Think Out Loud

There’s no official definition for the term “food sovereignty,” but the Indian Affairs Bureau describes it as “the ability of communities to determine the quantity and quality of the food that they consume by controlling how their food is produced and distributed.”

Portland-based news outlet Underscore recently tackled the topic in a new series. The Food Sovereignty Project features stories of Indigenous communities in and around the Columbia River Basin rebuilding food systems, reclaiming traditional foods and practices and preserving that knowledge for future generations.

Project co-director Nicole Charley joins us to talk more about the series and the importance of food sovereignty.

Oregon’s Bias Response Hotline connects residents with trauma-informed advocates trained in crisis intervention. The hotline began in 2020, and now, three years later, the hotline’s staff has grown and an emergency fund exists to help people escape situations involving bias. The fund has helped people move away or remove hateful language from personal belongings. We check in with Fay Stetz-Waters, the director of Civil Rights & Social Justice for the Oregon Department of Justice.

Mariachi Tradicion, a band made up of students from Forest Grove High School, has played with the Oregon Symphony, in front of audiences at Pickathon music festival, and will now perform later this month at the Jack London Review. The band was founded seven years ago by Lesslie Nuñez as an afterschool club at the middle school. Now, it is the only band from the Pacific Northwest to attend the International Mariachi Conference in Tucson every year. Nuñez and the band join us for music and conversation

Amateur fossil hunters have been digging at a spot near Mitchell, Oregon for years. They’ve found plenty of ammonites, and one dinosaur toe bone. A few years ago, the Bureau of Land Management granted a permit to the University of Oregon to try to find dinosaur bones at that site. A team of volunteers from the North American Research Group, a local fossil collecting group, along with an emeritus professor at the University of Oregon, set out to see what they could find. In the end, they didn’t find dinosaur bones. Instead, they found evidence that a lot of large bird-like dinosaurs had once spent a time eating and pooping at this spot - it’s likely this was once a home to a nesting colony of pterosaurs. Gregory Carr, who organized the dig, and Gregory Retallack, emeritus professor at UO, join us to talk about what they found.

Sophia Weiss is the owner of Firebird Farms, a working ranch nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains outside of Ashland. But you won’t find any Angus beef cattle roaming and grazing on the rolling hills of her 200-acre property. Instead, you’ll find a herd of about 80 Tibetan yaks which Weiss has carefully bred and built up from a pair she acquired nearly a decade ago off a Craigslist ad.

In October, the USDA Rural Development office awarded Weiss nearly $235,000 to market and develop a range of new products made from her yaks. The federal agency awarded similar grants to 10 other small Oregon farms which it announced last month, in honor of “National Ag Day 2023”. Weiss is now using the grant dollars to work with mills in the Pacific Northwest to process the yak wool she harvests by hand to make into yarn and other textile goods in the coming months. Sophia Weiss joins us to talk about her farm and why she’s bullish about the future of yak ranching in Oregon and the nation.

The city of Stanfield, just southeast of Hermiston, is on the verge of explosive growth. The East Oregonian reports that roughly 450 new homes are set to go up in the next few years, representing a 50 percent population gain to the city of 2,400 residents. The increase means a larger tax base and the possibility of new economic opportunities, but it could also necessitate costly upgrades to the city’s wastewater infrastructure and school facilities as the district anticipates more students.

Stanfield City Manager Benjamin Burgener joins us to talk about the challenges and opportunities of rapid growth.

The Say Their Names Memorial was created in 2020 in response to the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. The memorial honored other Black lives lost to violence including Aidan Ellison who was killed by a white man in Ashland after complaining about Ellison’s loud music.

The memorial has been vandalized three times and the most recent incident happened earlier this year, the Rogue Valley Times reported. Community organizers gathered to repair the memorial earlier this month and are planning a more permanent installation in Ashland Creek Park. Micah BlackLight is a multidisciplinary artist and teacher. His design has been selected for the permanent installation. Cassie Preskenis is a community activist and public art advocate. They join us.

Nikki Kuhnhausen was a trans teen killed in a hate crime in Vancouver, WA in 2019. The new play, “American Girl,” is by playwright Mikki Gillette and based on her extensive interviews with Kuhnhausen’s family and friends. Gillette joins us to talk about the play, and this sadly very American story.

Warrenton Mayor Henry Balensifer says the elk are no longer just a nuisance in his coastal community. They’re actually damaging property and some seniors in the area have been prevented from leaving their homes as elk have charged at them when they attempted to go from their front door to their car. For years, a coalition of groups has been working on how to address this ever-worsening problem. The Clatsop Plains Elk Collaborative has been busy since 2019. Part of the Oregon Solutions at Portland State University, the project team includes the mayors of Warrenton, Seaside and more than two dozen stakeholders. Everything is on the table, the mayor says, including enforcing feeding bans, tagging and tracking, as well as culling. He joins us to tell us more about the plan and what happens next.

For nearly 50 years, parking in Salem’s downtown was free. But a new plan from city officials may bring this to an end. Currently, the costs of maintenance, insurance, landscaping and other amenities in the downtown area are paid through a tax on area businesses. Expenses have now outpaced revenues, which is what led to the creation of a new plan for pay-to-park stations. The local business tax would be repealed. Abbey McDonald is the community reporter for the Salem Reporter. She joins us to share what parking currently looks like in Salem and the impact this change could have.