Pat Courtney Gold presents “Innovators and Traders: Indigenous People of the Columbia River”
Pat Courtney Gold now devotes her time to creating art and lecturing on Plateau Cultural Art. The Wasco traditional art of full-turn twined baskets with geometric human figures and motif unique to Columbia River area was a dying art. Pat revived this art form, and her goal is to preserve the technique and record the traditional designs for future generation.
She has been an artist in Resident at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City, New York. The Peabody Museum commissioned a basket from Pat and asked to write an article about her work and the Wasco basket collected by Lewis and Clark in 1805 for cataloging accompanying “Northwest Native Weavers: Honoring Our Heritage.”
Pat’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Highlights in Oregon include The Governor’s Office in Salem, Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, the Littman Gallery at Portland State University, the Museum at Warm Springs, the Portland Art Museum, the University of Oregon, and Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center.
Her program will show how like to days hot topics of international commerce, diplomatic relations, cultural exchanges and tourism are important to the northwest; it was just as important nearly twelve thousand years ago among the indigenous people who lived along the Columbia River. These civilized and prosperous nations developed a marketplace that, by the 1700’s included trade with Russia, Spain, England, China and America, yet their story is often untold in histories of the region.
Pat Courtney Gold, a Wasco native enrolled in the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon, discusses the rich heritage of cultural and financial commerce conducted up and down the Columbia River. Just as questions of sustainability affect modern commerce, Gold will show how native people’s relationship to the land provided our first environmentally friendly model of commerce.
This free Chautauqua Program will be presented on Saturday, May 10 @ 1:30, Heritage Museum. 112 S. 3rd St., Independence, OR.
For more information, contact Julie Baxter (503)838-4989
