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.

by Robert Bishop

This fall, OFN’s folklife survey will travel to the southwestern Oregon counties of Josephine, Jackson, and Douglas and to the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. Fieldwork in the region will begin in September and help identify artists for the Culture Keepers Roster as well as organizations for next year’s Culture Fest partnerships.

The survey aims to document folk and traditional arts practiced in the region’s many heritage groups, as well as examples of the area’s occupational folklife, foodways, and other traditions. Part of an ongoing statewide effort, the south inland leg of the survey will add new, region-specific information to the more than 400 folk and traditional artists already identified among Tribes and other communities all around the state.

The survey is also a key component of our folklore mentorship program, bringing professional and emerging student folklorists together to conduct fieldwork and transmit best practices to the next generation of public folklorists.

Have a recommendation of a folk and/or traditional artist to be included in the survey? Let us know! Contact Riki Saltzman at riki@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3820.

by Madison Howard

We are pleased to announce the Oregon Library Services and Technology Act Program awarded OFN grant funds for our Equitable Access to All Oregon Culture Keepers project. The award will fund several exciting projects related to our Culture Keepers Roster.

With the newly secured funds, OFN will initiate an overhaul of our current roster software and data collection techniques. At the end of the project, we’ll have a new, improved system for presenting research records about living culture keepers from western Oregon communities, and a whole new level of staff expertise related to the development and management of culture keepers’ online profiles.

We’re grateful to the Oregon State Library for its support and look forward to sharing a refreshed and highly accessible roster that will continue to grow over the years ahead. In the meantime, you can visit the current version of the roster on our website.

by Jenna Ehlinger

In July, the Museum of Natural and Cultural History proudly hosted Oregon Culture Nights, an outdoor series showcasing the work of OFN’s 2021 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP) awardees. Consisting of four events, the series drew a diverse audience to the museum to celebrate living heritage traditions practiced around the state.

Local roping master Antonio Huerta kicked off the series on July 8 with a demonstration and discussion of charrería, Mexico’s national sport. The following week, award-winning Portland vocalist LaRhonda Steele shared Black gospel traditions and discussed their ties to contemporary Black Americans’ socioeconomic concerns. On week three, Sandy-based weaver Francisco Bautista shared examples of his textiles, which reflect both his Zapotec heritage and his family’s life in the Pacific Northwest today. Finally, Portland dancer, teacher, and choreographer Jayanthi Raman presented on Bharatha natyam, a classical Indian dance form that tells traditional Hindu stories through movements, gestures, and expressions.

The series drew rave reviews from audience members, who called the demonstrations and performances “a huge benefit to our community” and “a highlight of the summer.” We’d like to thank the incredible artists who shared their stories and art during the series, as well as the community members who joined us for these special celebrations of Oregon culture. We are moved by the collective effort to steward and share traditional arts in our state and we eagerly look forward to next summer’s second annual Oregon Culture Nights.

TAAP is one of Oregon Folklife Network’s cornerstone programs. It supports master artists in teaching and passing on their living traditions to promising apprentices from the same cultural background. Master artists receive stipends to cover costs of focused, individualized training and a final public presentation. Artists can now apply for our 2021-2022 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program; download the application and submit it to OFN by October 1, 2021. 

Funding for TAAP comes from the National Endowment for the Arts and Oregon Arts Commission. Additional support comes from the Oregon Historical Society and the University of Oregon.

OFN welcomed Winter and Spring term University of Oregon interns, Taylor Burby and Robert Bishop. Thank you for your contributions to our programs!

