Many Faces: Ethnic and Cultural Origins of Oregonians - 2/6

Dr. Stephen Dow Beckham will explain how Oregon was built through the efforts of many different peoples.  Native Americans lived with the land and thrived; the first immigrants from the U.S. settled in Oregon and wanted to ‘civilize’ the territory.  Later groups include Mexicans and Chilean packers and teamsters; Chinese heavy laborers; Basque sheepherders; Scandinavian fishermen and loggers; Irish railroad workers; Jewish merchants and bankers; Japanese fruit-growers; African-Americans who were excluded and the Latinos who arrived in the 20th century.  Legal and social limits created and enforced the racism of their times and still haunt the state.

Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S. State St., 7 pm. Presented by Oswego Heritage Council

Stephen Dow Beckham is a historian known for his work with Native Americans and the American West, especially the Pacific Northwest and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He has authored many works and is a Professor Emeritus of History at Lewis & Clark College in Portland.

He was teaching at Linfield College in McMinnville, when Lewis & Clark hired him in 1977 to offer courses on Native Americans, the Pacific Northwest, and the American West. Over the years, Beckham taught in the undergraduate college, the graduate school’s teacher education program, and the law school’s Indian law program.

Beckham was educated at the University of Oregon, UCLA and Oxford University.

Beckham is a contributing author to Volumes 4, 7, and 12 of the Handbook of North American Indians (Smithsonian Institution), is the author of Requiem for a People (1971), The Indians of Western Oregon (1977), and numerous other books and monographs. He has served as an expert witness in Indian land claims, hydropower, and fishing rights litigation and has also worked as a witness in state assertions of its “navigation servitude.” 

Beckham is so admired by his former students he even has a Fan Club on Facebook.