S4, E10: Illuminating Local History Part 2 with Irene Rasheed and Megan England

In this episode, part 2 of 2, our hosts welcome ILLUMINATION collection team members Irene Rasheed and Megan England about their unique roles on their project teams. They explore how shared community identity and relationships, built on trust, impacted their work and the stories that were shared and what influence this has on how communities interact with libraries and museums.

Listen to Part 1 here.

ILLUMINATION is a history and story collection project started by Madeline McGraw and Mindy Linder to actively work to address representation in its collection, recognizing that museum institutions have historically used gatekeeping and erasure in collection practices. 

Through ILLUMINATION, the museum’s intention is to lead with transparency and accountability, to build relationships and trust with members of the community who have been left out of the historical narrative. The goal is for the Springfield History Museum to offer a more inclusive representation of all the people who have both shaped and been shaped by Springfield and rural east Lane County. For these people to be empowered as stewards of their own stories, and to entrust the Springfield History Museum with the preservation, documentation, interpretation and display of their stories through exhibits, archives and digital collections.

The culminating works from this project will all become part of the Springfield History Museum archive, available to the public. Selected images and narratives will also become part of the permanent heritage exhibit on display at the museum.

Hosts: Kristen Curé & Mindy Linder (guest host)

Date of recording:  December 11, 2025

Mentioned in this episode:

ILLUMINATION virtual exhibit 

Transcript

Kristen: 

Hello, and welcome to OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries, a podcast produced by the Oregon Library Association's Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Committee. I am Kristen. My pronouns are she/her/ella, and I am a public librarian in Oregon and a member of REFORMA Oregon and the Oregon Library Association's Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Committee. It is such a pleasure to be able to continue our conversation about the Springfield History Museum's Illumination Project in this second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't listened to part one, please pause this episode and go back to listen to the first half. We are thrilled to welcome a special guest co-host to the show today. 

Mindy: 

Hello. I am Mindy. My pronouns are she/her, and I'm the community engagement specialist for the Springfield Public Library and History Museum. 

Kristen: 

It is an honor to welcome our two guests today, Irene Rasheed and Megan England. Irene Rasheed is a nonprofit branding and funding consultant, a writer, and a public speaker. She is the collaborative lead on the Monument Project in partnership with the Black Cultural Initiative, which aims to erect a monument in Alton Baker Park in memory of the first Black families who settled in Lane County. She works and volunteers with several local nonprofits such as the NAACP, Ujamaa, and the United Way to help improve their branding, funding, and programming. Her passion is supporting the lesser-known heroes and grassroots work that support the vulnerable and disenfranchised in Lane County. 

Megan England is an enrolled member of the Confederated tribes of Siletz Indians with Chetco, Tututni, and Gros Ventres Ancestry. She lives with her family in Springfield, Oregon. Megan is a historical writer and researcher with special interests in Native history. She works on local history projects that involve archival research and creating interpretive materials to help engage the public. She was a contributor to the Chetco Indian Memorial in Brookings, Oregon, and she recently completed a collection of biographies formed from archival language materials and community interviews about historical tribal elders. Megan is a co-author of the forthcoming historical Atlas of Springfield, Oregon, as part of her service on the Springfield History Museum Committee. Welcome, Irene and Megan. It's an honor to be here with you today. 

Mindy: 

So today's episode featuring Irene Rasheed and Megan England will center around project years three and four of Illumination. The third year and third collection of Illumination centered the Black and African American community, and that team included Michael K. Clint, who was our videographer and interviewer. For the team, Marcus Holloway, also known as M5 Vibe, extraordinary hip hop recording artist, as well as M5 and 5D photography. He was the project photographer who had the opportunity to work with Irene. And then the fourth project year centering the American Indian and Alaskan Native community included Kunu Bearchum, who is Northern Cheyenne and Ho-Chunk. He was the project photographer. Princess Bass Mason, who is a two-spirit Klamath and Western Shoshone tribal member, and they were our videographer and interviewer. And Dr. David Lewis joined the team as an exhibit advisor and he is of Grand Ronde. And so that was the team that had the pleasure of working with Megan as our writer and historian. 

Kristen: 

I have the first question. So Irene and Megan, please describe how you became involved with Illumination and the unique significance of your role on your project teams. 

Irene: 

I have worked with Springfield Librarian History Museum on several projects. And so I came to one of the meetings that they were having regarding Illumination and some other projects really early on and then subsequently was part of that group of people that offered their services. And I might have been one of the few people that wanted to do writing. I think that's kind of how it ended up happening. 

Megan: 

And I got connected to the project through the Springfield History Museum Committee. I joined the committee back in 2021, and I was at the time just looking for local ways to get involved with history and culture projects in the area. I've worked for a couple years now on local history projects, and it's something that's really exciting to me. So when the opportunity came up to help with the American Indian chapter of the project, I joined up as the writer and historian. 

Mindy: 

So each of the four current Illumination community collections have faced both opportunities and challenges during their project years. Can you each please illuminate some of the challenges and opportunities that came up specific to your community collections? 

Irene: 

I think the biggest opportunity was to be able to illuminate a very small part of the population of Springfield and one that goes unseen simply because there just weren't a lot of Black people and people of African-American descent living in Springfield or really remaining. So some had been there, but many had left. So that was both a great benefit and positive aspect and also a challenge. Like, finding the people was a challenge. Being able to find and illuminate their stories was a benefit. I also think that being able to share history from a non-Eurocentric perspective was an immense benefit. That's not to knock the traditional perspective, which is a Eurocentric perspective. It's just because most history is told that way. It's not often you get to hear stories from the groups that are often discussed in a historical context. So I think that was, to me, one of the major benefits. 

