Tug Collective

13/10/2017

We'd like to introduce 'Columbia,' one of the newest, permanent members of TUG Collective. She's been with us for about a month now, helping us to shoot a film along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Keep an eye out for Columbia while she's in Omaha, and please join her at the Fair Deal Village MarketPlace (2118 N 24th St.) on Saturday, October 14, 10 am to 2 pm, for conversation.

13/10/2017

We're back, coming to you from Omaha, Nebraska, where we are Artists-in-Residence at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. You can listen to what we're up to here Friday morning (9:41 Central Time) on Nebraska Public Radio's NET Radio's Friday LIVE. You can listen online at netnebraska.org or watch the live stream video at netnebraska.org/interactive-multimedia/radio/friday-live-live-mill-81.

Host Genevieve Randall has lively discussions with people and groups involved with arts and humanities in Nebraska. For more information visit: http://netnebraska.org/fridaylive

16/07/2016

Renato Rosaldo “Cultural Citizenship and Educational Democracy”—The term ‘cultural citizenship’ is a deliberate oxymoron, a pair of words that do not go together comfortably. Cultural citizenship refers to the right to be different and to belong in a participatory democratic sense. It claims that, in a democracy, social justice calls for equity among all citizens, even when such differences as race, religion, class, gender, or sexual orientation potentially could be used to make certain people less equal or inferior to others. The notion of belonging means full membership in a group and the ability to influence one's destiny by having a significant voice in basic decisions. The term ‘citizenship’ includes the legal definition where one either is or is not a citizen and where all citizens should receive equal treatment and enjoy equal opportunity. Yet the term moves a step further to embrace a notion that is at once more subtle and more familiar. People often speak of citizenship, not as an either/or matter, but along a continuum from full citizenship to second-class citizenship. Most people in the United States probably would agree that democracies aspire to achieve full citizenship for all their members. Nobody should have to settle for second-class citizenship. The term ‘culture’ introduces vernacular ideas about first-class citizenship. If you want to know about first-class citizenship, don't run to a dictionary. Go instead and ask the person concerned. In low-income neighborhoods, the people concerned will speak of goods and services, jobs and wages, health care and housing, education and income-segregated neighborhoods. Without the material conditions that give people reasonable life chances, other questions of vernacular citizenship may recede into the background. In more favorable material circumstances, people will speak about well-being, thriving, dignity, and respect. Or, by contrast, they may speak about feeling unsafe, violated, humiliated, and invisible. The process of learning vernacular definitions of full to second-class citizenship involves the art of listening attentively to how concerned parties conceive, say, equity and well-being. For example, a man must listen attentively, and curb his culturally conditioned tendency to make authoritative pronunciamentos, as a woman talks about what gives her a sense of well being and dignity. To do otherwise would be like hearing somebody say that he or she felt thirsty and then trying to convince him or her that they were mistaken.

15/07/2016

We made it to Cape Disappointment a few days ago and are happy to report that this bold, beautiful promontory does not live up to its name. It was along this dynamic shoreline, between aquatic wetland and tidal shore, that Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery fulfilled a key goal. Although they had not found a direct water route to the Pacific Ocean, they had reached the edge of the continent. After wintering over in Ft. Clatsop, surviving only because the Chinook and Clatsop provided them with food, the Corps set out on its return trip, and even as they were making their way back east, wagon loads of settlers were headed west. In less than 60 years, Euro-Americans would multiply across the vast lands that had been traversed by the Corps. Thomas Jefferson’s bid to form a nation that would stretch from coast to coast would be advanced. In 2011, descendants of William Clark gave Chinook tribal members a new canoe in return for the one stolen by the Corps in the spring of 1806. Brian Elliot, a direct descendant of Chief Comcomly, the principle leader of the Chinook Confederacy at the time, was at the ceremony with his wife, Linda. They watched their children with pride paddle in the ceremonial regalia up the Columbia River, which the Chinook call Hyas Cooley Chuck. Standing atop the river at the Elliot’s home on the Washington side, and then later across the river in the town of Astoria, Oregon, we were certain that we could reach out and touch the vessels coming off the ocean shipping lanes and into the river channel. Stunning in their enormity, the ships were actually a half-mile away from shore. Drew Herzig had invited us to Astoria to realize the end of our expedition. As the Chair of the Lower Columbia Diversity Project, his imprint is everywhere, whether it be interjecting issues of misogyny, transphobia, racial justice, or workplace diversity into the public consciousness or providing mutual aid to organizations such as the Lower Columbia Hispanic Council. Astoria’s fishing industry was once a haven for Yugoslavs, Greeks, and Norwegians. By 1907, half the town's population would be Finnish. Brian Elliott still remembers how he and his cousins stuck out when time came for them to leave their one-room schoolhouse and integrate with the larger public schools. The Chinese would come later and take on the hard work in the canneries. Now it’s immigrants from Latin America—predominantly Mexico—that form the backbone of the fishing industry. There is much work to be done to assure that these newer arrivals are treated with dignity and respect. Jorge Gutierrez and Maritza Beltran, Executive Director and Program Coordinator of the Hispanic Council, are trying to right the ship, reaching out to law enforcement, employers, health care providers—and anyone who will listen. Progress is slow, but the work that they are doing to get there is profoundly fulfilling. All eyes are on the next generation. We spent some time with a few of them yesterday morning at Peace Lutheran Church in Astoria. They’re a diverse bunch, eager to tell their stories. We ran into Matteus, an adventurous eater from our morning cooking class, later at the River People’s Farmers Market. “I’m addicted to these tacos,” he deadpanned, as he started making up siblings to give a taco to so that he could have more. “More” was on our minds last night, as we gave our final performance and spent time with folks bewildered by the state of the state (and world) and grappling with how to engender more of that which our world needs.

