On October 19, Oregon Origins Project came to the Reed College campus on Woodstock Boulevard in southeast Portland. Helmed by founder Matthew Packwood, the project brought in four artists from different Oregon tribes to present Keeping Traditions Alive. This event showcased, as Oregon Origins described it, an “extraordinary gathering of Indigenous artists and culture bearers from across Oregon.”

Though Packwood is not from Oregon, his move to the state from Louisiana by way of North Dakota immediately inspired a sense of place and wonder that he had not experienced before. He describes the Origins project as “fundamentally an exploration of place” that “… becomes more than creative events and cultural traditions. It becomes a personal communion between people. A way of recognizing the humanity in each other.”

“Any of these culture bearers could do a show by themselves,” said Packwood. 

Beth’Ann Gipson, basket and jewelry maker

Beth’Ann Gipson, a member of the Cow Creek tribe, specializes in basketry and traditional jewelry native to southern Oregon and Northern California. Her journey into traditional basketry began in 2012, when Tabitha Johnson, head of the Cow Creek cultural office, reached out to tribal members to see if anyone wanted to learn the skill to carry on the tradition. 

“There were seven or eight of us that wanted to do this initially,” Gipson said. “Just a few of us stuck it out.”

She studied under five different master weavers from the Yurok and Karuk tribes in northern California. These tribes had never let the tradition die, so the basket-weaving tradition was, and is, very much alive with these makers. Verna Reece, Lena Hurd, Alice Lincoln Cook, Denna Dodds and Theresa Surbaugh taught Gipson what to do and how to do it, but they did not make it easy. It was a journey just to learn from them, as most of these women reside in small towns such as Orleans and Happy Camp, lining the Klamath River in California’s Humboldt County. “I personally want to thank all my mentors for guiding me back to the lands and our traditions,” Gipson says. 

“Verna told us in the beginning that we probably wouldn’t weave for five years,” Gipson said, adding that learning about the materials for the baskets came first. “They weren’t handing out any materials, and there was no purchasing allowed. We had to learn the seasons for gathering, and how to process the materials. Some materials take a year before they are ready to work with. A lot of our plants hadn’t been gathered in a century, so the plants themselves had to be cared for, the forest tended and trimmed back; traditional burns were used to clean the lands and grow healthy, pliable basket materials. You also can’t take too much, as the plants need to grow again.”

She does have her favorite materials to work with: hazel and willow for the stronger framing parts of the basket, and spruce root for the body. The weavers work with about ten different materials, so in order to have things for future projects, everything must be gathered, sometimes years in advance. Knowing exactly which plants to gather is integral as well, as one type of fern might be brittle and unsuitable for weaving, but a closely related and nearly identical species might be perfect for the job. Other plants are used for dyeing the material, such as alder bark, used for an intense earthy red to add detail in some of the more ornate, ceremonial baskets. Maidenhair fern is a black overlay plant material. 

The process is time-intensive, and clearly few people will be cut out for the rigors of being a maker. In preparation for making a specific type of open-weave gathering basket, Gipson waited for a year, gathering and stashing all the hazel and willow for the day when she would be able to make these with one of her mentors in Alsea, Oregon.  

She is deeply involved with ethnic revitalization for the Cow Creek people. It is important to Gipson that younger tribal members are exposed to the art form. 

“Even if they aren’t getting their hands into it, being exposed to it is a great form of education,” she says. “Teaching them the culture for the next seven generations.”

The Seventh Generation was an idea that came up several times throughout the discussions with these women. It stems from the Great Law of the Iroquois, and asks us to think seven generations ahead and to guide our decisions so they benefit future generations. 

Jacy Sohappy, regalia maker

Jacy Sohappy, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, is a seamstress and maker of regalia. She is the traditional arts manager for Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton in addition to working for Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland.

“I come from a really strong line of native women,” Sohappy says. “Even though these women don’t walk the earth anymore, I can still hear their voices as they guide the way for me. My grandmother poured all this love into these creations for us. She poured all this love and she didn’t even know us yet.”

She presents her craft with a passion that only someone truly driven in their art form can have. Her presentation described everything that goes into the manufacture of these items, from the beading to the hazards of using a sewing machine. 

Sohappy became very emotional at times when describing the work and devotion that her family members put into the traditional sewing. She began beading in high school, though it is something that doesn’t come as naturally to her as sewing, as she doesn’t like sitting still for long.

Her beadwork is incredibly detailed. Hats with multicolored brims, moccasins positively dripping with minute patterns, traditional woolen dresses covered with shells and ribbons. She refers to making clothing for other people as “pouring into other people’s cups.” She works with some very expensive material, from companies such as Teton Wool, which sells for around $80 a yard. When you want your work to be handed down to your great-great grandchildren, you work with the best.

For years, she didn’t want to take credit for the intricate work she’d done for other people, but she says the compliments are easier to take now. She takes care to be very intentional when crafting these pieces, as she believes the person wearing the final product will feel the intention put into the item. Her daughter has a beading desk of her own in the sewing room, preparing for her own seventh generation path.             . 

Acosia Red Elk, jingle dancer

Acosia Red Elk presented her way of blending native dance and yoga as a way of helping people find a greater mind-body connection. Another Umatilla tribal member and raised on the reservation, she is a jingle dancer, a dance based around specific regalia that are covered in small bells. 

