Monday Mailing - October 5, 2020

RARE Monday Mailing Year 27 | Issue 03 05 October 2020 1.

Quote of the Week:

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“Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.”

- Carl Jung

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The US Government Took the Land of Oregon’s Native People 170 Years Ago This Week (Katie McFall) Oregon Department of Agriculture: The Agriculture Quarterly Resilience: Leaning In To Recovery After a Disaster What’s Changed in Oregon Since the Timber Wars?

(Katie McFall) Connecting Fishermen with Hungry Communities Can Also Benefit Local Food Systems The Path to Rural Resilience in America Visitors Association: ‘Love from a Distance’ to Support Wildfire Recovery Backers of Metro Transportation Funding Measure Say Climate Change Is on the Ballot Rebuilding the Foundation of Rural Community Health after COVID-19 It’s His Land. Now a Canadian Company Gets to Take It. RESOURCE: COVID-19 – Impacts on Cities and Suburbs: Key Takeaways Across Multiple Sectors

The US Government Took the Land of Oregon’s Native People 170 Years Ago This Week

OPB One of the most pivotal days in Oregon’s history occurred before the state of Oregon even existed.

Oregon Fast Fact “Buckaroo” is an actual term for horsemen who have worked on ranches and rangeland in SE Oregon for over 150 years. It is an anglicized version of the Spanish word “vaquero”.

More info.

Oregon became a state in 1859. But nine years earlier, on Sept.

27, 1850, the Donation Land Claim Act became law. That makes this week the act’s 170th anniversary.

It allowed white settlers — and only white settlers — to claim 320-acre parcels of land in the Oregon Territory, which included the modern states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Wyoming. Married couples could get double: 640 acres, or a full square mile of land, free of charge.

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The impact was staggering: In 1849, there were only 9,000 European Americans in presentday Oregon; by 1860, there were 50,000.

Read the full story.

2. The Agriculture Quarterly Oregon Department of Agriculture Strong westward winds, low humidity and hot temperatures on Tuesday, September 8, transformed small fires burning in the Cascades into super-charged, fast-moving infernos that forced thousands of Oregonians out of their homes. We have since heard many amazing stories about people banding together to save their communities, homes, farms, and livelihoods. Almost immediately, shelters were stood up to host people, their livestock, and pets. It’s estimated that more than 5,000 animals were sheltered across the state, finding safety at several of our county fairgrounds facilities. Countless more animals were rescued and sheltered by various private groups and citizens at no charge.

Thousands of Oregonians pulled together during this time, including farmers and ranchers.

Those with equipment and local knowledge of the terrain, hopped on their dozers and filled up their water trucks before firefighters could respond. They began battling the flames, saving homes, farms, and livestock. In several communities—such as Scotts Mills— farmers, ranchers, and other local residents are credited by many with saving the town.

These acts best describe how tight-knit and selfless Oregonians and the agriculture community really are.

Read the full publication.

3. Resilience: Leaning In To Recovery After a Disaster The Ford Family Foundation It is Josh Bruce’s job to plan for the worst. As program director of the Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience, Bruce and his University of Oregon team help communities all across Oregon prepare to respond to and recover from potential disasters. Earthquakes.

Forest fires. Floods. His team even worked on an economic resiliency plan addressing the effects of a massive influx of tourists for 2018’s eclipse. But a global pandemic? Not so much.

“We talk so often about the need to prepare for anything, but a global pandemic was not top of mind for me,” Bruce says. “Now that it’s happened, communities are dealing with the ever-changing situation and its ramifications.”

Read the full story.

4. What’s Changed in Oregon Since the Timber Wars?

OPB It was the most unlikely mascot. It spent its life in trees, looking pudgy, brown-eyed and curious. If you knew how to call it, it would answer you. But few people bothered, because RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 2 of 5

the northern spotted owl preferred a life of seclusion among the mossy giants of the Northwest’s ancient forests.

Until the late 1980s, most Americans didn’t know it existed and didn’t think much about the woods in which it lived. That was before environmentalists used the birds' preference for old trees as a rallying cry to protect the bird under the Endangered Species Act, thus preventing chainsaws from leveling its forest habitat. It was a tactical move that used the power of the TV news media to introduce the public to the beauty of these majestic trees, the size of which most of the world had never seen. But the move also triggered an intense conflict that reshaped the social, environmental and economic fabric of the Northwest for a generation. The spotted owl became the face of what became known as the timber wars — a conflict with consequences that are still being borne out today.

Read the full story.

