Quick little post here to share a mural I finished up at Clear Creek Middle School in Gresham, OR this May. The mural idea came from 8th grade educator Lindsay King after reading My Name is LaMoosh with her Social Studies students.  The book chronicles the life of Linda Meanus a Tribal Elder from Rock Creek and Wyam peoples, now in Warm Springs, Oregon. 

She shares stories of growing up with her grandparents Flora Thompson and Chief Tommy Thompson near Celilo Falls on the Nch’i-Wana or Colombia River, the largest trading center and fishery on the West Coast. In 1957 Celilo Falls was flooded in the erection of the Dalles Dam and erased the sound of the rushing falls as well as an economic hub for Indigenous people of the West Coast. People traveled across Turtle Island to trade at Celilo Falls.  

Throughout the book Linda speaks of all the things she learned from her elders.  So Lindsay had the idea to ask her students to do the same.  Students interviewed an elder and took pictures of being taught something.  Then we took the photos and arranged them, after which I added some additional elements to bring vibrancy and movement to the mural composition.  Not all 150 students photos made it into the mural but some of the skills shared were working on a car, learning guitar, working with super 8 film, making chicharones and playing sports. 

Over the month of May all 180 students painted Clear Creek’s first mural featuring some of the photos taken by students and by Mrs. King during the semester.   The mural is the first thing that students see when they arrive in the morning and leave in the afternoon. The wall is 45 feet long and 16 feet high and features a segment of a loosely translated quote “They tried to bury us, They didn’t know we were seeds.” that you might be familiar from the immigrant rights movement, and based on a couplet by Greek philosopher Dinos Christianopoulos.  To us this phrase felt appropriate during this time of increasing anti-immigrant and anti DEI sentiment in the States as well as the way that young people’s gifts and skills are often overlooked by our society.  Gresham Barlow is a very ethnically diverse school district in Oregon and we wanted to celebrate the beauty of that diversity in our mural as well as the joy of intergenerational knowledge sharing and play.