9:30 Welcoming Messages
Dr. Gary Miller, Chair
Department of History
Southern Oregon University
John Enders, Executive Director
Southern Oregon Historical Society
David West, Native American Studies
Brent Florendo, Native American Studies
Southern Oregon University
Columbus Poetry Recital by Alan Mainwaring
10:00 “Ah nee, ah nee” and Joaquin Miller
Margaret Guilford-Kardell
11:00 Separating Fact from Fiction:
Joaquin Miller’s Life Amongst the Wintus
Julie Cassidy
11:30 The Battle of Castle Crags
Valerie Gomez
4:00 A Pictorial Survey of the Writings
of Joaquin Miller
Bill Miesse
7:00 Premier of Crater Lake: The Mirror of Heaven
National Park Service
Southern Oregon Public Television KSYS/KFTS
Joaquin Miller’s Oregon
Scott McKeown
8:00 Koffee Klatch: Tall Tales, Lies, and Rumors
of Joaquin Miller.
Hosted by Chris DeHart
9:00 Mount Shasta and Joaquin Miller:
A Lifetime Bond
Bill Miesse
10:00 Joaquin Miller: First Encounters Panel Presentation
(In the memory of Judge Richard Eaton*)
Alan Rosenus
Frank La Pena
Darryl Babe Wilson
Malcolm Margolin
1:30 Joaquin Miller's Living Legacy
Stephanie Benavidez
3:00 The Poetry and Prose of Joaquin Miller
Discussion and Recitals
Hosted by Alan Mainwaring
7:00 Theatrical Presentation
In the Land Where Acorns Dance
Written, Directed and Produced by Michael O’Rourke
Center Square Theatre, SOU campus
9:00 A Night at the Howlin’ Wilderness**
Hosted by Alan Mainwaring
Standing Stone Brewing Company Music by Siskiyou Summit
101 Oak Street Ashland, OR
• Heyday Institute
• Joaquin Miller Newsletter
• Southern Oregon University Department of History
• Southern Oregon University Department of Theater
• College of the Siskiyous Library
• Southern Oregon Historical Society
• Montagne Publishing Company
• Oregon Heritage Commission
• Humboldt State Dep’t of History
• Southern Oregon Public Television KSYS/KFTS
Many Thanks to:
Emile Amarotico and the Standing Stone Brewing Company
Erik Schjeide for graphics and web design
* Legendary judge and historian in Shasta County, CA.
** The Howlin’ Wilderness was immortalized through Miller’s Life
Amongst the Modocs as the watering hole for
Siskiyou gold miners in the 1850’s.
Born in Wales, Alan is a director-graduate of the prestigious British National Film School. He was educated at the universities of Warwick and Bristol in England. A resident of Mt. Shasta, Alan has produced, directed and acted in theatrical productions through the Shasta Mountain Playhouse and Shadow Box Players. In addition, Alan has produced a commercial video, “Under Milkwood”, a weekly program titled “Siskiyou Magazine” and “Siskiyou Portraits”, a documentary on local artists. Alan has written feature screenplays, in particular, “The American”, based on the life and times of Joaquin Miller.
A tireless seeker of reliable information on Joaquin Miller, Margaret was born seven years after Miller’s death and learned his poem "Columbus" in grade school. During her girlhood, she enjoyed hiking the acreage surrounding his Oakland home at "the Hights." A whole lifetime passed after her graduation from U.C. Berkeley with a Bachelors of Science in Agricultural Economics (Natural Resources). She later received an M.S. from the University of Tennessee. Only in the 1970s after a life abroad did she accidentally discover that Joaquin was telling the truth about the Indians of the McCloud River locale where she was then living. For many years now she has edited and published the Joaquin Miller Newsletter--sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with others. Her many other publications include "Joaquin Miller: Fact and Fiction" in The Californians.
Julie Cassidy has a BA from U.C. Berkeley in Near Eastern Archaeology and History and an MA in Anthropology from California State University, Chico. She has worked for the Forest Service for 24 years as an Archaeologist and liaison to American Indian Tribes bordering the Forest. She comes to us not as a Joaquin Miller expert or aficionado, but as a researcher always pursing names, places, and historical fact. In this case, Joaquin Miller has intersected with one of her passions, understanding the lifeways of the Wintu. To this end she has written or presented papers on the Wintu and their history at various historical society meetings and during her graduate studies.
Julie’s has had a long time friendship with Florence Jones, a well-known Winnemen (middle water) Wintu, who just passed away this last spring. Florence asked her to pursue her research on the Winnemem Wintu, hence the inception and dedication of this paper.
Valerie Gomez earned a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 1968 for her studies in Romance Languages and Literatures, and recently retired from 34 years of service as a faculty member and academic administrator at Saint Mary's College in Moraga. She is the great-granddaughter of Ross and Mary McCloud, who kept a small inn near Portuguese Flat, a mining settlement below the Crags. It was the McClouds that provided shelter and tended the wounds of young Joaquin Miller after the Battle of Castle Crags.
Valerie is currently working on a research project which will encompass the years 1850 to 1920, and cover the history of the Upper Soda Springs Resort Hotel, from its beginnings as a small wayfarers inn constructed by Ross McCloud on the Upper Soda Springs site in 1857, to its development as a popular summer resort on the Upper Sacramento river through the 1880s and 1890s.
Alan has reintroduced a number of California classics, including The Indian History of the Modoc War and Joaquin Miller's Life Amongst the Modocs. Miller's autobiographical novel was the first book Alan's Orion Press published in 1972. (The press name has since been changed to Urion Press.)