Megan: 

And for me, I think an opportunity for the American Indian chapter was just that it was a contemporary project. And that was something that was really exciting to me, because I think for a lot of people, what they know about Native people is in the context of the 19th century and the context of white settlement. And they may know that Native people were removed to reservations and they may know that they have history in the area and that there was conflict over land and things like that. And all of that info is really important, but there's just a lot more that doesn't get talked about very often. Native people have a really rich history in Oregon in the logging industry and local agriculture and education and politics. There's all these different areas that Native people have contributed to local history. And a lot of those stories are connected. There's some historical reasons why Native people have come to live in Eugene-Springfield area, but they aren't talked about very much. So I really found it appealing to be able to interview contemporary Native people and explore our roots and how different people came to the area and how they're staying connected with their tribes history and their traditions, but also kind of looking at the longer scope of the community history. 

Mindy: 

I'd love to follow up on that just a little with each of you. If you could share a bit more about your role as writer historians with each of the collections and how that related to some of the opportunities and impacts you talked about. Because I know, for instance, Irene, you shared that your joining the project came out of one of the community gatherings with the Black and African American community and part of that was actually a recognition that a writer/historian was a role that didn't currently exist and was a real opportunity for the project to further give agency and voice to the community to tell their own stories. And I think that that's really exciting that each of you have now held that role. And if you could talk a little bit more about that. 

Irene: 

Yes. I think when it comes to the African American project, something that was really a challenge and that I feel could not have been properly addressed if we did not have a writer was kind of leaning on what I was saying earlier, the telling of the stories by the people that are represented in those historical narratives and the contextualization of that. Because on the interviewing side and on the interviewee side, we were all part of the same community, the dialogue and the conversations are very different than you would get if somebody outside of the community was asking the same questions because we were talking to each other. And so a lot of what was revealed in those conversations are things that would not normally be for general consumption. And so that was a challenge in and of itself because as a writer, I felt super protective as I was transcribing over the releasing of conversations that would've stayed within the Black community, language and transparency that we have with each other that we might not have with people who are outside of our community, and being able to contextualize that for a wider audience was both a challenge and an opportunity. 

I think the addition of that portion, I know Megan will add even more layers onto that when she stepped into her role for the Native American Indigenous Collection, that was the most impactful thing and the biggest opportunity. And it was a huge challenge. There were parts of the collection. I just didn't want to see the light of day. I just didn't want out in the public. I wanted them archived and saved. I felt the stories were important, but I did not want them out there. And I think it's a different way than history is presented. I just want to say it makes me think of the interviews that were done with formerly enslaved people and they were always done by white people and these people were just coming out of slavery, right. 

And so they would ask questions. And a lot of times I hear the responses to those questions and I recognize that how many of those responses were really genuine, right? How many of those responses actually got to the heart of anything? It was just very compromising. So I do recognize that the forward-thinking of the museum to culturally match the collections with individuals who represent those communities added a layer of truth to what was collected that is often missing historically from our narratives that we have in museums and libraries. And I definitely really appreciate that. 

Megan: 

And I think Irene said it really well, just that with these types of materials, it's a big opportunity to have someone who can step into that mediator role and help with the decision making about what information is emphasized and what themes are pulled out. And just even with some of the practical things like the window exhibit in the museum, there's limited space and we were able to select quotes from each interview that we wanted to highlight. And I think having somebody from that community who could identify what are the themes that are going to accurately represent this person and how might this person want to be portrayed? Having someone who could kind of have that shared connection was really helpful. And I think it did affect the way the exhibit came together. I guess I could say a little bit about the history materials 'cause we haven't mentioned them yet. 

For the fourth year, the Illumination Project added a history component. So I was the writer and I helped create interpretive text for the material, giving introductions to each interviewee and explanations of what their interviews were about and things like that. But I also worked on a collection of historical materials, and that was a big opportunity, but also a big challenge. It was meant to be a companion to give some extra context to what people are talking about in the interviews and just give an overview of the indigenous history of this area. So it starts in early times from time immemorial as we'd say, and then it goes up through removal to reservations and through the 20th century and up to the present day and contemporary times. So that's just a huge range to try to cover. And going into it was pretty challenging just because it was so much information to summarize and it was really hard to narrow down what to talk about with the space available, especially because a lot of native history has been shaped by legislative acts and a history of treaties and the creation of reservations. 

There's a lot of stuff that needs to be explained to help understand how Native people got to where they are today. But in a slideshow, which is the format we were using for this project, there's only so much text you can have on each page. You can maybe have a couple of sentences with an image, but that was kind of limiting to try to figure out how to boil down some of those big concepts to fit the space. And then after you've explained all of this background about these different legal acts, that initially was a majority of what the slideshow was about. And I really wanted it to have more and talk about more variety and about Native people and other time periods beyond just the 1840s and 1850s, but that history isn't as well documented. So I ended up going down a lot of rabbit trails and digging through all of this archival materials and newspaper databases, trying to look for stuff that discussed local happenings involving Native people to put it into this collection. 

So there was the component where I was helping with the interviews and meeting with people and coordinating that part of the project. But then there was this other side where I was trying to organize all of this stuff and make sense of this story that hadn't really been told locally. And so that project ended up being pretty big. And the upside is that now there's a really nice collection on the Illumination website where you can go through and it does have a lot of variety like I was hoping for. And it mentions things like education and the logging industry. But in hindsight, that was just a really big chunk of the project and I learned a lot from working on that. 