13/07/2016

Rebecca Solnit “Wound” [from The Faraway Nearby]—Some empathy must be learned and then imagined, by perceiving the suffering of others and translating it into one's own experience of suffering and thereby suffering a little with them. Empathy can be a story you tell yourself about what it must be like to be that other person; but its lack can also arise from narrative, about why the sufferer deserved it, or why that person or those people have nothing to do with you. Whole societies can be taught to deaden feeling, to disassociate from their marginal and minority members, just as people can and do erase the humanity of those close to them….Empathy makes you imagine the sensation of the torture, of the hunger, of the loss. You make that person into yourself, you inscribe their suffering on your own body or heart or mind, and then you respond to their suffering as though it were your own. Identification, we say, to mean that I extend solidarity to you, and who and what you identify with builds your own identity. Physical pain defines the physical boundaries of the self but these identifications define a larger self, a map of affections and alliances, and the limits of this psychic self are nothing more or less than the limits of love. Which is to say love enlarges; it annexes affectionately; at its utmost it dissolves all boundaries….If the boundaries of the self are defined by what we feel, then those who cannot feel even for themselves shrink within their own boundaries, while those who feel for others are enlarged, and those who feel compassion for all beings must be boundless. They are not separate, not alone, not lonely, not vulnerable in the same way as those of us stranded in the islands of ourselves, but they are vulnerable in other ways. Still, that sense of the dangers of feeling for others is so compelling that many withdraw, and develop elaborate stories to justify withdrawal, and then forget that they have shrunk. Most of us do, one way or another.

12/07/2016

Bubonic Plague. Yellow Fever. Cholera. Small Pox. Typhus. We spent two days in a turn-of-the-[last] century “pesthouse,” surrounded by the artifacts of an era when migrants entering the United States through the Lower Columbia River were poked and prodded for disease before being sent along to be naturalized in Portland, Oregon, quarantined, or deported. We were guests of the Knappton Cove Heritage Center, a complex of buildings in Naselle, Washington that reveals the different lives this nitch of the river coast has seen since members of the Corp of Discovery clung to the edge in 1805 to ride out a dismal, six-day storm that temporarily prevented their progress to the Pacific Ocean. These lives have included: A cannery (1876-1899), whose packing label depicted Lady Liberty holding a salmon instead of a torch; the U.S. Public Health Quarantine Station (1899-1938), which became known as the Ellis Island of the Columbia River; a fishing camp and moorage facility (1950s), owned and operated by Clarence and Katherine Bell; and now a heritage center established by the Bell’s daughter, Nancy Bell Anderson, and maintained by Nancy, her brother, Tom Bell, and a corps of members. “Membership doesn’t really come with any special benefits,” Nancy tells us, breaking out in laughter as she realizes the extent to which the Heritage Center, which is now listed as a National Historic Site, is a labor of love for everyone involved. It was Nancy’s penchant for creative programming—no doubt influenced by her years as an elementary school teacher—that envisioned the mash-up on Saturday afternoon between our Taco Encampment and a presentation by Jesus Reyna, a registered nurse and Region 10 Minority Health Consultant for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Lieutenant Commander Reyna came down from Seattle with his family to talk about several of his recent deployments: To the U.S.-Mexico border in 2014 to work with unaccompanied minors from Central America; to Liberia that same year to help with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa; and most recently to Flint, Michigan to work with Spanish-speaking residents caught in the flow of the city’s disastrous crisis with lead-contaminated water. The tools and tactics of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have changed since the department ran the Quarantine Station (see the e***a cans pictured below), but not the impulse to prevent the spread of communicable disease—an impulse which now extends compassionate care around the world. Nancy is so thrilled that Knappton Cove was chosen to host a swearing-in ceremony this fall for new citizens that she invited President Obama to attend. “I doubt he’ll come,” she says, but no one can fault her for her pervasive optimism. In the meantime, Nancy—ever the promoter of the role of the U.S. Public Health Services—would like to remind everyone to wash their hands…or else!

