October 2008 Stories

From Tractor to Trustee Meeting

“My dad likes to say that farmers were the first environmentalists,” says politics student Janelle Duyck ’08, who grew up on a farm in Hillsboro, Ore., patched jobs together to get through school, and graduates in December.

She still helps out on the farm for a month every summer, driving tractor 16 hours a day to get through the rows — berries, wheat, corn and grasses spread across hillsides and flatlands. “My dad has memorized the phone number for the weather,” says Duyck, who’s inherited his work ethic.

Her first summer after college, she canvassed door to door for OSPRIG, a public interest advocacy group, creating awareness about global warming — in temperatures that sometimes topped 100 degrees. “We talked about renewable energy legislation — from 10 in the morning until 10 at night,” says Duyck, who carried a backpack of literature for miles. “You learn a lot about people when you go door to door.”

She also advocated for a more sustainable lifestyle at Willamette, where she and Maya Karp ’07 created a sustainable floor in Matthews Hall. Her roommates used low-flow showerheads and cloth towels instead of paper. They turned out lights, composted kitchen scraps in outside flowerbeds, and turned over old event flyers to print new events on the back. They carried reusable mugs with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, “Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water.”

“Our goal was to make our little community more environmentally friendly and to lower our carbon footprint,” Duyck says. “The uncertainty about our environmental future scares me, but I’m optimistic. I think people are good, and we’re trying to do the right thing. You can be a realist and an optimist at the same time.

“I used to look at things as black and white, but since coming to Willamette I’ve spent more time trying to understand the gray areas. A true democracy rests on people being educated enough to understand issues, and Willamette teaches you to think critically and keep an open mind. I’ve learned that two very intelligent people can arrive at very different conclusions.”

Willamette has been a great fit for Duyck in other ways as well. “It’s small enough that you can really make a difference,” she says. She chaired the Sustainability Committee in Kaneko Commons, chaired the student judicial board, organized the “I’m Dreaming of a Green Holiday” alternative gift market, and coordinated a vegetarian barbeque, where she created awareness of the environmental and health benefits of vegetarianism. She even advocated for a sustainable campus in a presentation to University trustees.

“I tried to focus on small things people can do, things that wouldn’t really have that much impact on individual lives, but would make a difference collectively.

In a motivational speech she gave to incoming students, she said, “You chose Willamette because it’s a great school, so it may seem perfect. But it’s not — and that’s good. Everything can be improved, including this community, and the school is small enough that you can really make a difference and inspire others if you capitalize on the opportunities.”

Duyck will graduate in December, and her goals then? “I want to do something with my life that has impact,” she says, “but even seemingly insignificant jobs can help people. With my education and job experience, I feel that my options are endless, whether it’s going to grad school in politics or law, working at the state capitol, or working with a nonprofit group, especially one focused on sustainability.”

And when she needs a breather from good works, she can always fall back on the affinity for nature she inherited from her farmer dad. “Some of my friends laugh at me,” Duyck says, “but I really do like to stop and smell the roses.”

The Art of Understanding

When a woman from the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw dons a cap made of dentalium shells and feathers, she is honoring the coastal tribes’ tradition of covering the head in white to mimic the bald eagle. Families from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation craft hand drums of deer skin, sinew and wood to use in their longhouse ceremonies. A wealthy young bride in the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs might wear a veil of dentalium shells, beads and coins as part of a Columbia River Plateau tribal tradition.

The regalia items Oregon tribes use in their private ceremonies — including weddings, funerals, feasts and dance ceremonies — are as important as the celebrations themselves. These headdresses, staffs, drums, necklaces and other pieces reflect the tribes’ traditions while showcasing the artistic talents of their creators.

“Outfitting a dancer for a ceremony requires an array of artistic skills and of natural materials,” Anthropology Professor Rebecca Dobkins says. “The artist needs access to a body of knowledge, family connections and training. Generations of knowledge about artistic process and the natural environment are embedded in each object.”

To share their traditions and artistic processes, all nine of Oregon’s federally recognized tribes loaned regalia — some from their personal family collections — to an exhibition at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, The Art of Ceremony. These pieces are not what the public is used to seeing at powwows, says Dobkins, who curated the exhibition. Much of the regalia used at public powwows is based on intertribal styles originating in the Great Plains.