Taylor Burby is a graduate student in the Folklore and Public Culture program and an intern with OFN. She earned her B.A. in linguistics with a minor in sociology from the University of Nevada, Reno. Here at UO, she has explored the intersections between new religious movements, rituals, the consumption of entheogens, and Indigeneity. Her ethnographic research looks at cacao and its trajectory from Mesoamerican food staple to a plant medicine central to New Age entheogenic self-renewal rituals. With the OFN, she is documenting culture keepers for the south coast leg of the statewide folklife survey. Her additional interests include contemplating the connection between k-12 lore and white supremacy, documenting chunky squirrels around UO’s campus, and bouldering

Robert Bishop is a graduating senior at the University of Oregon, majoring in folklore and public culture. Robert joined OFN for spring 2021 term, during which he worked on the Legends and Lore program, a historical marker program focused on traditional culture and administered by the William G. Pomeroy Foundation. Robert has also been working with Riki Saltzman on the south coast folklife survey, helping interview and document coastal traditions. Along with his studies and work at OFN, Robert works at the archival record label Little Axe Records and collects songs and stories from his native Ozarks. After graduation, Robert hopes to move back to Arkansas to work in archives, special collections, or public lore and to finally publish his book on his family’s folk cookery.

by Emily Hartlerode

I have long carried a curiosity about what makes us who we are. In my first career as a child therapist, I saw firsthand the power of childhood lessons from our families and communities. These early lessons teach us how effective we are in the world, how much authority we have in our decisions, and how valuable we are to others. Our identity is shaped by experiences coded in memory before our brains can think critically. Whether empowering or traumatic, these early experiences are usually beyond our control, but still become part of our core stories. I remain fascinated by these stories and how we tell them—to ourselves and to others—as we grow, perpetuating or resisting our culture.

A child’s portrait in colored pencil

As a folklorist, I examine the ethnic, sacred, occupational, and place-based cultures we inherit from our communities. We are shaped by these cultural conditions as much as we are shaped by our family norms. However, folklife is made far more visible by how we dress, where we live and work, the way we speak, and more. Today, I am especially curious about how we interpret and are interpreted by others when we leave our homes and become public expressions of ourselves. Rather than taking a therapeutic approach to personal healing, it is now my work to support interpretations that build more empathetic, appreciative connections across people’s myriad cultural differences.

This summer, as I emerged from my COVID cocoon, the impressions of my own culture felt deeply embossed. The financial impact of business closures and work loss, and decisions about whether or when to vaccinate, have been very personal parts of a story I’m still writing. Other factors like the strength of my internet signal, whether and when to mask up, and even my housekeeping habits continue to be on display more than I’d prefer. My world has felt very small during COVID, and my interactions with others had barely opened up before the Delta variant impacted Oregon anew. Like a child heading off to school for the first time, my world is both opening up, and demanding more structure. As we live our personal lives together in community, I hope that we greet each other with curiosity about the contours of our culture. That we connect with the whole person behind the mask, whether we wear cloth or culture on our faces, for under it we all hold that same child’s call for a family, community, and world to embrace us.

OFN partners with Four Rivers Cultural Center (Ontario) and High Desert Museum (Bend) to support staff folklorists who sustain folklife programming across this large and diverse state.

Latham Wood, PhD candidate (anthropology) conducting fieldwork in Vanuatu.

We are excited to announce that Latham T. Wood, a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of Oregon and former OFN graduate employee, has accepted a folklorist position at the Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario, Oregon. During his time with OFN, Latham coordinated our 2018-19 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, working with many former TAAP masters to pilot the first of what we hope will be many artist mentorship gatherings. His primary responsibility at Four Rivers Cultural Center will be to coordinate the annual Tradition Keepers Folklife Festivals in 2021 and 2022. Other projects will include implementing regional public programs with cultural nonprofits in the region, producing and distributing podcasts and videos featuring traditional artists, and fieldwork documenting cultures in Eastern Oregon and into Idaho.

High Desert, Central, and Eastern Oregon

by Riki Saltzman, Folklore Specialist, OFN and Folklorist, High Desert Museum

Around the same time that I started OFN’s folklife survey, I also began working with the High Desert Museum in Bend to fulfill a National Endowment for the Arts Folk and Traditional Arts contract—this one to follow up on leads that previous OFN contract folklorists had identified in nine central and eastern Oregon counties. Over the years, folklorists Nancy Nusz, Douglas Manger, LuAnne Kozma, Debbie Fant, Joe O’Connell, and Douglas Manger interviewed hundreds of culture keepers in their surveys of eleven Oregon counties, the Klamath Tribes, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and the Burns Paiute Tribe. But they couldn’t interview everyone in the allotted time.