And we were fortunate to have Dr. David Lewis as the exhibit advisor for the History Collection. And he also has a book that came out recently called Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley. And that was really, really helpful to have that research available when I was working on the project. And then I was also able to get feedback from the culture department staff at the Grand Ronde and Siletz tribes. And so it was really challenging to bring all of that material together, but I'm thankful that the museum reached out to those different parties to provide support. 

Mindy: 

Thank you both. And I just want to hop in and give a shout out to one of our technical services librarians, Travis Lloyd, who took the enormous body of content that Megan developed for the American Indian Alaska Native historical context and summary and adapted it to our website in a new way. You can either download the PowerPoints in parts one, two, and three. Megan did a great job of dividing them into chapters, but it's also a great exploration virtually to go through on the website. And I just wanted to acknowledge Travis's contribution to that and support of taking Megan's content in making it more accessible to the community now and into the future. 

Megan: 

Yeah. And I'd just like to repeat one more time, kind of going back to the idea about having a person from the community being part of the project, it was a hard decision to have to do all of that side work, but I think part of what motivated me was having a vision for what it would be and wanting to go beyond just removal to reservations and beyond the 1850s and bring it up to the present day. So I think it was valuable to have people working on the project who are from that community who can think of things like that and say, "Oh, this is always the way that this story goes and this is what's missing. This is what we want to make sure gets included." 

Mindy: 

Well, just to offload the full circle on that too, I want to say that as the American Indian Alaskan Native Exhibit and collection has gone out into schools. In particular in that environment, I consistently get really positive anecdotes and feedback from young people and educators about how significant and important the elements of that exhibit are that celebrate and very clearly communicate the fact that indigenous people are still here, have always been here and are not only surviving, but thriving in a variety of ways. And I think that's also true for the Black and African American history and exhibit as well, is that offering of a blend of historical context, but also with this beautiful spectrum of multiple contemporary voices of all ages and backgrounds that are demonstrating, these are our people, these are your neighbors, these are community members who are here now and today. So thank you, both, for all of your work associated with bringing these to life. 

Kristen: 

Yeah, it's huge. Both of you talked in different ways about how being a part of the story collection team and working on the history and the contemporary history as well was a challenge and an opportunity. And just like as a librarian in the community, as a mom of kids in the public schools in Springfield, I really appreciate all of the hard work that you did, all the challenges you faced because it is such an opportunity. And this is me at the side of the education side and someone who works in collection development, there have been changes, some positive changes in publishing in the last 15 years, but we have so far to go and especially when it comes to children's nonfiction about history and about contemporary histories of people in our communities and how the stories are just not told, but the stories exist and this is like a drop in the bucket, but it is just so special for our kiddos here that get to have this resource now. 

And it's that whole idea of windows and mirrors and the Illumination stories are mirrors for some folks in our community and they're windows for others and we just need so much more of that and just thank you. Thank you so much. It's really huge. Sorry, I got a little emotional there. 

Mindy: 

Episode one, there were a lot of tears. We all cried. 

Kristen: 

Yeah. So I just shared a little bit as a neighbor in Springfield and as somebody who works in education and is raising young kiddos here, how your work has impacted my family and me, I would love to hear from you, Megan and Irene, about what the response has been from your community to your Illumination Collection and the related activities and programming. Have you observed or experienced any particular impacts that you'd like to share with us? 

Irene: 

Three major things that stick out to me were things that are not often openly discussed. So the lack of gathering of the Black community in Springfield, the lack of places to gather and to be together, that was something that was echoed over and over again in the stories. And I think because people spoke about that and they weren't trying to make that point, that point just kept coming out, right. And I think it's a sentiment that a lot of people shared and I think seeing that reflected in the stories opened up dialogue and conversation about that. 

I also really appreciated that one of the members of the founding Black families, so that handful of Black families that came here first, one of them was represented in the project, but the dialogue wasn't around her as a founding Black family member. Often when we speak to these elders, it's honed in on that part of the story. She was able just to speak about her life. I don't even think we touched heavily on the fact that she is one of the surviving members of those founding Black families. The elders are almost all dead at this point, and she's one of the few still living. And so I think having her story told and her just telling the parts of her story that were important to her, that was just so impactful. It was a way of collecting history from one of those surviving elders that had simply not been done before, not been done in that way. And I really appreciated that. And I think it added a lot to the history and the stories that have been collected from that handful of people, all the more valuable because we lost two of them in the past year. So that just makes that story that she told just even more valuable to us. 

I also think that the collection really highlighted how sometimes within the Black community, we find ways that we want to try to build each other up and create connectivity, and we don't know what the result of that's going to be. So our community's very small, so I knew most of the people that we interviewed, most not all. And it was really funny that the degrees of separation are so small. So I'll just give two really quick examples. 

My daughter and I were out shopping in a store and ran into a young lady at the store and because she was clearly of Black descent, I was kind of chitchatting with her. It's not many times that we see each other. And I was like, "Oh, how old are you?" She was commenting on the things we were buying. And she goes, "My teacher is essentially the interviewer and filmographer for Illumination." And I was like, "The degrees of separation are so little." Now subsequently, we went on to interview her for the collection and she was the youngest person interviewed, and that ended up just being gold and really adding to the dialogue because we often look at history as something that belongs to the elders in our society and how often do we go to young people who are also part of that history and capture their thoughts and experiences? 

