our house here at home.” OFN, alongside folklorists around the nation, combat social and political tension with our tools for finding common ground. But is it enough?

The American Folklore Society rushes to aid Ukrainian scholars to preserve their archives of songs, photographs and videos documenting dances, festivals, and cultural celebrations. New York CityLore invites I’m From: Across the Great Divide poems, to get Americans from different backgrounds and political orientations talking to one another about our shared humanity. Meanwhile steadfast programming like the National Endowment for the Arts annual National Heritage Fellowships honor America’s finest master artists whose lifelong commitments to tradition weaves our collective national fabric.

Here in Oregon, OFN does our part to strengthen our unity with statewide programming that celebrates our diversity. We recently brought Western women’s traditions to the High Desert Museum stage, and proudly welcomed as courtesy staff, Native colleague and consultant, Deana Dartt. Watch for this summer’s Oregon Culture Nights to connect with Persian, Black, Irish, and Asian Indian artists from our tenth Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program cohort. As folklorists, we readily marry conservative goals to preserve age-old practices, with liberal goals to sustain all cultures equitably. Harmonizing these apparent opposites is critical to healing society locally and globally.

Supporting Oregon Folklife Network with your donation, advocacy, and participation directly and positively impacts social cohesion in our state, and is critically important to our world. Your support enables us to elevate Oregon’s diverse expressions of individuality while amplifying our common drive to intimately know and practice our cultural roots. Share our newsletter with a friend. Follow us on social media. Donate, and double down your cultural support while leveraging a Cultural Trust tax credit. Your family, your friends, and your neighbors near and far will benefit.

Thank you!

Emily West Hartlerode, Interim Director

Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program: Application Deadline Extended to January 21, 2022

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The University of Oregon’s Oregon Folklife Network has been awarded a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts plus $40,000 from Oregon Arts Commission to support Oregon’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.

Oregon Folklife Network is accepting applications until January 21, 2022 for the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP) for projects in 2022. The program offers folk and traditional master artists and culture keepers a $3,500 stipend to teach their art form to apprentices from their same communities, Tribes, sacred or occupational groups. The stipend supports master artists in sharing their knowledge, skills and expertise with apprentices of great promise who will be empowered to carry on and strengthen Oregon’s living cultural traditions. Artist may make public presentations through the Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

Oregon’s 2021 TAAP awards supported traditional buckaroo leatherwork by Clair Kehrberg of John Day; Mexican charro (trick-roping expert) Antonio Huerta of Springfield; Black gospel, rhythm & blues singer LaRhonda Steele of Portland; Zapotec weaving by Francisco Bautista of Sandy; Guinean drum making and tuning by Alseny Yansane of Eugene; and Asian Indian dance by Jayanthi Raman of Portland. All mentored apprentices from their own culture groups in the traditional forms noted, with OFN providing technical support as needed for socially distanced teaching, learning, and presenting.

Oregon Folklife Network encourages applications from Oregonians practicing cultural traditions emerging from their heritage or Tribes. This program does not fund historic reenactments or cultural appropriation.

To learn more about application procedures and eligibility or to recommend a TAAP applicant, visit ofn.uoregon.edu, email ofn@uoregon.edu, or call 541-346-3820. Oregon Folklife Network staff members are available to provide application advice and will review and provide feedback on draft applications prior to submission.

Completed applications are due no later than 5 pm on January 21 at the Oregon Folklife Network, 242 Knight Library, 6204 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-6204. NOTE: This is NOT a postmark deadline.