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Cloudy weather couldn’t dim our enjoyment of the FisherPoets Gathering

Every year, the FisherPoets Gathering brings together fishermen from around the world to Astoria, OR during the last weekend in February to share their poetry, prose, and song and to celebrate the commercial fishing industry. This year’s FisherPoets Gathering featured over 100 performers at 8 different venues, workshops, a poetry slam, and the ever-popular Saturday night poetry contest. For the 5th year running, Oregon Folklife Network staff, students, and volunteers were all there to help document the weekend.

OFN Executive Director Riki Saltzman, Graduate Assistant Brad McMullen, OFN Program Manager Alina Mansfield, students Brandie Roberts and Kayleigh Graham, and volunteer folklorist Tiffany Purn spent the weekend experiencing the events and interviewing fisherpoets, documenting their poetry and their commercial fishing heritage. We got to see a number of fantastic performances from fisherpoets like Harlan Bailey, Rich Bard, Moe Bowstern, Meezie Hermansen, Tom Hilton, Cary Jones, Rob Seitz, and Cowboy Poet-in-Residence Ron McDaniel.

One event that stood out for first-timer Kayleigh Graham was the Strength of the Tides workshop, which focused on empowering women fishermen (their gender-preferred term) and other women who work in maritime industries. Strength of the Tides was well supported outside of its workshop too, with the movement getting shout-outs at performances throughout the weekend and lots of sightings of the new t-shirt.

For graduate student Brandie Roberts, another first-timer who described it as a weekend of “heartfelt expression,” what really stood out was her interview with fisherpoet Harlan Bailey. She writes, “For [Harlan], as with many others, gathering as the collective Fisherpoets means creating a space that staves off alienation and allows transformation – from the quotidian to the symbolic, and the mundane to the meaningful. Harlan Bailey will be back next year, and I’ll be in the audience to cheer him on.

(From L to R) Brandie Roberts, Brad McMullen, ED Riki Saltzman, Kayleigh Graham, & Tiffany Purn

As always, the FisherPoets Gathering is a great chance for fishermen to celebrate their industry and the art that they create in isolation and share as a community. The OFN is proud to attend every year and help document the stories of the men and women of the commercial fishing fleet, and we’re already looking forward to next year’s gathering!

It is with great excitement that we announce that Makaela Kroin, a graduate of the University of Oregon’s Folklore Program and the former program manager at the Oregon Folklife Network, has accepted a position as a public folklorist with the Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission.

Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission hired Kroin as the manager of the Folk & Traditional Arts Program. Founded in 2004 by public folklorist, Dr. Jens Lund, the Folk & Traditional Arts Program planted deep roots in state parks across Washington. Kroin, who started in January 2018, Makaela replaces Deborah Fant (one of OFN’s former contract folklorists), who retired in September 2017. Ryan Karlson, Parks’ Director of Interpretive Services, says “We are quite excited to have Makaela Kroin coming to Washington State Parks to lead our Folk & Traditional Arts Program. We look forward to building new partnerships and the reach of Folk & Traditional Arts programming within our diverse state park system.”

Kroin has a Bachelor’s Degree in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from Smith College, a Master’s Degree in Information and Communication Science from Ball State University, and a Master’s Degree in Public Folklore from the University of Oregon. During her time as Oregon Folklife Network’s Summer Folklore Fellow (2016) and Program Manager, Kroin conducted fieldwork, produced exhibits, coordinated public programs, wrote grants, and did extensive community outreach.

Kroin credits her mentors at the University of Oregon and the OFN for her success, “I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with world class scholars in the Folklore Program at the University of Oregon as well as the dedicated staff and interns at the OFN. It was the practical experience that I gained through internships and fellowships at the OFN that gave me the professional skills, the extensive network, and the confidence to flourish in the field of Public Folklore.”

At Washington State Parks, Kroin is responsible for coordinating the statewide Folk and Traditional Arts program and related community partnership development efforts. In 2018, she will oversee a packed schedule including annual events and festivals such as the Salish Sea Native American Cultural Celebration, Cambodian Cultural Celebration, and the American Roots Concert Series, as well as a collaboration with New Old Time Chautauqua to tour Washington State Parks and small towns in the North Central and North regions of Washington as well as the Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation.

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded the Oregon Folklife Network funding to conduct folklife field surveys and documentation of traditions in the Willamette Valley. We are pleased to announce that folklorists Amy Howard, Alina Mansfield, and Thomas Richardson will be conducting this fieldwork with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and in the counties of Polk and Benton as well as the portions of Marion, Linn, and Lane counties in the Willamette Valley.

