[OR_Archaeology] Rose Quarter Development Project: Museum Concept

[Wendy Ann Wright]

Dear colleagues, friends and family,

As some of you may know I am involved in a campaign to bring a world class
museum of natural and cultural heritage to the City of Portland, Oregon.
 This museum would be located in the Memorial Coliseum along the east bank
of the Willamette River in Northeast Portland and serve as an important
cultural destination for local citizens and global tourists.

Our concept has been submitted to the Rose Quarter Development
Project<http://www.rosequarterdevelopment.org/>,
largely due to the hard work of two Portland State community members, Ms.
Gina Botel, Graduate Student in the Conflict Resolution Department and Dr.
Virginia L. Butler, Professor in the Department of Anthropology.

The Museum Concept has secured a presentation before the Stakeholder
Advisory Committee <http://rosequarterdevelopment.org/sac.php#membership>,
chaired by Mayor Sam Adams.  Currently we are a small group of students,
professors, and community museum enthusiasts, but support for this concept
is growing fast.  We have received letters of support from the Northeast
Neighborhood Coalition, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and many
others.  Still, we are up against some well funded competition and need more
help from you, groups you are involved in, schools, tribes, federal
agencies, local bureaus, and many other community partnerships.  Please
consider contacting me for ways you can support the Museum Concept as an
individual, community based group, organization, business or government
entity.

The Museum Concept team aims to create a holistic understanding of our
pacific region by linking the past to the present. Natural events, species
migrations and human settlements have all shaped our biosphere and the way
we live today.  Through interpretation and hands on learning, the museum
hopes to inspire people to become active citizens for the sustainable future
of their local and global environments.

My personal reason for becoming involved in this process is because I want
to see the historical significance of the Memorial Coliseum embraced not
only for its grand architecture, but also for its history of people and
lives.

The Memorial Coliseum site is historically significant because past urban
renewal practices here led to the destruction of a number of businesses and
476 homes<http://lostoregon.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/mem2.jpg?w=500&h=325>,
roughly over half of these belonging to African Americans.

The development of Memorial Coliseum in the middle of this neighborhood in
1959 marks an event that has made a significant contribution to the broad
patterns of our local  and national history of disinvestment in African
American communities through public policy and development across the United
States.  There are certainly other reasons this site might be significant as
well, including the arrival and history of Europeans and other immigrant
communities who lived in the Rose Quarter area, and the history of local
Native American tribes who have been in the region since time immemorial and
have also been negatively impacted by past policy and development at the
local, state, and federal level.

My hope is the Rose Quarter Development Project will help share these
stories, and be a source of social and economic capital for the City of
Portland, particularly for communities of color who have suffered at the
expense of past policy and development in Portland.  I believe the Museum
Concept can help attain this goal.

For more on the Museum Concept please contact me or better yet come see a
presentation by Ms. Gina Botel and Dr. Virginia L. Butler and other concept
teams this evening, Tuesday, January 26th.  The presentations will be
projected on giant screens in the bowl of the Memorial Coliseum.  RSVPs are
necessary for the event.  You can do that
here<http://rosequarterdevelopment.org/tickets.php>.
 Be sure to print out tickets.  The Museum Concept team presentation is
scheduled to go on at 6:15 p.m., doors open at 5 p.m.

Can't make it this evening?  There are other ways you can support the Museum
Concept.  Contact me for questions, ideas, and suggestions.

Sincerely,
Wendy Ann Wright

--
Wendy Ann Wright
Portland State University
Anthropology Department
503-853-0595
www.web.pdx.edu/~waw <http://www.web.pdx.edu/%7Ewaw>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition,
on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation,
and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize
gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the
spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult
task."
BARACK OBAMA, Inauguration Speech, Jan 20, 2009
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