Thanks to this new NEA funding, I’ve been able to follow up with many of the identified culture keepers—so far talking to buckaroos, a cowboy poet, saddle and gear makers, a hat maker and farrier, ranchers, rawhide and buckskin tanners, basket makers, a fishing guide, and more. What has struck me in spending time with all of these folks is how connected they are, especially over the vastness of central and eastern Oregon, from Wasco in the north to Lake and Harney counties in the south. The ranchers and Western gear makers often know each other. And despite the forced displacement that federal and white settler violence against Indigenous communities caused in Oregon, family connections among those who with different Tribal affiliations become evident after only a few minutes of talking. People throughout our state are related—and they nurture those relationships as they practice their cultural traditions.

Folklorist LuAnne Kozma first interviewed Lisa Robinson back in 2014; what follows is an update from Kozma’s biography of Robinson.

Lisa Robinson, Silver Lake, cowboy hats, farrier

Lisa Robinson (2014), photo by LuAnne Kozma

Lisa Robinson grew up in a cowboying family in south central Oregon. After years of ranching, running cattle, and farriering, she learned to make quality, custom-made Western hats of 100 percent beaver for working cowboys. “I don’t do any wool or rabbit or blends because they don’t hold up as well. [The beaver hats] hold up better when they’re wet, snow and cold. The beaver hats don’t shrink, and they don’t bleed dye when they get wet. They hold.” As a working cowboy (she and her husband, Paul Robinson, run their own small ranch as well as run cattle for other ranches), she knows the value and necessity of a well-made, well-fitted hat; she tailors her individuals and has her own special identifying mark—dots on the ribbon band, which, along with the look of her beaver felt hats, she can spot from a distance.

Lisa Robinson (2014), photo by LuAnne Kozma

Robinson’s father, Al Prom, is a legendary cowboy in Lake County and her mother, Marcie Prom, who is known for her outdoor cooking, used to own the Cowboy Dinner Tree. Their children, Lisa and Josh, grew up learning how to ride and shoe horses from their father. At a young age, Lisa Robinson decided that horseshoeing and working was what she wanted to do most, and at age 14, she got right to it full time. When her father was injured and unable to continue horseshoeing, Lisa and Josh (also a farrier and cowboy) took over the family business. Lisa gradually took on most of the work, which meant shoeing at least 10 horses 2 to 3 days a week from March to October and cowboying 3 to 4 days a week—that kept her in the saddle from 4:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.

In the early 2010s, after 25 years of full-time horse shoeing and part-time cowboying, Robinson decided on a less physically demanding career—building cowboy hats. She knew from experience that good hat makers who make custom hats are hard to come by, so she set out to learn how, with the goal of eventually retiring from her physically demanding work as a farrier. In early 2014 she apprenticed with two skilled master hat makers, Mike Moore, who owns Buckaroo Hatters in Tennessee, and James Whittington (JW) of JW Hats in Salt Lake City; JW taught Moore, and Moore taught Robinson. Several years later, she has a workshop complete with refurbished antique haberdashery equipment for her thriving business, Top Knot Hats. She and her father built the log workshop, which is filled with her custom creations. From the beaver and/or rabbit felt hat body, Lisa works to size, shape, style, and press (or tighten up) the felt into a custom-made hat.

As Robinson explained, the beaver felt hat blanks come with “no structure to them. And then I use steam and I block them stretching down over block to the size I’m going to use, and then I sand and fire it and set the felt. And then it goes into a plate machine and that sets your 90-degree angle on your hat brim. And then you do some more sand and then work on the brim when you get it out. You cut it down to whatever size somebody wants and then I build the sweatband to their size and…put the liners in for them. It’s all dependent on what a person wants in their order. You just build it from scratch.”