09/07/2016

Roberta Conner “Our People Have Always Been Here” [from Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes, edited by Alvin Josephy Jr.]—To hear tribal history requires listening to many connected stories all interrelated, just as all things in creation are connected. Looking back at our tribes' recent past, the arrival of Lewis and Clark and company is part of the same story as that of subsequent arrivals-other explorers, then trappers and traders, then emigrants-which led to the Treaty of 1855 and the tribes' move to the reservation. These are not events unique unto themselves. They are connected to ancient times and modern times because they shape the stories of our people, who are still here, and the stories of our lands on which we still live. Lewis and Clark are also connected to subsequent incursions by the Founding Fathers' visions of a continental nation and the consistency of methods used to obtain lands and to justify the taking of them from l1ative peoples, reaching back to the 1400s. If each person’s life is a story, then the lives of Lewis and Clark and the Indians who received him or her are not only the story of the time of the expedition. In one lifetime much would change. Men who were little boys at the time of the expedition's arrival would, forty-nine years and seven months later, be asked to cede their homeland to Lewis and Clark's a great chief: albeit the man in the presidential chair had changed. One tribal leader would argue in 1855 that they had been good to Lewis and Clark but that they had been blind. In Clark's next career as superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Missouri Territory, he would use the relationships he made with some tribes during the expedition in order to move them to what is now Oklahoma. Each story unfolds to the next story. They are not isolated.

08/07/2016

A cancelled gig in Idaho opened up our schedule and allowed us to freestyle our way west through the spectacular Clearwater National Park and into the plateau of Eastern Washington, a shift in topography that caught us off guard. Washington is the Evergreen State, and yet this eastern half is predominantly shrub-steppe vegetation—sagebrush, bunch grass, and prickly pear cactus—except, of course, in those spots where humans are now cultivating green grass and shade trees and where Big Ag has taken over with golden fields of soft wheat that feather on for miles and leave a nutrient-depleted, chalky soil. We crossed into Oregon to spend a few hours at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, a destination that had been on our radar since reading “Our People Have Always Been Here,” an essay written by the Institute’s Director, Roberta “Bobbie” Conner (Cayuse, Umatilla, and Nez Perce) and published in Alvin Josephy’s edited volume, Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes. Seeing history through Indian eyes still takes our breath away, no matter how mindful we are to avail ourselves of those perspectives, and the Institute has done a spectacular job of curating the past and the present in tactile ways that disrupt the narrative of American exceptionalism. Bobbie was working with colleagues in the bookstore/gift shop, so we introduced ourselves and had a lovely conversation that expanded beyond her writings and activism. A fortune cookie consumed at dinner offered us something serendipitous: “Travels from nesting space will take you to a broader cultural horizon.” Does the opposite hold true, as well? Does always being here mean that one’s horizons are closed off to the multiplicities of human experience? The next morning, we stopped at the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers. When Lewis and Clark arrived here in 1805, they noted the abundance of salmon—modern projections into the past estimate a population of roughly 16 million. Today, the progeny of those salmon must traverse four dams to reach their spawning sites, and not far from the confluence, the taco has taken root and multiplied. We entered into the Columbia River Gorge and spotted Mt. Hood in the background, a handsome sight. We leave for Naselle, Washington today to ready ourselves for an event with Jesus Reyna, a nurse and officer with the US Department of Health and Human Services, at the Knappton Cove Heritage Center—the “Ellis Island of the Columbia River.”