To create ceremonial regalia, Native people use items found in their environment, making the pieces unique to each tribe’s history and geography. This regalia is used in community rituals the general public rarely sees. “Many tribal members feel the public does not understand the degree to which ceremonies continue in the daily lives of Native communities,” Dobkins says.

Fostering understanding between those communities and the public has long been a goal for Dobkins, who grew up around multiple Indian groups in Oklahoma and learned about West Coast tribes while living in the San Francisco Bay Area during graduate school.

“There is an enormous gap between the lives of American Indian people and nearly everyone else. There’s a saying that Native Americans are familiar strangers. Their presence is everywhere, but people aren’t aware of the Native world all around them. When I ask my students to name the tribe indigenous to where they’re from, nine times out of 10 they have no idea.”

Since coming to Willamette 12 years ago, Dobkins has successfully nurtured relationships between the University and the region’s tribes, partly in acknowledgement of the University’s founding in the early 1800s by Methodist missionaries looking to “educate and civilize” the area’s Natives. The Art of Ceremony is the 14th Native art exhibition Dobkins has curated for the Hallie Ford Museum. She also organizes the Indian Country Conversations lecture series to address issues facing Native communities, and she started a program for Willamette undergraduates to tutor students at Chemawa Indian School in Salem.

“There has been an open invitation from the Native communities to be partners and to learn more about each other,” she says. “I want Willamette to share in that relationship because I think there is so much to be gained for our consciousness as a community. Our motto, ‘Not unto ourselves alone are we born,’ implies that you are born into a family, a community, a place. It has implications that are very resonant with Native philosophies.”

In 2005, Dobkins brought an exhibition of the intricate weavings of New Zealand’s Maori people to campus, making the Hallie Ford Museum one of just three venues in the world to display the works. A delegation of Maori came to Willamette to celebrate the exhibition in a procession with members of Oregon’s tribes. The event was meaningful for both sides, inspiring the Oregon tribes to share their own finest artwork at the museum.

The Art of Ceremony won a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, making it Oregon’s 2008 American Masterpieces Project. The initiative was created to acquaint Americans with the best of their cultural and artistic legacy. Dobkins sees the grant as recognition that the regalia items are not just artifacts, but examples of the tribal artists’ master work.

“Art is a process and a transformation,” Dobkins says. “It is the human imagination at work in dialogue with traditions and the past. These pieces are very much part of a living ceremony, but they also stand on their own as beautiful and animated works of art.”

The Art of Ceremony is on display at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art through Jan. 18. For more information, visit www.willamette.edu/events/art_of_ceremony.

‘It’s About Connections’

Singing opera is a bit like playing tight end says football player Josh Lee, who does both with grace.

“There’s a total focus,” he says. “In music, you concentrate on how you’ll hit a note, rather than how you’ll hit a player from the other team. You might be nervous, but you’ve worked out all the details in the practice room, so when you perform you don’t have to think about it — it just flows.

“The same technique happens on the football field. You’ve already put in your time and effort so you don’t have to worry about the next step — just where you’re headed.”

Right now, Lee is headed for a teaching career, working on a Master of Arts in Teaching through Willamette’s one-year graduate program. He’s hoping to conduct choral music, teach math and coach football. “The combination could shatter some paradigms,” he smiles. “I think music is an extremely important part of education, especially today, when so much of what we value as a society is communicated through music.”

Lee didn’t get a good dose of classical music until he got to Willamette. In between football practice, the Willamette Jazz Singers, Male Ensemble Willamette, and a student a cappella group called Headband, he signed up for Chamber Choir and started voice lessons, where he was introduced to composers like Bach and Handel.

“One of the things that attracted me to classical music was the difficulty,” Lee says. “And there’s just a lot of classical music that’s really beautiful. ‘Beautiful’ means different things to different people in different settings, but it comes down to how it makes you feel. Opera focuses on communicating a depth of feeling through music. There is a lot of mental and emotional engagement.”

Lee has been engaged with music since boyhood. At home the family sang before bedtime. He found folk hymns and rock music in church, and at Christmas his father recorded singing cards. During high school he fit musical theatre and choir into his football schedule.