And I always say she really, Natalia, she really leveled us out in that she said something that is so poignant in this point in time is that we think we've come so far, like old people, we look at stuff and because things are better, we think we've come so far and there's nothing else to do. She's like, "But the youth, they want it to be even better for them." And I think sometimes we can feel the work is done because the behaviors are not as egregious as they were in the past. And so it feels like we're beating a dead horse, but when you look at that with the fresh eyes of the youth, they're saying, "That was good and we're happy you guys did all that, but we see that it can be better." And so that the fight to better ourselves as a society continues because they only have the here and now to look at. That's what they've lived through. They are not comparing it to the past. They're comparing it to the present and how can we be better now? Not that we are better than we were before, so let's leave things along, but how can we be even better now, right? Because there's always a devil that's worse, that we could then say, "The work here is done, let's wash our hands." And it can be tempting to do that. 

I think the other thing that I want to add to that is another story that really touched me was, it's just that the community is so small, because one of the things I worked with  the Black Cultural Initiative was to really uplift local artisans and Black businesses and expose them and their work to the public and get our local community to support the cultural arts and cultural artisans that are available locally. 

And it was just so amazing to me because we were doing that, but we ended up interviewing a mother who said she literally started a business because of one of those opportunities and that business led into a domino effect, of course, of events that ultimately changed her life, right. And having those sorts of stories illuminated really, I think brought home to our community that sometimes we don't know the impact that we can have because people don't come back around and tell those stories. And I don't even think it connected in her mind until somebody sat her down and she was just telling her story. And then all of a sudden the dots started to connect to all of the things that had gone on locally that ultimately nourished this young mother. 

And so I think that what it did is it made us realize we are a community. The little things that we do, they do reverberate throughout all of the humans surrounding us. And I think sometimes it's easy to forget that. It's easy to forget the person that checks you out at the counter like Natalia did us, or that there's some young mother somewhere that maybe you didn't speak to directly, but saw that flyer that you put out and decided to make a change in their life because of that thing. Or even the coalescing of the stories, right? The museum deciding, you know, "What we're missing, let's do something about that." And then that trickling down into collecting stories that tell the stories of founding members of the Black community locally all the way to young people that are kind of making their way in Springfield now. We don't know what those impacts will be. And so I think for our community, it allowed those stories to be seen and for us to be encouraged that the work that we're all doing, that it doesn't go without impact, that it doesn't go without changing the fabric of who we are in Springfield and throughout Lane County. 

And I would say that was the greatest impact. I've been really fortunate to see Illumination, just recently the exhibits were all featured over at the Holt Center for the NAACP's Freedom Fund Dinner and the way that people gravitate to it. The way that people gravitate to it, I think is so important. I think about within my community as a Black person, but I recognize that our community is only as good, only as safe, only as productive as the investment of our community jointly, as residents of this area. And so I will say that I saw immense impact for our micro community, but an even greater impact for the community at large. I think it made us all feel more connected and it humanized things that are often weaponized to divide us. 

Megan: 

For me, one of the impacts of the project was just the chance to think about our shared connections. I'm a Siletz tribal member, which is one of the Oregon coastal tribes and there's certain experiences that I would expect to share with other people from my tribe, but I wouldn't necessarily think about other tribes and what they've experienced. And this was really a chance to talk to people in this community who are Native, but might come from a different background, a different tribal background, and to see that we actually have a lot more in common than we would've expected. So that was really eye-opening for me. I think some examples that I'm thinking about were just hearing Esther and Shannin Stutzman's story about all of their work on the Kalapuya dictionaries and what a passion project that has been for their family and trying to relearn their ancestral language. And that was so relatable to me, even though I don't know much about the Kalapuya language, but I'm involved in my own tribe's language program. And a lot of things that she was saying really resonated with me. And I was going in kind of expecting to hear a story about something that would be unfamiliar, but it was actually a story that I could really relate to. 

And then the same with Leo, who has ancestry from the Plains. He talks about his family's or his boarding school experience. And again, that was something that my family has history with. And I was able to kind of hear part of my family's story through his story. And I didn't go in expecting that. I expected that I'm from a coastal tribe and he's from the Plains, so we would be different and have different backgrounds. But it was really neat to see that we actually were able to connect and just kind of look at our shared history together. 

So there were a lot of neat things like that. And then also even just in the interviews, like between takes on the interviews, Princess and I, as we were interviewing each person, we were able to chat with them and share stories about ourselves and just kind of ask questions to different people. And have you ever been in a situation like this? And what did you do? How did you handle it? And be able to just talk. And that wasn't something I think I was going in expecting it to be more formal like, "Okay, I'm here to interview and this is what we're going to do." But it was actually kind of neat. We kind of bonded as we were working together. So that was just a really neat part of the project. 

And I loved being able to share the interviews and talk about them with people in the community. And I actually talked to a lot of people who weren't aware that Springfield had a museum, and for them, being able to talk about the project was a way to get the museum on their radar. And it's been really neat over the past year or two to see as there's been more Native centered events that you start to see people coming to things and getting to know some of them and just kind of see that people are starting to have Springfield on their radar a little bit that there might be something worth going to over there, if that makes sense. 

Mindy: 

Thank you both. It's been such a gift to hold space with and walk the journey of Illumination with every community leading up to the present and hearing all of these elements from you, there are so many countless anecdotes from every community participant and every story collection team member. And again, I'm just really grateful for this podcast opportunity to share some of that out into the world and to give this as a sample, an example of how other institutions can show up and work with community, so, thank you. So I have the next question. What does it mean to you to illuminate history? What are you hoping people will take away after exploring an Illumination exhibitor collection? 

