Monday Mailing - February 8, 2021

RARE Monday Mailing Year 27 | Issue 21 08 February 2021 1.

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“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.

Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

- Harriet Tubman

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Nez Perce Tribe Reclaims 148 Acres of Ancestral Land in Eastern Oregon (Grace Kaplowitz) Lessons from Oregon’s Historic Wildfire Season Turn Off That Camera During Virtual Meetings, Environmental Study Says (Grace Kaplowitz) Bills Would Make Companies Pay for Recycling System in Oregon (Bree Cubrilovic) New Program to Reduce Childhood Hunger in Eastern Oregon Wyden, Merkley Propose New Protections for 4,700 Miles of Oregon Rivers (Katie McFall) Census Delay Leaves Oregon’s Redistricting Process in a Lurch (Katie McFall) Putting Indigenous Place-Names and Languages Back on Maps (Eva Kahn) Creative Collaborations Support Vibrant Downtowns PODCAST: Common Community Engagement Mistakes with Kevin Lyons, FlashVote

Nez Perce Tribe Reclaims 148 Acres of Ancestral Land in Eastern Oregon

Oregon Public Broadcasting The Nez Perce Tribe is reclaiming an ancestral village site in the Eastern Oregon town of Joseph more than a century after being pushed out the area.

Oregon Fast Fact Ancer Haggerty, born in Vanport, OR, was the first African American to serve as a judge on the federal court in Oregon.

Read more.

This month, the tribe purchased 148 acres of an area known as “the place of boulders,” or Am’sáaxpa.

Chief Joseph held council on the ridge above, before a sweeping view of the Wallowa Mountains. Hundreds of tribal members would camp there at the peak of the fishing season and catch sockeye salmon along the Wallowa River.

“There’s a lot of excitement buzzing around,” Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee Chairman Shannon Wheeler said.

Read the full story.

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2. Lessons from Oregon’s Historic Wildfire Season

American Planning Association If someone told me a year ago I would spend part of 2020 masked and door-knocking in a hotel in a pandemic, carrying my inhaler to combat smoke irritation, I would have thought that sounded more like a dystopian novel than real life. Yet that is my memory of September: delivering meals to families and individuals taking refuge at the Graduate Hotel in Eugene, Oregon, after the Holiday Farm wildfire forced them to evacuate their homes.

Last year saw unprecedented damage from wildfires, both in Oregon and across the world.

The Holiday Farm wildfire ravaged the ancestral land of the Kalapuya, Molalla, Winefelly, and Yoncalla tribes, as well as the lands of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, otherwise known as the Willamette Valley.

While delivering meals served an immediate need, it felt like merely step one in the face of so much damage. Coming off my weekends volunteering and supporting mutual aid efforts, I felt overwhelmed and lost. How could we move beyond volunteering as triage? I wanted to help sustain momentum toward long-term recovery, both as a resident and a young planner, but I did not know where to start.

Read the full story.

3. Turn Off That Camera During Virtual Meetings, Environmental Study Says Purdue University It’s not just to hide clutter anymore – add “saving the planet” to the reasons you leave the camera off during your next virtual meeting.

A new study says that despite a record drop in global carbon emissions in 2020, a pandemic-driven shift to remote work and more at-home entertainment still presents significant environmental impact due to how internet data is stored and transferred around the world.

Just one hour of videoconferencing or streaming, for example, emits 150-1,000 grams of carbon dioxide (a gallon of gasoline burned from a car emits about 8,887 grams), requires 212 liters of water and demands a land area adding up to about the size of an iPad Mini.

But leaving your camera off during a web call can reduce these footprints by 96%.

Streaming content in standard definition rather than in high definition while using apps such as Netflix or Hulu also could bring an 86% reduction, the researchers estimated.

Read the full story.

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4. Bills Would Make Companies Pay for a New Recycling System in Oregon Oregon Public Broadcasting Oregon lawmakers are considering two bills that aim to overhaul the state’s recycling system by requiring packaging companies to take responsibility for their products.

Both bills would create a statewide list of what is recyclable in curbside bins, and both would ban the use of the chasing arrows recycling symbol on packaging that isn’t actually recyclable.

House Bill 2065 came out of a two-year recycling stakeholder committee process led by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Gov. Kate Brown is backing that bill, which calls for packaging companies to share the cost of recycling with governments and consumers. It would require companies that produce packaging, paper and disposable food service ware to form a producer responsibility organization that would develop a plan for recycling all of the items on the statewide collection list and meeting a yet-to-bedetermined goal for plastic recycling.