5. Connecting Fishermen with Hungry Communities Can Also Benefit Local Food Systems Civil Eats While delivering food boxes this summer to tribal communities in Oregon’s Columbia River watershed, Bobby Rodrigo was floored by what he saw. Tribal members were living in campers and RVs with no electricity, a single hose for running water, and no permanent structures except for a bathroom. Meant to be temporary, these “in-lieu fishing communities” were created in the 1950s when the federal government-built dams that forced tribal members to leave their ancestral fishing grounds.

It was like “being in a homeless shelter, without the infrastructure,” said Rodrigo, who is part Mohawk, a member of the Native American Committee of the American Bar Association, and legal and operations director for We Do Better Relief.

Read the full story.

6. The Path to Rural Resilience in America Center for American Progress The current economic crisis in the United States requires a renewed commitment to investing in rural communities in order to ensure that they have a prominent place in this country’s future. Given the changing nature of the rural economy, the lack of upward mobility in many rural communities, and the persistent gap in unemployment and poverty rates between metro and nonmetro counties, the United States needs to overhaul its current approach to rural development and create a new framework that builds resilient rural communities. This new framework must call for a complete change in mindset about what constitutes rural America, the assets within these diverse communities, and the struggles they face.

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Rethinking rural development policy will also require investing in these communities from the bottom up instead of the top down, empowering them to identify and leverage their existing assets and knowledge and to promote homegrown economic opportunities.

Read the full story.

7. Visitors Association: ‘Love from a Distance’ To Support Wildfire Recovery KVAL The tourism and lodging industry in Oregon has had a rough year. With the wildfires on top of the pandemic, the hardship is trickling down to the families in small towns, working behind the scenes in hotels and restaurants.

Brad Niva with Travel Southern Oregon says the small towns of Talent and Phoenix drive the tourism industry in the area’s larger cities, Ashland and Medford. Those small towns are still reeling from the Almeda Fire that tore through this summer. Niva says 80% of the kids that go to Talent Elementary School are now homeless and 50% at Phoenix Elementary are homeless.

He said that some big companies, like Dutch Bros., Boise Cascade and Rogue Credit Union, stepped up to help families in the wake of the fire, but now they need your help too.

Read the full story.

8. Backers of Metro Transportation Funding Measure Say Climate Change Is on the Ballot Portland Mercury An unexpectedly contentious political fight over a Metro transportation funding measure is shaping up to pit big business interests against environmental concerns—and Portland area voters will have the final say in November.

In early 2020, Metro’s $5 billion transportation funding ballot measure was on track to sail through the November election with the support of a broad coalition and little organized opposition. The measure, which if passed by voters will fund a new TriMet MAX line along with a bevy of safety, transit, and infrastructure improvements across the Metro region, had the support of local elected leaders, transportation and environmental advocates, and business interests, all of whom worked together to craft the measure’s project package.

Read the full story.

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9. Rebuilding the Foundation of Rural Community Health after COVID-19 The Medical Care Blog COVID-19 has exposed the cracks in the foundation of America’s rural community health system. These cracks include increased risk of facility closures, loss of services, low investment in public health, maldistribution of health professionals, and payment policies ill-suited to low-volume rural providers.

As a result, short-term relief to stabilize rural health systems and long-term strategies to rebuild their foundations are necessary. In this post, we propose four policy cornerstones on which to rebuild the rural health systems. They include new financing and delivery models, community engagement, local health planning, and regionalization of delivery systems.

Read the full story.

10. It’s His Land. Now a Canadian Company Gets to Take it.

ProPublica This past spring, while much of the country focused on COVID-19, three men who work in an obscure corner of the federal government weighed a question with profound effects across the American West. On the docket was a proposal to build a natural gas pipeline that would slice through hundreds of miles of Oregon wilderness, private lands and areas sacred to American Indians. The plan, which had been repeatedly rejected by state and federal regulators for more than a decade, would give a Canadian company the right to seize the land it needed from any American property owner who stood in the way. The government panel that would make the decision can meet in person. But on this March afternoon, it was conducting the people’s business in writing — government by what amounts to dueling memos.

Read the full story.

11. RESOURCE: COVID-19 – Impacts on Cities and Suburbs: Key Takeaways Across Multiple Sectors Urbanism Next How is the COVID-19 pandemic changing urban living? In this paper, we explore the landscape of COVID-19 disruptions to date on land use and real estate, urban design, building design, transportation, e-commerce and retail, and goods delivery. We also highlight the longer-term questions and potential ongoing impacts COVID-19 might have on the built environment.

Access the full publication.

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