Part of the 7th Vanport Mosaic Festival May 20 - June 7, 2022
Festival Program Here
Join us between 12-4pm for An afternoon of Re-membering & Re-seeding Liberation:
Free/open to the public
Expo Center - Hall A
Free and Open to the Public
Bring seeds, a cup for lemonade/tea and an open heart to transmute the pain, celebrate survivance and everything in between.
We will re-member this place alive through various stories of place curated over the seven years of this festival. We will re-member this place alive into a future that includes re-seeding our intentions and imaginations for land justice.
Throughout the day we will to reflect on the 80 years since the creation of Vanport and issuance of Executive Order 9066, an offering to remember the history and spirit of Vanport, the Japanese and Japanese American people who were incarcerated here, and the peoples of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River.
There is no schedule, nor fixed program. We gather and experience together throughout the afternoon activities and cultural offerings led by Indigenous, African American, Japanese American and Latinex artists and community weavers
Here some of the offerings:
REMEMBER US BY CHISAO HATA - a temporary memorial to Japanese Americans held at the Portland Assembly Center in 1943 honoring their history, loss, erasure and continuing ReClaiming of Culture, History and and Stories.
JAPANESE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF OREGON will display history boards, signage, photos and memorabilia of the Portland Assembly Center
Portland Expo Center staff will be presenting the Japanese American Museum of Oregon with the original 1942 Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) blueprints from the Portland Assembly Center (temporary detention center)that was once housed in this very building. The blueprint was discovered by Expo Center staff while cleaning one of the spaces and noted immediately as significant. The Expo then had the piece archival framed to protect the document and included a plaque explaining its significance as part of the experience of the 3,676 Japanese-Americans detained here in the summer of 1942.
ARCHITECTURE OF INTERNMENT: THE BUILD UP TO WARTIME INCARCERATION by Graham Street Production: traveling exhibit exploring how Oregonians participated in the decision to incarcerate Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II.
VIDEO ALTAR by Joemil Santos: A container for our converging stories: past, present, and future; a space to enter willingly, contemplate quietly, and love unconditionally; an altar for the land and its people; a place to amplify, honor, present, and preserve the silenced histories that surround us; an opportunity to be in circle, to be present, to witness, and ultimately, to choose: How will these stories live on? How and what will you add to these stories? What action will you take to make sure these stories never repeat themselves? (content curation: Story Midwife Laura Lo Forti)
LAND ART - CURATED BY RIDHI D’CRUZ - We will re-member this place alive through various stories of place curated over the seven years of this festival. We will re-member this place alive into a future that includes re-seeding our intentions and imaginations for land justice. To support this re-membering and re-seeding, we will collaborate with some land-artists to make paper and cordage out of blackberry vines as a way of honoring this place as it is now, thorns and juicy berries alike. We will seed our intentions and imaginings of what healing and liberation is for this place into paper made from blackberry, with seeds and words. Land Artist Collaborators: daniela del mar of letra chueca press, Chlöe Hight, Jenn Woodward from Pulp and Deckle Song Artist Collaborator: Tonya Abernathy who sings with Grupo Masato Other Collaborators: Jessica Rojas and Diego Hernandes from Metro Regional Government
Storytelling by ED EDMO and Drumming/chanting by JOHN EDMO
DESIGN AS PROTEST place-claiming