OFN, Oregon’s Folk & Traditional Arts Program, is in search of excellent folk artists and culture keepers. We’ll include the best of those documented in our Culture Keepers Roster, an online curated resource for local festivals, parks, school, and library programs looking to hire performers, demonstrators, and speakers. We are also looking for master artists to serve as mentors for the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.

OFN will be working with a range of cultural partners such as Lane Arts Council, Lane County Historical Museum, Salem Arts Association, Corvallis Arts Center, County Cultural Coalitions, Independence Heritage Museum, da Vinci Days, Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center, CAPACES Leadership Institute (Latino workers), and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and our operational partners (Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Cultural Trust). We’ll be partnering with some of those organizations to create public programs with traditional artists in the region.

Please put us in touch with the traditional musicians, dancers, quilters, embroiderers, storytellers, fly-tiers, cooks, artisans, and others in your part of the Willamette Valley. We very much want to hear from the range of the region’s communities— regional, ethnic, and occupational folklore, including but not limited to Asian and Pacific Islanders (Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Hawai’ian, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Vietnamese), Latino (Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican), Native American (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde), and European (Dutch, English, French, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Scotch-Irish, Scottish, Swedish) as well as logging, hunting, railroad, sheep and dairy farming, orchards, viticulture, brewing, hops growing, fishing and fishing guides, boat building and other waterways traditions along with foodways, music, storytelling, and other relevant traditional expressions.

Contact information for Project folklorists:

• Thomas Richardson (Benton, Linn) tgrantrichardson@gmail.com
• Amy Howard (Polk, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Marion) maxwamy@isu.edu
• Alina Mansfield (Lane) alinam@uoregon.edu

OFN preserves this documentation at the University of Oregon, Special Collections and University Archives.

To provide OFN with contact information for tradition keepers, contact Riki Saltzman, riki@uoregon.edu; Alina Mansfield, alinam@uoregon.edu; or phone 541-346-3820.

OFN is a University of Oregon administered program with operational support from the Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Historical Society, and Oregon Cultural Trust.

Every year, folklorists from across the western states reunite at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.  OFN Associate Director, Emily Hartlerode, joined colleagues to staff the festival as stage manager and host to cowboy musicians and poets Feb 1-3. This year’s 34^th annual festival theme, “Basques & Buckaroos: Herding Cultures of Basin, Range and Beyond,” made the beret, or Basque txapela, as common as the ten-gallon hat. A rich assortment of Basque music, dance, language, and rhymes came gathering from near as Elko and far as Spain’s Basque Country. Oregonians performing at the Gathering included photographer Mary Williams Hyde (Klamath Falls), poet Annie Mackenzie (Jordan Valley), and musicians Caleb Klauder Country Band (Portland) who played the famous Saturday Night Dance.

Mary Williams Hyde, whose family has been ranching in Klamath Falls since 1911, shared an hour of her photo slides in a collection called “Images of the Buckaroo: On the Ranch and in the Arena.” Her documentation of this culture specializes in the rare million+ acre ranch of the Great Basin, like Oregon’s ZX Ranch in Paisley.

Annie Mackenzie was a fresh new voice in Elko, attending her first Gathering as a recipient of the Rod McQueary & Sue Wallis Scholarship. This fund, established by an anonymous donor in memory of two of the Gathering’s earliest poets, brings emerging poets, writers and reciters to the Gathering. OFN looks forward to adding to our artist roster Ms. Mackenzie, who writes thoughtful and humorist poetry of her experiences on her family’s fourth-generation ranch in southeast Oregon.

Interested in performing or exhibiting at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering?  Get in touch with OFN, or watch the NCPG website where applications for 2019 will be posted soon!

World Learning is administering an exciting initiative on behalf of the U.S. Department of State called Communities Connecting Heritage.

The initiative will connect US-based organizations with like-minded organizations abroad to work on a collaborative cultural heritage project, culminating in a public exhibition and reciprocal exchange program to each other’s countries.

If your organization would like to receive the application, please fill out this five-question Inquiry Form. Kindly pass this along to other individuals or organizations whom you think may have an interest in this opportunity. Thank you.

Regards,

Nicolette Regis

Program Officer, Global Exchange

World Learning
1015 15th Street NW | 7th Floor | Washington, DC 20005

T: 202.355.6466 | C: 202.413.5140

The call is now open to established American Indian and Alaska Native artists to apply for a one-year NACF Mentor Artist Fellowship to mentor an emerging American Indian and Alaska Native artist apprentice. Established artists should have at least ten years of experience in the Traditional Arts or Contemporary Visual Arts fields.