When Lee left home for the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, he formed an a cappella group, which practiced in between mechanical engineering classes and glider training. “A glider is like an airplane without an engine,” Lee says. “You fly behind the plane, and gravity is the only thing that moves you when they cut you loose.”

It seems Lee landed in a good place. On break from the academy, he spent a semester at Willamette, where he shifted from mechanical engineering to music, and decided to stay.

“Now the doors have opened here to pursue music teaching,” he says. The career may also enable him to use summers off to perform at summer opera festivals.

“I want to do something where I can see a difference,” says Lee, who sees a common thread to running football plays, singing arias and teaching students. “For me, it’s all about people. If you don’t do something as a means to love people, it’s meaningless.

“I love football, but if there wasn’t a team and the camaraderie and shared goal, I wouldn’t enjoy it. And I could perform an aria better than I’ve ever performed in my life, but if it’s just about being the best performer, I’ve missed the point.

“It’s more about treating everyone as children of God, who have dignity and worth and need to be loved. It’s about connections.”

Teaching as a Political Act

History Professor Bill Smaldone is a man of mirth, but there’s one thing he’s completely serious about: Teaching. “I regard teaching as a highly political act,” Smaldone says.

“That’s not to say you should inculcate your political perspective, but you should pass on a critical curiosity about the world. Creating an educated citizenry is one of the most fundamental things you can do to create a vibrant political life in America. If we have knowledge, we operate from a place of strength; if not, other people will run the world for us.”

Smaldone has had a lot of practice helping run his small neighborhood of the world. He served as president of the Salem City Council, where his biggest concern was not his next academic publication, but constituents who couldn’t afford heat in the winter and infrastructure that needed an infusion of cash. He now chairs the Southeast Salem Neighborhood Association, which promotes neighborhood parks and public safety, reminds older folks about Meals on Wheels, and mediates with developers.

Smaldone also chaired the Socialist Party of Oregon in 1996, the year the party ran a full slate of candidates, and served on the central committee of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon after the two parties merged with a common platform of social justice and restoration of the environment.

“To be a socialist you have to be an optimist at heart,” Smaldone says. “I believe we are equipped with the ability to feel compassion for each other. Socialism is based on cooperation, emphasizing not only the individual but also the community. If there are crass differences between social classes, it can lead to the rise of violent political extremism.”

Smaldone’s community engagement informs his most recent book, Confronting Hitler: German Social Democrats in Defense of the Weimer Republic, 1929–1933. The book is set at a moment of historical significance. The most significant depression in world history had ransacked global economies, and in Germany 6 million were unemployed amidst widespread business failures. The bankrupt economy provided fertile ground for Adolf Hitler’s violent ideology to take root.

“Americans know a lot about the bad guys of World War II,” Smaldone says. His book recognizes Germany’s Social Democrats — including politicians, trade unionists and women’s movement leaders — who resisted the rise of the Nazis, and examines their defeat from the perspective of individuals enmeshed in political struggle.

“It’s true that individuals can play a critical role in shaping history, but people don’t act in isolation. Germany’s Social Democrats wanted to build a world that you and I could be comfortable in, one based on social justice and democracy, but they operated in volatile social circumstances they couldn’t control. Their failure helped unleash World War II and the later Cold War.

“Democratic socialist movements in the 20th century had revolutionary goals, but aimed to get there through democratic means. They sought to implement change, not through the barrel of a gun, but through peaceful measures. They were run over because politicians on the other side were willing to cast aside democratic rules and resort to brutal tactics. Their failure raises fundamental questions about how to effect change within democracies.”

The messy, gray areas of history are what intrigue Smaldone. “In my high school American history was taught as a march toward consensus,” he says. “I became more interested in European history because it was presented as chaotic.

“The next step won’t always be better. History does not move in a straight line. That’s why we have a responsibility to be engaged in politics, to change the trajectory.”

When Smaldone was making choices about what to do with his life, he sought a profession that “wouldn’t compartmentalize my life.” The overlapping political acts of teaching, research and community engagement have given him a life of great satisfaction.

“Historians have an archaic, medieval kind of job,” Smaldone says. “We’re an old fashioned guild. We don’t punch a clock, and the danger isn’t that we work too little, but that we work too much.” That suits Bill Smaldone just fine.