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Maya Lin and the Confluence Project
Artist Maya Lin's latest memorial is a multi-site installation along different points of the Columbia River. From Cape Disappointment where the Columbia River meets the Pacific to the inland intersection of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers, the Confluence Project is a series of installations commemorating the landscape, the people and the cultures that greeted Lewis and Clark when they explored the area. Lin says the project is like "holding up a mirror to reflect back on Lewis and Clark's journey."
The Confluence Project got its start in 1999 as various plans were being made for the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial in 2005. Organizers were interested in how the event could be remembered from other perspectives — particularly from the view of Native American tribes who considered the Lewis & Clark expedition just one in a series of intrusions to their land.
Umatilla tribal elder, Antone Minthorn, began thinking about a project that would reflect his people's role in the Lewis & Clark story. He thought of Maya Lin after viewing a documentary about Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. That memorial, designed in 1981 while Lin was still an undergraduate at Yale, has been called one of the most elegant and emotional monuments ever designed.
One of the installations still being designed is at Celilo Falls. That site holds great significance to the Native American tribes who came from all over the region to fish for salmon at the falls. In 1957, when The Dalles Dam went into operation downriver, the falls were covered by the pooled water. The planned memorial at Celilo Falls will tell the story of this lost place. (You can hear Celilo Falls as it once was in this piece that aired on OPB Radio. You can also see Celilo Falls here.)
How does the Confluence Project serve to remind us of the past and help us look to the future? What questions do you have about the Confluence Project? Have you visited one of the Project sites? What are your impressions? What other memorials 'speak' to you? What about them do you find compelling?
GUESTS:
- Maya Lin: Artist/architect
- Jane Jacobsen: Executive director of the Confluence Project
- Bobbie Conner: Director of Tamastslikt Cultural Institute
- Tad Savinar: Artist, member of design team of Oregon Holocaust Memorial
Photo credit: Courtesy of the Confluence Project
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The inundation of Celilo Falls, to be memorialized by Maya Lin in the Confluence Project, recalls an injustice to both humans and animals that provides a lesson to the nations and people of the world. Former Oregon Senator Richard Neuberger, in a 1941 article in the Saturday Evening Post, noted that a "number of wildlife experts hope to forbid Indians from spearing and netting the homeward-bound salmon at Celilo Falls." He wrote, "if we take even this from the country's original owners, what are we accusing Hitler of anyway?"
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The Oklahoma City Memorial, hands down, most moves and humbles me in its offer, not demand, to think about our treatment of one another.Of the many DC memorials i"ve visited, the Lincoln Memorial speaks deepest to me. In particular, Lincoln's words in his second inaugural address inscribed on the wall.
Question: Some, Tribal Leaders and others, have posed the idea of seeking UNESCO World Heritage Site status for Celilo. How might the Confluence memorial help in seeking that designation?
Charles Hudson
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I have visited the Fort Vancouver Confluence Site. Most freeway travelers think it is just a glorified bike bridge, but it is very informative and has a dynamic landscape.
I love that local projects are being addressed by world famous architects. I think Great Architecture can make the Portland-Vancouver a Great City and world famous destination.
Our greatest natural attractions are Mt. Hood and the Columbia River Gorge. Lewis and Clark highlighted both on their historic journey. And I am sure Ms Lin is familiar with the Columbia Crossing Site.
I would like to ask Maya Lin what she thinks about the current I-5 bridge crossing, the natural features of the Columbia River at the Site, and whether a landmark, modern suspension bridge with iconic towers and lights would help define our city.
I think with the background of Mt Hood and the sweeping waters of the the Columbia River, a beautiful bridge would be a magnet for tourists and photographers and local people who want to walk across the mile wide Columbia. IT is one of the BEST VISTAS on the most famous river west of the Mississipi, the Legendary COLOMBIA RIVER.
From the current bridge you have an unrestricted view of Mt. HOOD, the start of the Columbia Gorge, the mouth of the Willamette River, downtown Vancouver, the Historical First Settlement of Fort Vancouver with its sharpened battlements, the High Speed NW Rail, natural bird flyover wetlands and the broad Mile Wide Waters of Columbia with sailboats, houseboats, salmon fisherman, transoceanic cargo ships and sometimes even Huck Finn children fishing. The Columbia is calm and sometimes foaming but always beautiful. Very few state borders have such a wonderful crossing.
The current bridge proposal is described as a concrete single level slab like the deck of an Aircraft Carrier. It would resemble the current I-205 bridge. It is utilitarian and has a broad back for 8 lanes, but proabably because of budget, will be as plain as any freeway overpass or freeway bypass junction.