Irene: 

When I was young, I knew a man, he was a Black Muslim and he goes, "History is his story, the his being, whoever gets to tell the story." And so history can look at a lot of different ways depending on who the narrator is and illuminating history from the perspectives of the people in the community, I think for me, it really meant telling the stories that people often think aren't the norm and also demonstrating how, because a lot of ... Michael, our interviewer, he said something that was ... It made me laugh, but it's not funny. He would say things like, they would say, "Oh, I never experienced any racism. I never had any problems like that." And then the interviewees would go into the most racist story you'd ever heard, but that's not how they perceived it. Like, if you just ask them, "Have you experienced racism?" They were like, "No, not at all. It's all fine." But then as they were telling their stories, they'd tell these stories and we'd be looking at each other like, "Is this real life? Is that a thing that happened?" 

And also sometimes we feel disconnected. I just think in this day and age, it's so easy to feel disconnected from the things of the past. It goes back to beating that dead horse. But when you hear somebody say, "Look, I into the '70s would joke with my friends about how I needed to get back across the bridge, because technically I'm not supposed to be here anymore, because this is a Sundown town and so I've got to go." And the laws that pertain to that weren't taken off the books until the '70s. And I'm looking at a man that's relatively young, kind of joking about how he used to crack jokes with his friends about it. That makes it feel more recent, right. That makes it feel like it's not so far away. 

When I'm looking into the face of a woman who her family's home in the first Black church that was all bulldozed down and I'm looking at her face and she's breathing and living in front of me, that makes it not feel as distant and that makes it feel more like today. Also, I think another aspect of what it means to me to illuminate that history is to just open up a more honest dialogue. Again, many of the stories that were included in our collection are things I think would've never saw the light of day if we hadn't been all kind of hanging out in a room together essentially talking to each other, if it didn't feel like just a conversation you were having with a friend. And it was almost scary for me. 

Definitely there were times where I just felt anger. I felt anger at the stories and I felt angry at having to share the stories. I didn't really want to. So illuminating is really shining a light on those things that you want to keep in the dark. And I'm hoping that what people will take away from it is that it's not what's in the textbooks and it's not the blanket stories, right. So often we look at stories as like a blanket thing, right. So there's a blanket story of slavery, there's a blanket story of the history of Springfield, there's a blanket story to the Civil Rights Movement, and that thing happened and we overcame it and now we've moved on. But when we look at individuals and how it impacts individual lives, right. When we look at that, then we recognize that it's not the movements or the laws or the big changes we make that form or change or stagnate where we are as a community. It is the individual stories and lives of the people that live through those things, because these people are still around. And so, their interactions with the community, their interactions and their families, their interactions with each other, that's the nitty-gritty of the change we need. I can pass a law today, but that doesn't change the face of what's going on the ground, right. The things that are going on the ground, they have to live past that generation often into the next generation. And the real tangible events that happen to people, though that impact doesn't disappear because we pass a law or because we all agree that something is wrong. 

Also, there were just some really cool things. I mean, a Black rodeo cowboy, you know what I mean? That's just cool. Marissa's story about randomly meeting some lady, making jam, holding her basically newborn baby and trying to make jam and starting a business and then meeting the woman that helped her start her homestead and then realizing like, "You know what I really want to do? I want to work with other mothers." 

Some of those stories are just so cool. People who we can watch on TV now, actresses, you know, and that those are people that are represented as part of Springfield history. And they're just people. They're just moms and firefighters and rodeo cowboys. They're just teachers. They're just people that could be just like our grandma or grandfather. That part too, that people are more than their stories, they are people that we can relate to that are living lives just like us, some of that is just super cool as well. So I would say that is what it means to illuminate history to me, to make it more than a law or a movement or a moment in time, but to make it stories about the people that live through that and understand that those experiences live on. And number two, just to see ourselves in the faces of people that look nothing like us. That it's not a Black person that's a mom. That's not a Black man that's a rodeo cowboy or a fireman, right. That their physical appearance, these are like human beings who have the same experiences, the same sort of lives, the same sort of challenges that we can that are colored by other things, and then honoring the things that color those experiences. That is a firefighter who is asking the question like, "You may feel a way about Black people, but if I come to save you, you want to be saved, right? You're not going to say, 'Leave me in the burning building.'" Or if there is a delicious dinner that you're wanting to put together and the woman that canned those jams is a Black mother living on a homestead, are you not eating the jam because it's her? No, those are the petty things. The bigger things are that these are people in our community. And I hope when we walk down the street and we're looking at each other, you're not ignoring color, but you're not basing your judgment on that person on their color. 

I think this is especially important to me because unlike many of the other story collections, our group kind of wears who we are on our skin. We can't walk through the world with ambiguity. So it was beautiful to be able to illuminate something that allowed us to be more than the thing that you can't ignore when you lay eyes on us. 

Megan: 

One thing I hope people will take away after exploring an Illumination exhibit is just to think about their place in the longer arc of the community history across different generations because I think it's pretty normal for people to think of history in terms of their own lifetime. We kind of see ourselves as being separate and there's history that happened and then there's us. But something that came up for me that really surprised me while I was working on this project was, as I was researching local newspapers looking for information about indigenous history, I found editorials in the newspapers from the early 1900s and even the 1800s and the author is just lamenting all of the terrible things that Native people have had to go through. And it's written in a really sympathetic way, which is kind of surprising maybe, but it's written from the perspective of, "I just can't believe what's happened. It's so sad." And even taking some responsibility and saying things like, "I can't believe what we have done to those people. It's just so terrible." And that was really striking to me because I think that we still hear those same types of conversations today when we're talking about the place of Native people in history. People will say, "Oh, it's just so sad. I just can't believe what they've gone through. It's just so terrible." But I think it's really interesting to think that these aren't really new reactions and that people in Lane County have been saying these same things for over a hundred years now. And it's just interesting to think of the perspective of somebody in the 1890s who thinks that Native history has kind of already happened and it's over because in the 1890s, if you went to one of the local reservations, it would just be incredible. 

