Join us in an exploration of Mt. Tabor Park and the surrounding community’s history from 1896 to the summer of 2020. By examining critical events, the panel will discuss Portland’s Chinese, Black, and Indigenous communities’ evolving relationships to Mt. Tabor and highlight the park’s significance as a greenspace in the city. The panelists include David Harrelson, Cultural Resources Department manager and member, The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Darrell Millner, Professor Emeritus of Black Studies at Portland State University; Hap Pritchard, Board Member, Friends of Mt. Tabor Park; and Dr. Marie Wong, Professor Emerita, Seattle University Institute of Public Service, Asian Studies, and Public Affairs. Light refreshments will be served.
This discussion is the first in a series of events leading to the composition and later premiere of three new jazz works performed by Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble at the 10th Annual Montavilla Jazz Festival. Find more information on Views of an Urban Volcano here.
Light refreshments will be served.
Views of an Urban Volcano: A discussion on Mt. Tabor Park
March 5th, 2023, 2–3:30 pm at Oregon Historical Society *FREE*
1200 SW Park Ave. Portland, OR 97205
(503) 222-1741
About the Panelists:
David Harrelson is the Cultural Resources Department manager for The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde where he is also a tribal member. David is active in his community and currently serves as an Oregon Arts Commissioner. Working for over ten years in the field of Cultural Resources, David has championed the protection of archaeology sites, maintenance of ancestral lifeways, and proliferation of indigenous art forms throughout his Tribes homelands in Western Oregon.
Hap Pritchard and his wife Bonnie, moved to the Portland area in 2004 to be close to their two children and their grandchildren. The move coincided with Hap’s retirement from an 18-year career at the EPA and a three-year program at the Danish National Environmental Research Laboratory. At the EPA, Hap participated and led programs in environmental biotechnology and risk assessment, the most renowned of which was the use of bioremediation in the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil. Retirement has allowed Hap to teach microbiology at Portland State University and chemistry at Oregon Episcopal School, as well as dabble in his woodworking shop and his model train room. In 2019, he joined the Friends of Mt Tabor board and took on responsibility of managing the visitor center at Mt Tabor Park.
Dr. Darrell Millner holds a bachelor’s in English from California State Polytechnic University and a D.ED. in English curriculum and instruction from the University of Oregon. He began teaching in the Black studies department at Portland State University in 1975, serving as department chair from 1984 to 1995. He is currently professor emeritus and continues to teach as an adjunct faculty member in the department. Millner is an expert on the history of African Americans in the western movement with a special focus on the Oregon and California trail experiences, early Oregon and California Black history, and the history of the Black Buffalo soldiers in the Indian wars. He co-edited the Oregon Historical Quarterly’s Winter 2019 special issue on “White Supremacy & Resistance.” He is perhaps best known to his students as the biggest Los Angeles Lakers fan in Portland.
Dr. Marie Rose Wong is a Professor Emerita with the Institute of Public Service at Seattle University. Wong’s research investigates urban planning and policy, housing, and land use with a focus on Asian American settlements. Her presentations and publications center on Asian American history and urban development that include several articles, a book on Portland, Oregon’s first Chinese communities entitled Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon (2004, 2012), and the history of Seattle’s Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino settlement entitled Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels (2018). She is currently working on book projects that chronicle the histories of Seattle’s Japanese American community baseball, and Seattle’s Luck Ngi Chinese Music Club.
