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City Club of Eugene: "(Re)Writing the History of Oregon."

The City Club of Eugene’s weekly program is posted on Friday at noon on the organization’s Facebook page. This week’s program is “(Re)Writing the History of Oregon.”

The Thanksgiving holiday ahead celebrates a relationship between Pilgrims and Native Americans that is mythic in nature, weaving together fact and fiction. Local stories of the arrival of “Oregon pioneers” aren’t much different. In this season, it is appropriate to ask: who wrote the history behind these myths, and what were their goals? In writing Oregon’s history, what was included and what was left out? We need to consider what really happened when White settlers encountered Oregon’s Indigenous people in the 1800s—and what that means for our Northwest today.

Many of us learned a simple, heroic story of the foundation of Oregon in school, focused on Lewis and Clark, fur traders, and covered wagons. In truth, the first White settlers in Oregon were initially well known to have been brutal, violent conquerors. In the decades that followed, the writers of Oregon’s historical narratives clashed over whether to isolate or celebrate the violence. Eventually, they converged on an open strategy of erasure, nourishing a false nostalgia for a peaceful colonization that never was. Oregon’s violent history was imperfectly hidden from view.

In this program, Marc Carpenter and Jennifer O’Neal will discuss how Oregon’s history has been written and rewritten, what steps were taken to shape incomplete narratives, and how they work and collaborate with Native American communities to tell more true and accurate accounts of this history.