Page 2
May 30, 2018
t ri m et
A community member
places a flower onto a mural
adorned with messages
of hope and inspiration
at the Hollywood Transit
Center during its dedication
Saturday to the victims of
a fatal MAX train stabbings
that occurred at the location
one year ago and sent
shockwaves through the
city. The two men killed
and another man who was
injured in the attack were
defending two teenage girls
subjected to a racist tirade.
Photo Courtesy oF
Photo By J enny g raham , o regon s hakesPeare F estival
Tanis Parenteau (left) and Rainbow Dickerson star in “Manahatta,” one of the
summer and fall attractions at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland , a
play that moves between time periods to explore and give a voice to the exploita-
tion and colonization faced by Native Americans.
o PinionAted
J udge
By
d arleen o rtega
Rare Perspectives on Stage
formerly worked in Manhattan) has found
resonant parallels between the economic
pressures driving events in all three sto-
ries and the patterns of exploitation and
colonization that recur again and again.
In this play -- as frequently happens for
indigenous and marginalized people--the
Lenape characters invest in relationship,
and what they offer in friendship and good
faith is used as leverage for their removal.
Moving between the stories in this way
captures a sense, common to indigenous
cultures, that ancestors move among us
and may help us to respond to suffering
with hard-one wisdom from the past.
The play offers an exceedingly rare
opportunity to experience mainstream
art that is driven by indigenous story-
telling rhythms and that centralizes the
perspective of its indigenous characters,
rather than the more usual erasure of in-
digenous people or the tendency to crop
their story into a narrative that belongs to
the dominant culture. We get a sense of
how the first peoples viewed their early
trades with European settlers, and of how
persistently the perspectives of the colo-
nizers erase evidence of agency and omit
signs that they are dealing with a worthy
trading partner. When a Lenape character
addresses a settler in his language, he re-
marks in surprise, “You speak,” as though
It is no exaggeration to say that three
plays currently on offer at the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival in Asland are making
space for authentic, rarely-heard perspec-
tives, and are changing the landscape of the
American theater.
“Manahatta,” the astonishing work of
Cherokee playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle,
takes place in three settings and two time
periods. A few years before the 2008 finan-
cial crisis, a Lenape woman, Jane Snake,
arrives on Wall Street -- to Manahatta,
the very land her ancestors were forced to
leave in the 1600s. She has taken a job in a
prestigious investment bank and is fighting
for credibility and opportunities to demon-
strate her skills, but in a place where she
is not seen or expected to rise. Meanwhile,
her family is facing personal and financial
troubles back in Oklahoma that eventual-
ly lead her mother to take out a mortgage
loan that will jeopardize the family home.
Finally, much of the play involves Lenape
people in Manahatta encountering Dutch
settlers for the first time, leading to a series
of failures of communication with disas-
trous consequences for the Lenape people.
Staging these three stories together is a
feat of theatrical genius, performed by a
talented cast under the facile direction of
Laurie Woolery. All seven cast members
move between time periods, with subtle
but clear shifts of costume, movement, and
tone, and Nagle (herself an attorney who
C ontinued on P age 5
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Hope and remembrance
one year after deaths
Hundreds of Portlanders gathered Sat-
urday at a new mural adorning the Hol-
lywood Transit Center with messages of
hope and remembrance one year after a
The
Week
in
Review
Shelter Shooting Video
On Friday, Portland Police released video
from surveillance cameras inside a south-
east Portland homeless shelter which re-
corded the police shooting death of John
Elifrtiz, 48, last April when he entered the
shelter while experiencing a mental health
crisis and wielding a knife. Elifritz’ wife,
Barbara Elifritz, has filed a wrongful death
lawsuit against the city and eight law en-
forcement officers in federal court.
Rosanne Racism Dooms Show
ABC Tuesday canceled its hit reboot of the
show “Roseanne” following a racist Twit-
ter rant by the show’s star, Roseanne Barr.
A few hours earlier, Barr apologized for a
tweet she sent out Monday that said “mus-
lim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a
baby=vj,” which falsely tried to denigrate
a former aide to President Obama, Valerie
Jarrett.
Historical Boxer Pardoned
A pardon was issued by President Trump
Thursday for the late boxer Jack Johnson,
an African American convicted a centu-
ry ago for the crime of taking a woman
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double fatal stabbing on MAX light rail
stunned the community.
When an anti-Muslim, racial tirade
against two young women was challenged
by other passengers, the perpetrator then
turned on Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche
C ontinued on P age 14
across state lines, saying it righted a wrong
in American history. In 1912, the heavy-
weight boxer was arrested with Lucille
Cameron, a white woman he would later
marry.
NFL Bans Anthem Protests
Some athletes in the NFL are discussing
alternative ways of protesting after NFL
owners voted on a new policy last week
that fines teams for any personnel that “do
not show proper respect for the flag and
Anthem.” Kneeling during the national
anthem rose to prominence when former
49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick did so
to protest racial inequality and police bru-
tality in 2016.
Dolezal Charged With Fraud
The former NAACP
leader in Washington
State whose life was
turned upside down
when she was exposed
as a white woman pre-
tending to be black is
now facing welfare
fraud charges. Rachel Dolezall, who legal-
ly changed her name to Nkechi Diallo, has
been charged week with theft by welfare
fraud, perjury, and false verification for
public assistance.
Starbucks Anti Bias Training
Turning away customers looking for an
afternoon jolt of caffeine, Starbucks shops
across the U.S. began closing up early on
Tuesday to hold training for employees on
recognizing hidden prejudices. It was part
of the coffee chain’s effort to deal with the
outcry over the arrest of two black men last
month for sitting in a Philadelphia Star-
bucks without buying anything.
Harvey Weinstein Arraigned
Michael Leighton
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Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein
was brought to court Friday on charges of
first- and third-degree rape and committing
a criminal sexual act in the first degree,
which stemmed from incidents from two
different women in 2013 and 2004. The
arraignment follows claims of multiple
decades of abuse by many women first re-
ported in the New York Times in October.