Read the full story.

5. New Program to Reduce Childhood Hunger in Eastern Oregon Lake County Examiner As part of its ongoing COVID-19 relief and recovery efforts, No Kid Hungry, a national campaign to end childhood hunger in America, has invested $800,000 in four rural partnerships designed to increase access to healthy food for adults with children whose households experience high rates of food insecurity.

Selected Lead Partners include Communities Unlimited, Mississippi, Eastern Oregon Healthy Living Alliance, FAST Blackfeet, Montana, and Presbyterian Healthcare Foundation, New Mexico.

These partnerships are each engaged in a community-centered approach to increasing access to food through produce RX and voucher programs in cooperation with local health clinics. The four organizations will also work together as a learning community to share best practices and to propel each other to stronger, more effective models for local adoption.

Read the full story.

6. Wyden, Merkley Propose New Protections for 4,700 Miles of Oregon Rivers Oregon Public Broadcasting Oregon’s U.S. senators have proposed an enormous conservation package that would shield thousands of miles of the state’s rivers from development.

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Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats, on Wednesday announced the River Democracy Act of 2021, which would add nearly 4,700 miles of Oregon rivers and streams to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers system.

The bill would nearly triple the total number of river miles with Wild and Scenic protections in Oregon and includes waterways in almost every part of the state. It would also expand the amount of land protected in Wild and Scenic River corridors from a quarter-mile on both sides of the river to a half-mile.

It amounts to one of the largest public lands conservation proposals in state history.

“I was completely blown away by the number of miles included,” said Gena GoodmanCampbell, who directs the stewardship program for the Oregon Natural Desert Association.

“We’re just thrilled that Sen. Wyden decided to go bold.”

Read the full story.

7. Census Delay Leaves Oregon’s Redistricting Process in a Lurch Oregon Public Broadcasting Oregon lawmakers are scrambling to retain control over how legislative and congressional districts are redrawn this year after the U.S. Census Bureau revealed it could not provide data in time to meet the state’s deadlines.

The once-a-decade process of drawing new district maps happens after the completion of each new census, and is a significant power for the state Legislature. It helps dictate which political party steers Oregon for the next 10 years.

But under the Oregon Constitution and state laws, lawmakers are facing a hard deadline for creating new maps. It has to be done by July 1.

This year — largely owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and litigation — lawmakers won’t even have a chance to meet that cutoff. The Census Bureau revealed late last month that states should not expect official data for redrawing districts until July 30, at earliest.

Read the full story.

8. Putting Indigenous Place-Names and Languages Back on Maps Esri Newsroom How many Indigenous Nations and communities can you name? Who are the Indigenous Peoples original to the land you now reside and work on?

I have always been surprised by how few nonindigenous peoples are able to answer these questions. With thousands of Indigenous Nations existing throughout Turtle Island (North RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 4 of 5

America)—and more around the globe—how is it possible that most settlers cannot name more than a handful of Indigenous sovereigns?

In 2014, while serving as a tribal coleader for the former Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Body of the United States’ National Ocean Council, I was confronted, again, with this phenomenon of Indigenous invisibility while reviewing our Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal.

In examining this digital mapping interface—which federal and state agencies, fishery management councils, and broader stakeholders throughout the United States regularly use—I noticed that Tribal Nations were absent from the map.

I realized in that moment that the absence of Indigenous participation in broader ocean planning forums has a deep connection to our erasure in maps. If we are not on maps, we usually don’t have a seat at the table. And there is no justice for Indigenous Peoples if we are not participating in the decision-making that affects our territories.

Read the full story.

9. Creative Collaborations Support Vibrant Downtowns Oregon Heritage Exchange A healthy and vibrant historic downtown or neighborhood district doesn’t just happen. It takes the dedicated efforts of a broad spectrum of partners who value the central role these district’s play as the heartbeat of the community: a place to shop, eat, work, live, invest, and play. Collaborations take many forms – from one-time partnering on a specific project or activity to deeper partnerships forged over time.

Read the full story.

10. PODCAST – Common Community Engagement Mistakes with Kevin Lyons, FlashVote GovLove Pizza, beer, & public input. Kevin Lyons, CEO & Co-Founder of FlashVote, joins the podcast to discuss community engagement. He highlights common mistakes made with various types of communication channels as well as mistakes organizations make in town halls, social media, online forums, and surveys. Kevin also shares with resources to improve community engagement.

Listen to the full story.

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