Applications will be accepted until 5 p.m. Pacific Time, on Monday, November 6, 2017. 

Awarded Mentors will develop lesson plans intended to increase their apprentice’s skill level, and provide an experience of intergenerational exchange of cultural knowledge within the apprentice’s traditional arts or contemporary visual arts practice. To assist in developing lesson plans, awarded mentors and their apprentices are required to attend a training session before the mentorship begins. The training date will be announced upon notification of the awards.

This is a regional fellowship focusing in the Pacific Northwest, Southwest and Upper Midwest areas of the United States. Eligible applicants must be at least a five-year resident of, and enrolled in an American Indian tribe or Alaska Native corporation located in Alaska, Arizona, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Southern California (Imperial, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties), Washington or Wisconsin. Submission of documentation of American Indian and Alaska Native heritage is part of the application process.

First year Mentor Artist Fellow Lani Hotch (Chilkat Indian Village) said of receiving her award, “I’ve tried to work with groups of weavers, and I’m excited to work one on one with somebody so they know all the steps. In the last few months we’ve lost two weavers (…).  I’m feeling a real compulsion to teach somebody.” Mentor Artist FellowShirod Younker (Coquille, Coos) said in response to the mentor training, “[A] good way to build focus [on] what we are doing and think about the macro vision of the projects in conjunction with each other.”

The Mentor Artist Fellowship is a monetary award of $30,000 — $20,000 to the mentor, $5,000 for the joint art project and $5,000 for the apprentice’s expenses — gas, supplies. Applications will undergo a selection process and fellowship awardees will be announced in the Spring of 2018. The mentoring period will be from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019. To demonstrate the experience and success of the mentoring, a completed joint mentor/apprentice art project is required at the Fellowship’s end.

For more information and to apply click here.

To learn more about previous NACF Mentor Artist Fellows, visit our website at http://www.nativeartsandcultures.org/mentor-fellowships.

The Mentor Artist Fellowship Program is generously supported by individual donors and regional funders committed to preserving and perpetuating Native arts and cultures. NACF is grateful to the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation for supporting an Oregon Mentor Fellow.

Alina Mansfield

We are pleased to announce the release of Oregon Folklife Network’s first publication: Culture Keepers of Eastern Oregon. In the Spring of 2016, Folklorists Douglas Manger and Joseph O’Connell visited communities throughout the Eastern Oregon region and interviewed cowboys, ranchers, quilters, water witchers, stone masons, old time musicians, community poets, fly tiers, fishing guides and more. This folklife survey into the “deep west” of Eastern Oregon, was made possible thanks to generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works, and the Oregon Historical Society.

Culture Keepers of Eastern Oregon features over 40 photographs and biographies of traditional artists throughout the Eastern Oregon counties of Baker, Crook, Deschutes, Grant, Union, Wallowa, and Wheeler. Douglas Manger explains, “Our effort was to record unique culture keepers at their home place, particularly those held in close esteem for the craft they are upholding, their striving for excellence, their giving back while teaching others.” Joseph O’Connell notes, “Our conversations explored how broad traditions, like rodeo sports or cowboy poetry, take on new dimensions in local places.”

Keep an eye out this summer for our upcoming publication, Oregon Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Master Artists: 2012-2016, which will highlight the 23 master artist teams who received TAAP awards from 2012-2016. This photo essay provides a tantalizing glimpse into Oregon’s cultural traditions and the artists who make them thrive.

With deep sadness, we mourn the passing of dear friend and colleague Carol Spellman, 1951-2017. Carol was a folklorist’s folklorist. The Oregon Folklife Network, the state of Oregon, and the entire field of folklore would be the poorer without Carol’s impressive body of work for the Oregon Folklife Program.

“All who knew Carol are invited by her family to honor her memory at a Celebration of Life/Irish Wake at The Evergreen, 618 SE Alder St, Portland on March 8 from 5 to 8 p.m.”

The UO Folklore community is very grateful for the Spellman family’s very generous designation of UO’s Folklore Program to receive donations in Carol’s memory.

“The Folklore Program at U of O has established a fund in Carol’s name to assist graduate students to work in the field that she loved so much. Donations may be made to the Carol B. Spellman Public Folklore Fund, Attn: Beth Magee, Folklore Program, 1287 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403.”

“Carol Beth Spellman passed away peacefully with her family by her side on January 26, 2017 due to complications from treatment for leukemia.

Born October 19, 1951 in Oakland, California to Edmund and Helen (Heber) Stone, Carol lived her early years in Hayward before the family moved to San Leandro. Continue reading