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You asked and we listened. OFN’s newly revised Culture Keepers Roster incorporates numerous changes you requested. Please check out the new format and review your personal artist page before we make a public announcement about the new site. You can send your approval or request for edits through our roster survey. Here’s how:

• Visit the Roster
• Type your name into the Name box and click Search. Your profile should come up.
• Once you review your roster page, please fill the roster survey to indicate your approve or what, if any, corrections need to be made.

Approving your profile helps us empower tradition keepers like you with paid opportunities to support your work preserving Oregon’s rich cultural heritage. Without your approval, we must deactivate your profile.

I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve all accomplished. Thank you for participating in the Roster, for giving us your feedback, and to all of our staff, interns, and website development team for their care and attention to this project over the years. Ultimately, it is you artists who make OFN and the Oregon Culture Keepers Roster a success. Bravo!

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

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.  

Oregon traditional artists who would like to be considered for the Traditional Arts Recovery Program may self-nominate between now and Tuesday, Aug. 31.

Master weaver, Francisco Bautista, and family with a tapestry they wove together.

Administered by the Oregon Folklife Network in partnership with the Oregon Arts Commission, the Traditional Arts Recovery Program will provide stipends of $5,000 to 15 Oregon traditional artists for the creation of new work. Eligible artists will use a range of art forms to represent and express Oregon’s diverse ethnic, sacred, occupational and regional cultural arts.

“Our traditional artists are critical keepers of our cultures,” said Rogers. “We recognized they had not yet been a focus of our relief funding programs and so enlisted the support of our partners at the Oregon Folklife Network to develop this initiative.”

The Traditional Arts Recovery Program is supported by National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan Act funds allocated to the Arts Commission.

Traditional artists who would like to be considered should email Emily Hartlerode, associate director of the Folklife Network, at eafanado@uoregon.edu by 5 p.m. on Aug. 31. For more information see the eligibility guidelines.

Oregon Arts Commission

The Oregon Arts Commission provides leadership, funding and arts programs through its grants, special initiatives and services. Nine commissioners, appointed by the Governor, determine arts needs and establish policies for public support of the arts. The Arts Commission became part of Business Oregon (formerly Oregon Economic and Community Development Department) in 1993, in recognition of the expanding role the arts play in the broader social, economic and educational arenas of Oregon communities. In 2003, the Oregon legislature moved the operations of the Oregon Cultural Trust to the Arts Commission, streamlining operations and making use of the Commission’s expertise in grantmaking, arts and cultural information and community cultural development.

The Arts Commission is supported with general funds appropriated by the Oregon legislature and with federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as funds from the Oregon Cultural Trust. More information about the Oregon Arts Commission is available online at: www.oregonartscommission.org.

Oregon Folklife Network

The Oregon Folklife Network is the state of Oregon’s folk and traditional arts program. Administered by the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon, OFN comprises a network of partners working to document, support, preserve, and celebrate the diversity of Oregon’s living cultural heritage.

As part of OFN’s statewide survey, graduate students from UO’s Folklore and Public Culture Program shadow professional researchers in the field. This serves OFN’s broader mission to educate, train, and prepare the next generation of public folklorists. Read their reflections on conducting fieldwork during the pandemic.

by Robert Bishop & Taylor Burby

Robert: This internship has been quite different from the ones of the past. Previously, the two interns and teacher would venture out in the field to interview folks over the weekend and take time to observe, gather, and experience the lives and traditions they help document. This time though, we watched from home. It is odd to think that I have never actually been in the field or even on campus much at all because the majority of my time at the University of Oregon has been during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, I have worked on other skills throughout my zoom term. Practicing researching, organizing, writing, archiving, and so on and so forth.

Knute Nemeth having a laugh while talking about the wonders of tuna fish

I sat in on three interviews with Riki Saltzman taking notes so that I could adopt her methods to my own interview that would never come. But that is the name of the game, you don’t always get the interview or the information you’re chasing. So, you pivot like we all have done in the last twelve months during the Year of the Great Pivot. Of the interviews I sat in on, the one that stuck out the most was with a fisherman named Knute Nemeth. He has been working on or near the water his whole life and says, “I like fishing because you’re getting your hands wet and you feel like you’re communing with the ocean and Mother Nature. You’re right on the level there. I mean, physically, literally right on the level of the ocean. And it’s all raw and it just there’s just something about it.” He laughed and pondered and reflected about life out on the wild blue yonder, using words and phrases that made little sense to someone from a landlocked Midwestern state like myself. Knute talked to us for over an hour about various ways to catch fish, how he survived a shipwreck, what he looks for in a ship captain, and how he and his buddy became famous at Burning Man for bringing top-notch tuna year in and year out. While watching Knute tell stories I got somewhat lost in his jovial character and envisioned him to be Oregon’s answer to Long John Silver but with both of his legs intact.

Taylor: Similarly, to Robert’s sentiment, this internship with the OFN was different from those in terms prior, and even so, an invaluable experience. I, too, sat in on Riki’s Zoom interviews and noted which of her methods I have lacked during those I have given previously, namely for my thesis work. One such methods was her ability to rein in the conversation if they became too off-topic. Another, which I occasionally struggle with, was her ability to ask follow-up questions that directed the conversation towards uncovering stories that truly highlighted the essence of the interviewee’s experience. These were two skills I focused on developing during my interview with sheep shearer, Wendy Valentine.

Wendy Valentine displaying tools of the sheep shearing trade

I never thought I would take a special interest in the subject of sheep shearing, but Wendy really sold me when she had her daughter set the laptop on the ground and act as a sheep stand-in so that Wendy could demonstrate the process of shearing for me. When I later asked why she sheared, Wendy first joked that she was “too stupid to do anything else” (I snorted!). Her following response, however, suggested to me that shearing was more than wrangling a couple hundred 250-500 lb sheep in an eight hour day, getting bitten by a sheep and chasing it from the barn while wielding a hammer (she never caught it), or handling equipment that could cut skin or knock out teeth. Rather, at the heart of shearing is the ability to nurture one’s community, teach about animal welfare, and build multi-generational relationships. As noted by Wendy, this includes “watching children pick up where older generations have left off in ranching and farming.” Wendy herself is a fourth-generational shearer and stated that, at this point, her family must have lanolin (wool wax) in their blood. The opportunity to meet and make a connection with Wendy (and her daughter!), and I look forward to the potential of traveling down to Langois so I can get bitten by a sheep myself.

This internship turned a difficult situation into a great term of study for two future folklorists. We have enjoyed having extra time to work on the project and it has shown us that when one path is blocked, we can always take another, learning more than we thought along the way.