As a reminder from last week’s social justice column, mass camp sweeps have been carried out in multiple locations throughout Corvallis by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) this morning and will resume early tomorrow morning, Thursday, Dec. 14. Sweeps forcibly displace unhoused community members while providing few to no alternatives where the people being displaced can seek shelter or support, and frequently result in tents and personal belongings being demolished or trashed by ODOT and/or Corvallis Parks and Recreation staff operating heavy machinery to conduct these “clean-ups”.
Sunrise Corvallis, a youth-led climate justice organization committed to building community empowerment to facilitate social change, has actively opposed sweeps and stood in solidarity with their unhoused neighbors by assisting local mutual aid efforts of Stop the Sweeps Corvallis and the Corvallis Really Really Free Market (RRFM), organizing protests before Corvallis City Council meetings, and calling on the city to end sweeps and the criminalization of houselessness in their Corvallis Green New Deal for Climate and Housing Justice (CGND), which was passed by the city council earlier this year.
Most recently, one of the Sunrise organizers updated the group’s donation page to ensure that financial donations will go directly towards purchasing requested supplies/resources that have been and will continue to be distributed to those being displaced by, and recovering from, the sweeps. Funds will also go towards reimbursing community members – such as those with Stop the Sweeps Corvallis – who are on the ground providing direct support by purchasing supplies out of their own pockets.
In their latest Instagram post, Stop the Sweeps organizers summarize the harms that Corvallis sweeps have been causing, what folks can do to help, and what you can expect to see at sweeps.
“You wake up at 7 a.m. to emotional turmoil and stressed individuals who need to move everything they own in overstimulating conditions with little to no help,” reads one of the slides. “What’s left of people’s lives [is] left behind because they are too heavy to carry. Loud loaders (picking up tents at times with people in them), creating deep and difficult-to-repair gashes into the soil (causes flooding and damages ecosystems).”
To learn more about Corvallis sweeps and helpful tips for direct actions, strategies, and other efforts you can undertake, you can read this zine created by Stop the Sweeps organizers, who plan to have physical copies available at all local zine distribution places – such as the RRFM’s Free Store, the Oregon State University Pride Center, Interzone, etc. – in January. Updates and sweep posting announcements are available on the group’s Twitter and Instagram, and you can also reach out directly to organizers by sending an email to stopthesweepscorvallis@protonmail.com.
“We understand a lot of folks are just getting into local action in the city and we wanted to provide a helpful resource for those interested,” reads the post description. “We have a lot of things we need help with and a lot of needs to meet with little hands. We appreciate sharing this infographic-esque explanation of what is going on right now and please please please reach out if you have questions, contributions, or collaborations! We can stop the sweeps together.”
“Always Here” Exhibit: Last Friday, Dec. 9, the Corvallis Arts Center held its opening reception for the “Always Here” exhibit, which invites non-Native viewers to critically re-examine entrenched social narratives of what constitutes contemporary Indigenous art and experiences in the U.S.
All of the artists whose work is featured are enrolled members of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde or the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. They are Steph Littlebird Fogel (Chinook, Kalapuyan), a Two-Spirit illustrator, painter, curator and writer; Amber Hall (Siletz), a theatre artist and community advocate whose work centers intergenerational learning in collaboration with Native communities; Matthew Earl Williams, an artist, educator, and multimedia specialist for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; and Anthony Hudson (Grand Ronde, Siletz), a queer multidisciplinary artist and writer who’s best known for their performance as the Portland-based drag clown Carla Rossi.
In the middle of the Arts Center is a collaborative project created by all artists, a pyre pile of institutional furniture and reprints of an advertisement for the Dawes Act – an 1887 federal Indian policy which focused on breaking up reservations and Tribal lands to treat Native Americans as individuals rather than members of their Tribes, reasoning that “if a person adopted ‘White’ clothing and ways, and was responsible for their own farm, they would gradually drop their ‘Indian-ness’ and be assimilated into White American culture” – titled “Decolonizing/Kindling”.
