Oregon Folklife: Our Living Traditions
Oregon Folklife: Our Living Traditions explores community-based arts and culture in the context of local history. With author Joanne B. Mulcahy, we visit each of the state's regions to discover how ethnic, religious, occupational, and recreational communities tell stories, create material arts, and participate in rituals and celebrations. Mulcahy, who directed The Oregon Folk Arts Program from 1988 to 1991, has conducted fieldwork throughout the state. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies; her book, Birth and Rebirth on an Alaskan Island, chronicles the life of an Alaska Native healer. Mulcahy is currently Assistant Professor at the Northwest Writing Institute of Lewis and Clark College and Director of the Writing Culture Summer Institute.">
compiled by Joanne B. Mulcahy
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Introduction: What is Folklife?
Oregon folklife includes myriad traditions passed down intergenerationally and often informally by diverse cultural groups. Our values, beliefs, and aesthetics take shape in crafts, music, languages, stories, food, games, and rituals. These vernacular forms often emerge in the “contact zone” of cultural encounter, sometimes creating hybrids as cultures change. We do not simply coexist; we shape and alter one another, each of us contributing to Oregon’s vibrant traditions.
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The Oregon Coast
Indigenous people, descendents of Scandinavian, Irish, and other European groups, and occupational communities of fishermen, farmers, and loggers all shape coastal culture. Folklife adapts to our waterways and the land, connecting these diverse groups but also revealing different views of nature and culture. Economic shifts toward tourism and greater environmental protection are also reflected in changing art forms and cultural practices.
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The Willamette Valley
The notion of “Eden” remains central to the rain belt west of the Cascades. Settled by “webfoot” pioneers, the Valley’s inhabitants diversify more each year. Spend a week here to challenge the notion of folklore as “quaint,” rural or apolitical. Explore skateboard culture, Chinese opera, Palestinian textiles, Jewish Sabbath, Hmong funeral rituals, and the revitalization of Native American cultures. Stay for a year and witness the adaptability and resourcefulness that mark all of our cultural expressions.
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Central Oregon
A mix of ethnic, occupational, and recreational groups create the cultures of this rapidly changing region. New histories form as previously hidden stories emerge from descendents of Japanese Issei, Native Americans and other groups. At festivals, ranchers mix with rock climbers, Mexican tortillas with fry bread at food stalls. Central Oregonians sometimes clash but also collaborate to preserve their shared landscape.
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Eastern Oregon
This ten-county area sustains the confluence of diverse cultures: the cowboy world of the Pendleton Round-Up; Chief Joseph Days’ Celebration; John Day’s Kam Wah Chung Company; the “Four Rivers” of the Snake River Valley’s Japanese, Native American, Basque, and Hispanic legacies. The metaphor of distinct waters swelled into a shared stream reveals both change and continuities in the arts and cultures of this rich region.
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Southern Oregon
Southern Oregon’s traditions encompass tales of Hathaway Jones, La Llarona, and ghost stories of the Ashland stage; the verbal and material arts of Native American groups; a deeply rooted Hispanic legacy, and the pioneer heritage of the Applegate Trail. All invite us to ponder how folk arts take shape in relation to and sometimes tension with one another, producing novel forms and new cultural stories.
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