Today we met with J’reyesha and Santi at the Student Commons at PCC. We were formally introduced to each of them, their history in the environmental activism scene, what their current occupations were, and how they approach environmental Justice in communities around Portland. Specifically, they introduced to us Artivism, which is the use of art as a means to promote activism. J’reyesha highlighted a few of the projects she helped coordinate, such as the painting of electrical boxes to help brighten up communities. Afterwards, they introduced the activity we did, which were zines. Zines are a collection of different text and images to display particular message. Each of us created a singular page for our own zine using a variety of different magazines, focusing on what environmental activism meant to us. Once everyone finished, we glued each of our pages to the zine layout to finalize our art.
After meeting with J’reyesha and Santi, we went to the Hoyt Arboretum to go on a hike. We encountered a variety of interesting plant life, including the only redwood to produce pinecones in the western hemisphere.
Later in the day, we watched the documentary “Broken Treaties”. The documentary covered the extensive history of the colonization of indigenous Americans in the Pacific Northwest by White Americans and the American government. The documentary covered the numerous treaties in which indigenous tribes gave up their tribal land in exchange for resources and commodities. The resources and commodities were never provided due to the treaties never being ratified in Congress. Thus, indigenous American groups, tribes, or nations were forcefully migrated to unwanted land with no resources or commodities to help them survive.
Brandon Pham