Like, the people who were alive in that time period that you could have gone and talked to and the stories you could have heard if you took the time. And I mean, I definitely think that there have been changes over time. And I really have seen in my own lifetime that a lot more people are starting to think about history from a Native perspective and including different perspectives. But I also think it's important to think of ourselves as being connected to this longer history because it seems sometimes like every generation is having to learn the same things over and over again. And I would really love it if this project could help us think about that and think about if there's a way to move beyond it and to move beyond those blanket stories, as Irene called them, and to just think about our place in the community. And I would love it if having more materials available would help us have conversations that could go beyond that. 

Kristen: 

You both have shared quite a bit with us today about your experience being part of the project, being part of the story collection, interacting with, sharing the history, both the historical history and contemporary histories of your communities, and making sure that we have these collections to share with the larger Springfield, Eugene, Lane County community. I would love to hear a little bit about what your relationship has been to museums and libraries, both as a young person growing up and as an adult before you were part of the Illumination Project and perhaps now. 

Irene: 

Yeah. Museums and libraries have been central to my life. I love books. So I spent a lot of time in the library as a child. I would walk and read. I'd be walking and reading a book. I'd be bathing and reading. I'd be curled up at the end of the shower, not actually bathing, but reading a book. I would stay up at night and read under my covers. So I love books and I love museums. I think I want to touch on museums first. The thing I never really appreciated about museums is I didn't really feel reflected in museums. I think other than the random Egyptian exhibit here and there or Civil Rights exhibits, I didn't feel reflected in museum spaces. I loved going there, but I didn't see great diversity. I just saw a lot of the old world being shown and the old world was really limited to Europe and Asia, and then a little bit of Egypt kind of sprinkled in for good measure. 

And so as I moved on through life, my homeschooling journey was made possible by my local library. It's where I went to get books to teach my children. It's where I connected in with educational puzzles. Our local library had a bunch of puzzles and I would go there with my kids and we would do all of our homeschooling at the library. This was maybe 25 years ago, right. And throughout my life, libraries and museums have been just central to forming me as a person and helping me form my children. I have a child that speaks six languages and we stayed in our libraries and museums and that sparked his passion for the world and wanting the ability to be able to communicate with all these types of people. And even now, my children can't wait to get to a library. 

I think the thing that is unique when I think about Springfield Library, because in my work, I work with libraries and museums throughout Lane County. I feel I've had the most meaningful work with Springfield History Museum and Library. And I think it is because they don't just do programming. They are literally boots on the ground invested in the community. And it's not like a detached experience, which libraries can often be. I mean, we have our story times, we have the things that libraries do, but that's like a very different thing from trying to make touchstones individually with the community. I think the community engagement is off the charts for Springfield History Museum and Library. And I think that is what I really appreciate. It feels like you're going home. It feels like you're going to a family event when you engage with them. 

Also, I think the projects are really spearheading something that's definitely needed in Oregon. It is seriously involving the communities that the library serves, but also having new and fresh takes on how they approach storytelling, how they approach getting people, getting their feet through the doors of a library or getting their feet through the doors of a museum or acknowledging the gaps. I mean, Illumination was started because of the acknowledgement of a gap, right. And so I think that that is wonderful. 

Also, I think it's strengthened my connection as a person to libraries in this phase of my life. Going from the little girl who went there to get books, who always had her nose in a book, the little girl who would go to museums and love it there, but not feel really reflected in those spaces, to a mother who utilized those spaces to better her children, to enable her to have things that she wouldn't otherwise have access to now a woman who works in the community, building programs, advocating, trying to create a community out of a community. Do you know what I mean? We're all living here together, but actually connecting in and caring for each other and being invested in each other, like, that true sense of community, that more human level of community, not just the sterile sort of dictionary definition of it, I think that is happening at the libraries and museums, our small local libraries and museums. 

And I think that is how I've been touched by libraries and museums in the past and now. I hope that these sorts of projects are duplicated, that a lot is learned from this. I think I've never experienced a library building community in a human way, building a community where people feel passionate and invested by their library because they know where the hearts of the people that are in that library, in that museum, are. I don't think I've ever experienced that before. That is very different. And it could be because Springfield is a smaller place. It could be in part that, and in large part, because the right people are in place at the Springfield History Museum and Library who want to connect and who want for something that I think is very close to being lost in this digital age, that in-person touchpoint that you can't get on a computer or you can't get through a digital catalog. They want to preserve that. And I think I just appreciate knowing that I'm not the only one who wants to hold onto that and not lose it. And so yeah, I don't know. I'm getting emotional thinking about it, because I think sometimes we feel that physical museums and libraries are a thing of the past or we think the museums and libraries that matter are the biggest ones, but I think it's our small community libraries where the real work is done and where we're really changing lives. I know my life was definitely changed and continues to be molded by my relationship with our local library museum. 