Robinson also refurbishes and rebuilds hats—replacing ribbons, sweatbands, and more for “work and dress and rodeo and play.” Each hat takes about 10-12 hours, and she usually has several going at once because they have to rest at different stages. She customizes hats for size, style, color, and the kind of crease folks want; she’ll also add ribbons and buckles. As Robinson explained, people have different style hats. “And you can recognize who it is by the crease in their hat and the silhouette in the sky.”

Perry Chocktoot, Director, Culture and Heritage Department, Klamath Tribes (Klamath Reservation, Chiloquin, OR), tule duck decoy maker, fisherman, cook, cultural expert

Perry Chocktoot, September 2020 Zoom interview with Riki Saltzman (insert).

Perry Chocktoot is a member of all three of the Klamath Tribes: Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Paiute. He was raised in the traditional lands of the Klamath Tribes and the history of his family is found throughout the area—most notably with Chocktoot Street, the main street in Chiloquin, which he explains, is “named after my two great grandpas that signed the Treaty of 1864.” Chocktoot is the director of the Culture and Heritage Department of the Klamath Tribes and sits on the governor’s taskforce for Cultural Resource Identification. He is also a former Tribal Council member and former chairman of the Intertribal Fish and Water Commission. Besides those duties, Chocktoot also conducts the C-waam Ceremony of the Klamath Tribes every year in March. A lifelong fisherman, he helps out anyway he can on restoration of the C-waam fishery and supports stream restoration to aid in their recovery.

A cultural expert, Chocktoot is an avid fisherman, cook, a lifelong hunter, obsidian knife maker, and is actively involved in reinvigorating the tradition of making and using tule duck decoys, also indigenous to the Klamath Basin. He first watched another Native man from Nevada make the decoys. Later, he asked Klamath elders if they used them; they told him, “of course, we did.” “And then,” Perry explains, “I just started making them. I found out real soon that the tule and cattail had to be dried out first and then reintroduced to water.” After researching the process and trial and error, he learned to harvest and process tule and cattails at the right time of year, to dry them, soak them, and then prepare the natural pigments to paint the decoys. He also makes a fair number of miniatures, which family members use to decorate their annual Christmas tree, as well as full-size decoys for hunting over.

Chocktoot’s parents, grandparents and elders raised him to be self-sufficient, to live off of the land and waterways. He grew up learning to fish for salmon, steelhead, c’waam, red band trout; hunt deer, ducks, and geese; cook or smoke his catch; and share his bounty with others. “That’s a tradition passed on . . . When I married and I had children of my own, I taught my family to smoke fish, can fish and how to harvest. And so I’m not sending them into the world . . . having a lack of knowledge to fend for themselves. . . . If need be my boys and my daughter could make an earth lodge, fish and dry it, hunt and dry it, can if need be, smoke trout, salmon, steelhead, deer meat, elk meat, and survive. I’ve given them the tools.”

Observing the year’s round of food gathering is critical to survival. Chocktoot explains, “You know, we function on that seasonal round gathering. Spring, May and June we do root digging. We do a lot of root digging. . . . [apos, camus, biscuit root]. In the spring, it’s fish; summer, it’s meat to make dry meat out of and continue fishing. . . . The huckleberries are just coming in. . . . Then in the fall, the meat is in its prime. . . . During the fall, deer and elk hunting occur as well as berry picking. . . . And all of it ends. And all of it comes to a screeching halt when there’s four foot of snow on the ground. Then it’s time to eat what you harvest.”

In all that he does, conservation is a part. As he explains in speaking of his ancestors, “there are different phases of life which were known to be harvested by the indigenous people—eggs. But it was a practice that you never took all the eggs out of a single nest. You never take all the berries off a single bush. You always leave something– either for procreation or for another animal. And so it was our way of existing in harmony with our environment.”

As with fieldwork on Oregon’s coast, my interviewing work with those in central and eastern Oregon will continue through the late spring. The High Desert Museum is also planning on some virtual public programs in March or April—women in ranching, saddle and gear makers, and perhaps others. Stay tuned!

Perry Chocktoot and Riki Saltzman collaborated to craft this description of who he is and how he preserves his cultural traditions.

Folklife fieldwork at the High Desert Museum is funded with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts Folk and Traditional Arts Program.