Her father was a survivor of the boarding school system and passed away when she was young. She describes herself as having been an angry child, and very much a tomboy. As someone who was not a full-blooded tribal member, she often felt that she did not belong in many of the tribal dances and ceremonies. Growing up on the rez, she says, she had a lot of trauma to deal with, and she credits dancing with showing her the way out of pain. This gave her the power to speak and trust her voice. 

She got started with the dance when her sister gifted her a jingle dress for a powwow event, and she was incredibly nervous to dance in front of the other tribal members. The nervousness led to tears the first few times she performed with the rest of the tribe, unsure of the songs and the movement, and lacking the experience to perform confidently. 

Eventually, she met someone who instilled the confidence to perform. The father of her children told her early on that she would be the top jingle dancer in the world. They raised their children on the powwow circuit, traveling from event to event, with tipi poles permanently lashed to the roof of the vehicle. 

She views movement as a form of medicine. The call and response of the traditional songs and dances has the potential to heal. There are two styles of jingle dance at powwows: the old way, and contemporary. Red Elk is a contemporary dancer. This is a far flashier form than the traditional dance — bright colors and more modern movements, combined with the willingness to change with the times. In April of this year she won a coveted Doris Duke Artist Award in dance. 

When her relationship with her children’s father ended, she got involved with the practice of yoga, something that brought a whole new dimension to her life. There were prophecies in some native traditions that spoke about tribes from the east bringing healing to the tribes of the new world. She sees yoga as that gift. It has brought her another level of confidence. She combined the two practices and called this new form Powwow Yoga, a method to get people out of their own heads, and to guide them to a mind-body balance. It is a modern ceremony, combining breath and body in a way that helps everyone heal themselves from within. 

Moving the body and (literally) shaking things up is a way of releasing old emotions. “Issues live in our tissues” is one way she describes the idea of finding and releasing all the anxiety and frustrations of our past. 

The dance she performed at the Reed event was based on an old Aashinaabe tribal form from the Great Lakes. It started with a medicine man trying to heal his child. He sought out healers from a northern tribe, and they gave him the sound of the Northern Lights. Returning to his tribe, he taught the women to perform this longhouse dance. The dance mimics the sound of those lights. Long brass bells cover the dress used for this dance – they make a whooshing sound as the dancers bounce and oscillate to the rhythm. This dance is a way for the dancers to express themselves in the moment. There is no set choreography; the dance unfolds with all participants moving in unison, yet it is completely improvised.

Of course, during the presentation, it was just Red Elk dancing on the stage. It is hard to imagine the cacophony that would ring out with dozens of dancers present alongside her. Sure-footed and moving with the beat, it is easy to envision another time and place (far away from the Reed College Performing Art Building auditorium) where a large group would be participating, with more faces eagerly waiting and watching for the next dance to begin. 

Red Elk is an athlete. These dances are vigorous and taxing, yet she never seems to tire. 

Dancing heals people, and if she can change one person’s life, she feels that she has done her job. 

Patricia Whereat Phillips, storyteller

Patricia Whereat Phillips, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, rounded out the evening. A storyteller and ethnobotanist with a more than passing interest in language, she studied linguistics at the University of Oregon in the 1990s. One of her many missions is to bring back Hanis, one of the surviving languages of her tribal confederation. The last fluent speaker of Hanis passed away in 1972, but the language is undergoing successful revitalization efforts thanks to Phillips and other tribal members.

“Storytelling is one of the oldest art forms,” Phillips says of her chosen art. “People have been telling stories since they had a language to speak.” She is a natural at it, the stories flowing from her easily. Gifted with a fantastic memory, she adds details about other animals within the stories that drift from the main idea, but make the narrative even more entertaining. 

Her first story of the evening centered on Cape Arago on the Oregon Coast. An old fisherman would go to the cape with his lines and his nets. His fortune was terrible, with no fish to bring home, two days in a row.

He finally netted a fish at the end of the last day, and when he was ready to club it, it spoke and told him that if he didn’t keep it, he would grant the man great luck. He returned the fish and became wealthy enough to have his own longhouse. But his wife became greedy and told him to ask the fish for more. He called and called for the fish, who finally came. The fish chided him for being greedy, then cursed him to be poor for the rest of his days.

The second story was about the five grizzly bear brothers that formed Heceta Head. These brothers were mean, always attacking people. The locals finally came up with a plan to rid themselves of the nasty bears. They tricked all the bears, goading them to try climbing a great wall that they had built, and one at a time, the locals kill the bear brothers. The last bear is finished off by an old woman, who pours boiling pitch on him before removing his heart. The bodies of these bear brothers encompass the rock formations, jutting out into the Pacific. 

Phillips said that many of her more gruesome stories are deeply enjoyed by the children who she entertains and educates, while sometimes leaving the adults feeling a little stunned by subject matter. She is animated, and the stories flow from her in such a natural way that it is easy to see why the children love her. These stories are treasures, and they have the perfect keeper. 

An evening-ending round dance

The evening ended with a Round Dance. All members of the audience were invited to the stage, where they formed a double circle, everyone stepping to the left in unison, with Red Elk leading the crowd in these last joyful moments. It might seem trite to have this large gathering of mostly white folks dancing to native music in the last moments of the night. But it was, in fact, beautiful. 

This is the message of what Oregon Origins Project does with every event that it puts on. It brings people together in an atmosphere of learning and celebration, where every last person, both artists and audience, can share in a new sense of community.