Megan: 

I grew up in Walterville, which is five or 10 minutes outside of Springfield, and I used to come to the Springfield Library as a kid. My mom would pay for the out of city limits annual fee so that we could have a card. Now they've got this awesome program where if you're in the school district, you get your card covered. My kids have that, which is awesome. But at the time, it was something we paid for and we would go into the library a lot of times on Tuesday nights when they were open later. So growing up, that was always something I really looked forward to, and that was a familiar space that was comforting. And my mom used the library a lot to check out reference books, like, cookbooks and books about home repair. And when she was looking for jobs, she would look for books about how to create a nice resume and things like that. 

So I think she really modeled for me and my brothers that if you need something, if you need resources, the library is a place where you can come and get them. And I really appreciate that. Yeah. Growing up, I would just check out a ton of books and I was a big bookwork. I still am. I still come to the library pretty often. I'm also on the museum committee, like I mentioned earlier. I did go to the Springfield Museum growing up. I remember playing on the stairs, which I don't know if I was supposed to be on the stairs, but I think the history side was always a little bit more intimidating to me. I remember when I was applying to be on the museum committee, I was kind of like concerned filling out the application that maybe I'm not qualified enough to be on the committee or maybe I don't know enough about local history, but I did still apply and I've learned a lot more, so I'm glad that I was able to have the opportunity and be on the committee. 

But since joining the committee, I've just gotten a lot more plugged in and a lot more aware of what the library and museum are doing in the community. And I really appreciate all of it. They do a lot and they don't have a lot of resources compared to cities of similar sizes. So it's really neat to see how dedicated the staff is. And I love bringing my kids to the library and sometimes we'll pop into the museum and they have a kids area in the museum that my kids will like. They'll test the strength of the structures and make sure they're sound there. I have three boys and they can be kind of rough, but they love going to the library museum. So that's really special for me to be able to take my own kids to the places where I went as a kid. 

And I really appreciate joining the committee and it's been a way for me to connect with other history projects. And I've been able to work on a history book for the City of Springfield that's going to be coming out in 2026 and some other projects with the Lane County History Museum and with the Siletz tribe, and a lot of it is linked to my work on the committee and just getting that experience working with a history organization and building that experience. So I'm really appreciative of what we have in Springfield. 

Kristen: 

Thank you both of your answers. They would be great commercials for what to look for in a library museum and why the community needs them. Irene, your answer touched a little bit on this when you were talking about what takeaways and what you've seen in your experience working with the Springfield History Museum and using the library in Springfield in connection with Illumination and just coming to the other programs and offerings that the library has. And Megan, you talked about how you've become very involved in different local history projects as an adult and since working with Illumination and being part of the museum committee as well. Are there any particular things you'd like to share with our listeners about how libraries and museums can better serve you and your communities and really big picture if these institutions are better serving your communities, we're better serving all of the community, right? Are there any takeaways from your experience with Springfield History Museum and Library and your work on Illumination or your work as part of the museum committee that you'd like other communities and institutions to take note of? 

Irene: 

I would say just thinking outside of the box, it's interesting, the conversation around Illumination was happening in the same general timeframe as the conversation around cataloging monuments. So these are like two ideas that Springfield History Museum and Library were having, and that was just so out of the box. 

What's crazy about that is Illumination, I talked about Ms. Reynolds being one of the elders from the original families that lived in this area being interviewed as part of the project. And then I'm going somewhere with this, the cataloging of the monuments exposed that there just weren't a lot of monuments, really any actual monuments, kind of acknowledging the history of Black people in the area and that they had even been here. And most throughout Lane County, people don't even know that of these sort of original Black settlements or individuals that lived in the area. 

Well, that led to a project named after what Springfield History Museum and Library have been doing called the Monument Project, which is actually going to change the face of Lane County with the erection of a monument. I bring up this story to say that, think out of the box. It's a hard thing because you can't duplicate the passion of a team, so you have to have people in the room that actually care and are looking for gaps and looking for ways that they can serve in their capacities. And I think that I think that that has been something that Springfield History Museum and Library have done successfully that I'd like to see. And it will look different for each area. Other areas do because when you're thinking out of the box and then engaging your community, the domino effect of that, the ripples that come out from that little stone, you just don't know how big they will get. 

And so of course we have Illumination which has impacted areas outside of Springfield, has been shared throughout Lane County outside of Springfield. You have the idea, let's just do a catalog of monuments, right, that has led to a whole conversation about a resurgence of conversation around these families and the funding at the state level of a monument to catalog that part of history, to mark that part of history in bronze. You don't know how big those impacts will be. We didn't know that so many families would start getting kind of trucked off and deported. And a lot of the stories of those families were collected before they became targets of deportation. And now those stories exist and we have them. If we lose some of those people, which is very possible in the current climate, we will still have their stories and evidence that they were here and those will live at Springfield History Museum. 

So I think when you're willing to think outside of the box, when you care about your community, when you choose to staff your museums and libraries with people that don't only have the acumen to do the job, but the desire to connect in and to really serve their local community, the potential is really great for making change. And I don't know how many museums and libraries consider themselves to be entities that can make change in their community, not just provision of a service or providing programming, but that through those services and through that programming, there can be impacts that can change the landscape of your community for the better. I would say I would want to see other museums and libraries attempt to find the way that they in their own unique way can duplicate that, duplicate that connection, duplicate that investment, duplicate what it means to just think a little outside of the box. 

Be a little unique in your approach. Find those open spaces in your local community where you can really make a change with your time that you are employed there. It's a job, but it can be more than a job. And I think that's how it's going to survive. I don't know. I think for me, I feel like we're in a modern day kind of book burning era, right. Everything is just going digital. Everything is becoming less tangible. We don't want to lose these spaces. And the way we're going to keep them is just to remind people why they're important, why these tangibles are important, why that gathering in that space, having that ability to go there and pick up a physical book, walk into a museum and engage physical exhibits, why that's important, because we could very easily lose those things if we don't start to make people remember why we invested in them in the first place. 