“This is very site-specific; it came out of the idea of being in a church [which the Arts Center used to be] and thinking about institutions – thinking about where assimilation happens, where has whiteness come in to conquer us,” said Hudson during the artist talk. “How does colonization operate? It operates through institutions. It operates through school desks. It operates in churches. And so we thought, ‘Okay, well let’s burn it all down,’ and we made a giant burn pile with a gas canister in the middle of the floor.”
The exhibit will remain up through Jan. 21, 2023.
“Indigenous Placekeeping in Corvallis” Recording, Further Reading: If you missed last week’s “Champinefu Series: Indigenous Placekeeping in Corvallis and at the Confluence” webinar, in which a discussion was held with Indigenous artists and activists – most of whom currently have new work featured in the aforementioned exhibit – about their artistic placekeeping work in the city, a recording is now available here.
Moderator David Harrelson, the Cultural Resources Department manager for The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, shared this excerpt from the Tribes’ Indigenous Place Keeping Artist Fellowship (which Hudson was selected for earlier this year to research stories, histories, and traditions of Indigenous queerness and gender variance in the Tribes’ ancestral homelands of Western Oregon) guidance document: “Art by Indigenous people is one of the most effective and recognizable ways that we as Indigenous people of place can hold a place in our homelands and further our own recognition and persistence.”
“Many of you [who are watching] have attended previous talks where we’ve talked about biodiversity, histories of Indigenous people or biological communities, or all the aspects of the knowledge of doing these presentations over the last six years, and a lot of that is very applicable to placekeeping,” said Harrelson. “The term placekeeping is the act of care and maintenance of a place and its social fabric by the people who live and work in a place in a manner that prioritizes ecological, historical, and cultural relationships to place, while bringing the presence of Indigenous histories and futures into focus. I really see Indigenous placekeeping as a unifying element; it’s not something that is just available for contribution by Native people, although Indigenous people of place like my ancestors and our Tribe today need to really be at the forefront of these efforts.”
Harrelson shared examples of these efforts – past, present, and future – in Corvallis, and also shared a document in the Zoom chat containing information about key terminology as well as follow-up articles and other media/resources related to Indigenous placekeeping, which include the following:
- Recording of the “Creative Placemaking, Placekeeping, and Cultural Strategies to Resist Displacement” Citizen Artist Solon;
- “How Can We Reindiginize Our Cities?” article featuring interviews with Wanda Dalla Costa and Selina Martinez, both of whom are credited with helping to coin the term “Indigenous Placekeeping”.
Items Needed for At-Risk, Homeless Youth: While youth holiday wish lists have already been covered by local community members, items are still needed for youth this season at Jackson Street Youth Services, an organization offering a continuum of 24/7 care, services, safety and support to runaway youth experiencing, or at risk, of homelessness in Benton, Linn, and Lincoln Counties. Per a recently updated list, requested material donations include the following:
- Hygiene supplies – face and body wipes, deodorant, body wash, shampoo and conditioner, lotion, razors and shaving cream, menstrual care items, grooming items (hairbrushes, tweezers, hair ties, etc.), small tissue packs;
- Dental kits – individual toothbrushes and covers, toothpaste, floss, nonalcoholic and travel-size mouthwash;
- Warming kits – gloves, hats and beanies, HotHands (hand and toe warmers), thin fleece blankets;
- First aid kits – Neosporin, band-aids, triple antibiotic ointment, gauze, individual sterilizing wipes, calamine lotion;
- Supplies for families – laundry baskets, laundry detergent, dryer sheets, toilet paper, hand soap, trash bags, paper towels, Clorox wipes, new body and hand towels;
- Healthy snacks – granola bars (especially protein bars), beef jerky, peanut butter packs, fruit snacks, nut packs, applesauce cups;
- Gift cards – Fred Meyer, Target, local coffee shops, local restaurants, and visa cards.
To coordinate a delivery or pick-up time for donations of any item(s) on this list you would like to make, contact Ben Martens, Jackson Street’s Communications and Events Coordinator, at ben.martens@jacksonstreet.org or 541-321-0116.
By Emilie Ratcliff
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