08/07/2016

“We need to mitigate the deleterious effects of this strange partisanship—fueled by elitism, fear, arrogance, paranoia, and aggression—with communication and education.” Jim was not the only person to express such pointed and impassioned pleas at our Taco Encampment last Friday. It was First Friday in Missoula, and time for the town’s monthly Art Walk. You’d think that operating out of a gallery located in an alley would make for thin crowds, but that wasn’t the case. The Co-Directors of FrontierSpace do a bang-up job and we are so grateful for the four hours of constant contact we had with folks. “Steady. Steady. Steady,” Frank offered as the evening was winding down. That’s what it’s going to take for us to live together. “One step at a time.” A BIG hug to Tyler, Tressa, Sarah, Reanna, and Brock for your labor of love (aka running FrontierSpace). Brock…thanks for the photos. We love your water jug light diffuser!

06/07/2016

Mary Louise Pratt “In the neocolony: modernity, mobility, globality” [from Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation]—The term "globalization" has emerged to name the epochal shift in global relationships at the end of the twentieth century. But its most conspicuous mark perhaps is the demise of a narrative of progress that was widely shared by people in very different circumstances across the planet. The grand narrative of modernity, which included all humanity in its teleological design, slowly lost its grip on imagination and actions….For many people the imperial character of the new global order was obscured for a time by a legitimating language of free trade, flow open markets, a global acumen. And yet, the reverse diaspora of people from the ex-colonial countries to the cities of the ex-colonizers was mainly caused by multinational capitalism's latest scheme to maximize profits through indebtedness and low wages, both abroad and at home….Though only about four per cent of the world's people are thought to be in the migrant stream at any given time, the normative backdrop of immobility ("home and here") against mobility ("elsewhere and away") is no longer the basis for the geo-social ordering of the world, nor the sale criterion for citizenship and belonging. New geographers will be required to map the planet reconfigured yet again by the vast mobilizing powers of technology, curiosity, necessity, and empire.

05/07/2016

“Vote for Juneau, you know?” It’s hard to capture the slow rhyme to the voice of the MC who rattled off this line spontaneously at the 118th Arlee Esyapqenyi (Celebration) on the Flathead Reservation in Montana over the weekend. Denise Juneau, Democratic candidate for US Congress, was addressing the crowd of hundreds gathered inside the main pow-wow space. “I know the Republicans were here yesterday,” she started in. “They fed you food and all. But don’t let that fool you.” Her message was clear: Vote Democratic. “I would be the first Indian woman in Congress,” she pointed out. “So, if Indians vote, I win.”

04/07/2016

Mary Poole had just given birth to her first child when Aylan Kurdi’s body washed ashore off the Turkish coast. The images of the three-year-old toddler, who drowned with his brother and mother in an attempt to reach Greece from Syria, awakened an impulse in Mary that most of us would feel, but few of us would be likely to act upon. Could we not welcome some of these refugees here, Mary thought? An affirmation made aloud in the company of friends gave founding to Soft Landing Missoula, and now, less than 12 months later, the Garden City is set to welcome its first 100 refugees. The journey from Point A to Point B has been met with controversy (surrounding counties have vowed to ban refugees) and generosity (high school students have already organized to pull together backpacks—complete with supplies—for their future classmates). It’s also been met with lots of room for personal growth for Mary. What do you do when people you consider friends espouse a position that comes from a place of fear? As one local reporter put it, Mary has had to learn “to funnel the passion into closing the divide that separates polarized points of view.” It helps to have Betsy Mulligan-Dague, and the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center that she’s Executive Director of, by your side. Betsy, whose featured in the documentary, Beyond the Divide: War, Peace, and the Courage to Find Common Ground, has been practicing the art of civil discourse and conflict resolution for some time now, developing curricula for the public schools, writing a children’s book, giving workshops, and being an ally to those who advance peace, justice, and sustainability. “There’s a great undercurrent of powerful and positive movement here,” Betsy shared with us when we met her and Mary at the Peace Center, named in honor of the first woman to hold elected office. We’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to live in a country that lives up to its ideals of democracy, equal opportunity, and generosity. An undercurrent, like the one Mary and Betsy have chosen to channel, direct, and move within, seems paramount, even if it means having to re-commit oneself to those ideals each and every day.