Megan: 

So I have a small scale idea and also a larger scale idea. I'll start with the small scale. I really love it when organizations have little printouts or pamphlets or some sort of promotional material that highlights what types of materials they have in their collections. I think those are really neat. And I could see the library museum having something like that, that it could be either materials related to American Indian, Alaska Native experience or other groups as well. But just for example, there was a tabling event where there was someone there from the U of O special collections and he handed me a pamphlet that was sharing what resources they had about indigenous history in their collection. 

So highlighting, we have these digitized newspapers and we have these different ethnographic collections, and if you're interested in researching with us, here are some things that you can look at. And I think that that is a nice low hanging fruit of what a lot of libraries and museums could do, either putting together a curated list of some of the fiction and nonfiction books in the collection that are written by indigenous authors or maybe a blend of events and programs and reading lists and things like that. But just like a little pamphlet or bookmark or QR code someone can scan, I love stuff like that to just share what you already have in your collection. And that's nice because it doesn't take a lot of money to get going. 

I think big scale, I would love in the future to see more unity among local institutions and more aware of what other projects are happening in the community because there's a lot of neat stuff going on, but sometimes people in Eugene know about it, but people in Springfield don't know or vice versa or maybe different organizations are working on similar projects and they could have pooled their resources and been consulting each other, but there's just a lot of opportunities like that, I think, to have a broader impact if you're communicating beyond just Springfield. 

So just as a small example, Willamalane has a monthly newsletter they've started that shares about events in the community that are relevant to Native people in Springfield, Eugene. And it talks about things happening at the U of O and at local organizations and things that are sponsored by the county and City of Eugene, City of Springfield. And so it's a great way to pool what's going on. And sometimes we don't always have that communication and you can miss out on things. So I really appreciate that I'm seeing some local groups taking steps to try to include the bigger community and make sure that that impact is bigger as well. 

Irene: 

Can I just add, build trust. I don't know why I didn't think of that. I think when we sit in the Illumination Advisory Committee, the one thing that every single group agreed on is that trust had been built. And I think just building trust with your community is the first step to just being successful in general in your public outreach and program development and the effectiveness that that can have, the penetration that can have into your local community. Work on just building trust. 

Mindy: 

Thank you both so much for everything that you've shared today and for honoring me as one of the project founders and the project manager for Illumination. It has been the highlight of my career. And I mean, it's something like Irene, what you were saying, this work isn't just a job, but it's more than that. It's also about that personal part about how you show up in community and develop and nurture trust and relationships and connections. And I certainly feel that with each of you and each individual who's participated, whether they've been a project team member, someone who's shown up and contributed and informed the journey and evolution of each project at the community gatherings and/or the participants who've either showed up to share their story and be illuminated through an oral history. Also, the extraordinary spectrum of artists and culture bearers who've joined us for the public programs and activities and educational programs and activities with youth and schools. 

And so I just thank you and thank these communities and thank our institutions, the Library or Museum and our leadership for having the trust in us as the staff to be able to have the space to do this engagement and to build this trust, to build these relationships and to center communities who are deeply entwined into the fabric of Springfield and really Lane County and who have either been under or misrepresented in the past. And I just feel it's been such a privilege to have the opportunity to be in this place and in this position to listen and to learn about how I and my colleagues and the museum and library can be and do better and to continue to evolve. And it all comes down to community. Community is central and it's everything and those connections. And I think that's part of what Illumination has done is illuminated that fabric and connection that we have. 

So again, I want to thank you, Megan, and you, Irene, for your contributions to the project for your time here today. Kristen, thank you for being the co-host and to all of the OLA EDI Anti-Racism Committee and the founders and producers of this podcast for giving us the space to share and illuminate this part of the story. And it is my sincere hope that our listeners go and explore Illumination on our website at wheremindsgrow.org/illumination and explore the stories. Let them be illuminated and brought into the light and take those words and stories and carry them with you, both in your own community and hopefully in your own institutions, and let that inform how you and your institutions can be and do better. 

Kristen: 

So well said. Gosh, thank you all so much. It's been a beautiful afternoon sharing this conversation with you and being able to listen to your stories and hear from your experiences. I think Mindy said everything way better than I can in this moment, but I do want to say that I'm just really inspired to go forward in my day, in my week, in my month, and my year about looking at those connections and community that we can continue to make and have be the fabric of our lives every day and being that part of my community, and when I'm at work at the library, welcome folks in and help people feel welcome and make those connections and be open to always thinking about how we can be even better, as the younger generation has asked us. Thank you. 

Speaker 1: 

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act administered by the State Library of Oregon. [Spanish 01:11:47]. 

Speaker 2: 

We would like to take time to acknowledge historical injustices. We recognize Oregon was established as a white sanctuary state with the intent to exclude African American and Black people on ancestral lands stolen from dispossessed indigenous peoples. We recognize and honor the members of federally recognized tribes and unrecognized tribes of Oregon. We honor Native American ancestors, past, present, and future whose land we still occupy. This acknowledgement aims to deconstruct false histories, correct the historical record, and disrupt genocidal practices by refocusing attention to the original people of the land we inhabit, the slave trade and forced labor that built this country, and to the oppressive social systems interwoven into the fabric of our national and regional heritage. We ask that you take a moment to acknowledge and reflect as well. 

This podcast was edited by Resonate Recordings.