I think this is an unsurpassed opportunity of 3 Generations to shape the beauty of the vista for the next 150-200 years. WE NEED A BEAUTIFUL BRIDGE CROSSING ON THE COLUMBIA. A suspension bridge, a modern bridge, a towering bridge, a landmark that defines the Northwest. Where thousands of photographers would descend to see the bridge in all aspects of weather, light and sunset. We should light it up in changeable high effiiciency floodlights and Christmas string lights to make it a nightime landmark. Think of the GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE IN San Francisco.
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How about a bridge that doesn't obscure the views of Mt. Hood with towers and cables. How can a bridge enhance an already spectacular view?
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I have visited the bird blind at the Sandy River delta many times in most seasons. I love the quiet walk through the fields. The delta is a great place for bird watching. However, it is a shame the materials used to build the blind are not suited to the harsh conditions of the Columbia River Gorge. It is already deteriorating. I think little, if anything has been done to maintain the blind. It would be a shame if the blind lasted only a decade before it had to be removed.
I look forward to the completion of the Celilo memorial. I hope it is constructed to last many years. It would be a shame if it didn't last for decades. Future generations need to be reminded of Celilo and what was once there.
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If anyone has seen the World War I memorial in Washington DC, then you know how moving this monument can be.
This momument is dirty, overgrown, and falling apart. It is on the Washington Mall, but no one was there when we visited it. It is almost forgotten, halfhazzardly thrown to the side. It makes me wonder why these deaths are less important to America then the dead of any other war.
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Super inspiring show today. Thank you.
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Though it is small in comparison to many other memorials, I've always found the Holocaust Memorial in Portland's Washington Park to be quite moving. The various bronze cast personal items scattered along the gravel path towards the memorial - a teddy bear, a doll, a suitcase, a tattered boot - never fail to haunt me and remind me of the tremendous innocent life lost during this tragedy.
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And remind us all that the Holocausts still happen again and again and we do little...
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Babies are an ongoing living memorial to me, every time I see one. Every one is a new start, a new attempt at a good life. A new reminder that we ought to care for and about each other. Each one is a sort of reset button for me, to get back to what really matters.
It's people wot matters.
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I appreciate Ms. Lin's Viet Nam Memorial as a 'public place for private memorials'. I am reminded of memorials at small town cross roads with a flag and a bronze plaque mounted on a brick or stone face. Names of Locals who gave their all for us. People known or un-known, remembered every year, with a silent Thanks. I have never seen, in person, Ms Lin's Memorial. We have one here, in the Village. I see it every day. Thanks.
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Good show...but let's look at two not-yet memorialized Oregon stories. First, Canemah, the landing where the native peoples came to fish the Willamette Falls is also a Historic Registered town for steamboat captains that plied the upper Willamette. A large portion of the historic property is in Metro's hands. A place open to the public that has huge Indian significance and the only wagon road I know of in the Portland Metro area still intack. It puts that funky "wagon" to shame in Oregon City, where most of the museum space is from 19840s forward. Canemah is thousands of years of human activity. Lewis and Clark missed it.
Secondly, the Astoria project is over its 200 year mark. And no mention of getting anything ready. Here, you have the tragic Indian story of Concomley's daughters and the chief himself aligning with the Americans and losing, as the Hudson Bay company got the assets jsut before a British warship sailed into the Columbia to capture it as a prisze of the War of 1812.
The comments are right about Lewis and Clark being tourists. Why can't we show true history? Here are two examples with both sides making interesting stories.
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I also think and have faith that babies are a living memory in one day course for a better world. Each is a new beginning, a new attempt at a good life, with a good future. To do this we must begin now to build a new world without war and terrorism, one day will be better! I'm sure!
diabetes | massagens | acompanhantes
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My husband and I love the project so much we recently drove to Pasco, WA to attend the dedication at the site where the Snake River enters the Columbia.
Until recently, neither one of us had known anything about our own Native American ancestors, but now we know that the confluence of our own European male ancestors with Native American women did not go well. For my husband, because of his mother's adoption, his discovery was quite shocking and he is still trying to rectify his identity and how he feels about it. Traveling by car to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming helped him a lot, and it really changed how we both "saw" the Northwest and our place in it.
The Confluence Project is a place that the two of us use to remember who we are, and where we came from—even when the facts are hard for us to accept. Yet, we cannot pick just one favorite site, and that is what we believe the project is supposed to show. Each site is a kind of a snapshot that you see, hear, and feel, yet, they are all part of a whole.
We love the project, we talk it up to anyone who will listen to us, and we look forward to more events in the future! Thank you Maya Lin for creating a new kind of space that we can interact with the tribes on, giving them a stage that is being created with them, and not for them. These spaces respect everyone involved, and are so peaceful.