EXPO CENTER/HALL A
12 Event Opening, Altar Contributions/John Edmo drumming/singing
12:30 Performance / Tonya Leads Us in Song
1-2 Story Circle
2-3 Ed Edmo on Celilo Falls
3 Taiko drunming
Blackberry Tea Meditations
3:30 Closing
Through the day
Pop- up exhibits
Murals created by Alex Chiu during Vanport Mosaic Stories in Movement Story Circles with Vanport and Albina community members
TOURS:
12:30 - 2:30 pmSoft Earth Hard Ground
12:30 Force Lake birding and history walking tour
12:00, 1:00 and 2:00 at Historic Marker: former head of the US-DOJ office of civil rights, will give a 20 minute talk about Vanport at three different times
First, we remember. And after?
This site-specific installation seeks to honor the many-layered histories that have taken place in the town known as Vanport: land theft, flooding, displacement, and incarceration that have affected the Indigenous, Black, Japanese, Japanese Americans, and Vanport communities. These histories are unknown to so many people who choose to live in Portland at the continued expense of these communities.
First, we remember. And after? also investigates the responsibility of the present moment. Once you become aware, what happens next? Currently, Oregon Metro is developing a process to envision a new use of the Expo Center and the surrounding 53 acres of land. This process will not let us forget: that this is land stolen from the Clackamas, Cowlitez, Multnomah, and Confederated Tribes of Siletz, Grand Ronde, Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla Natives; the atrocities that happened in Hall A to the Japanese and Japanese American community; nor the negligence and flooding that displaced tens of thousands of Vanporters. This lands’s legacy is interwoven with these undeniable realities. Will Metro’s plans truly center the justice and healing this land cries out for? That these communities have not seen for 75 years and more?
Let us weave our voices together, stronger in their diversity, to preserve this place as a site of conscience and to demand that the future of this place is by and for communities. In hope, new paths are possible.
Please join us at the Portland Expo center to participate in this site-specific installation on Saturday, May 27th from 12 - 4 pm. This work is one among several gorgeous offerings by artists and creatives dedicated to this work from Japanese American Museum of Oregon, Colloqate, and artists Sia Hanna, Tonya Abernathy, and daniela del mar.