An honors graduate of Brown University, he received his MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and took his Doctorate in American Literature at the University of Oregon. In 1976 he published Selected Writings of Joaquin Miller, a collection of Miller’s short stories, journals, and drawings. Alan’s biography of General Mariano G. Vallejo, General Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans, received the Spur award for the best biography of the year from the Western Writers of America. A grantee of the National Endowment for the Arts, he has published work in the California Historical Quarterly, the Northwest Review, New America, and Western American Literature. He is also the author of a book of short fiction, Devil Stories. Rosenus has taught at Coe College, the College of Marin, and San Francisco State University.
William “Bill” Sullivan is the author of ten books and numerous articles about Oregon, including “A Deeper Wild”, an account of the life of Joaquin Miller and the "Oregon Trails" feature column for Eugene's Register-Guard. A fifth-generation Oregonian, Sullivan began hiking at the age of five and has been exploring new trails ever since. After studying at Deep Springs College in the California desert, receiving an English degree from Cornell University, and studying linguistics at Germany's Heidelberg University, he earned an M.A. in German literature from the University of Oregon. Sullivan's hobbies include backcountry ski touring, playing the harpsichord, reading foreign language novels, and promoting libraries. He helped with the campaign to build Eugene's new library, is a member of the Oregon State Library Board, and is vice president of the Lane Library League. He and his wife, Janelle Sorensen, live in Eugene, but they spend summers in a log cabin they built by hand on a road less stretch of a remote river in Oregon's Coast Range.
Malcolm Margolin is the founder and publisher of Heyday Books, an independent
publisher in Berkeley California, and since 1987 has been publishing a magazine,
News from Native California, devoted to the history and culture of California
Indians. He is also the publisher of Bay Nature, a new magazine devoted to
the joyful and intelligent exploration of nature in the Bay Area. He has written
a number of books on California history, natural history, and Indian life,
including The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area.
He has received the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement from the San
Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, as well as other awards from
the Before Columbus Foundation, Society for California Archaeology, California
Council for the Promotion of History, the California Indian Health Services,
California Horticultural Society and the California Arts Council. He was given
the Gerbode Fellowship, and has been awarded residencies at the Headland Center
for the Arts and the Djerassi Foundation. Margolin also serves on the boards
of the Save the Bay, the California Studies Association, River of Words, the
Djerassi Resident Arts Program, the Yosemite Association, and is a member
of the Bancroft Library’s Publication Advisory Board.
Bill Miesse has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Evergreen State College and a MA in Environmental Education from Humboldt State University. An art and rare book dealer, art publisher, and lecturer, he is the author of Mount Shasta: An Annotated Bibliography (1993) and Art and Artists of Mount Shasta 1841-1941 (1989) and is currently working on a history of the early naturalists of the region. He has been living at the base of Mount Shasta since 1981 and for recreation telemark skis and windsurfs. In 1987 he began researching and lecturing on Joaquin Miller's relationship with Mount Shasta and now considers Miller to be California's first environmentalist.
Michael recently returned to the Rogue Valley from Alaska where he served as managing artistic director for Anchorage Community Theatre. To celebrate the company’s 50th Season he designed and built the ACT Studio Theatre. He led the company (by invitation) to a triumphant production of Bus Stop at the prestigious Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska. Thirty years ago he directed five midnight projects at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which set the stage for construction of the Festival’s Black Swan. He co-founded Actors’ Theatre in Southern Oregon in 1982, producing 100 productions in 13 years, and served as executive director for the capital campaign to purchase and remodel the Minshall Playhouse, now the home of Camelot Theatre. Michael’s collaboration with Lakota actor Robert Owens resulted in a one-man show that toured internationally for six years. Recipient of grants for development of heritage scripts celebrating the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion, he wrote In the Land Where Acorns Dance, a screenplay based on Joaquin Miller’s life among the Waimuk in Northern California during the Gold Rush. He dedicates the merit of his practice in the theatre to his love, Becky, and his three children, Morgan, Tansy and Toby. Hoka hey.
Scott’s education includes a Juries Doctorate from Lewis and Clark College,
Northwestern School of Law 1985, a MBA from Portland State University 1983
and a BS in Political Science from University of Oregon 1971. He is one of
the two founding partners of McKeown and Brindle, P.C., a law firm with offices
in Portland and Beaverton. He has maintained an active general real estate
law practice since his admission to the Oregon State Bar in 1985. Scott has
devoted approximately 25% of his legal career to the practice of juvenile
law. He is on the board of directors of Innovative Housing, Inc., a non-profit
provider of low-income housing.
Frank LaPena, an internationally exhibited painter and published poet, was
born in 1937 in San Francisco. As a young man he became interested in the
song, dance, and ceremonial traditions of his tribe. He has worked with the
elders of the Nomtipom Wintu, the Nomlaki Wintun of northern California, and
elders of neighboring tribes, and is a founding member of the Maidu Dancers
and Traditionalists, dedicated to the revival and preservation of these Native
arts.
LaPena lectured widely on Native American traditional and cultural issues,
emphasizing California traditions, and he is a professor emeritus at California
State University, Sacramento. His art has been exhibited since 1960 in twenty-two
one-man exhibits and numerous group shows across the United States, Europe,
Central and South America, Cuba, Australia, and New Zealand. He has been a
consultant to museums across the country including the de Young, the Oakland
Museum of California, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of
the American Indian. He lives in Sacramento and is still active in ceremonial
life as a singer and dance leader.
Refuge Naturalist, Raconteur, and Keeper of the Flame of Joaquin Miller's & Paul Covel's Legacies. Has worked for the City of Oakland's Office of Parks and Recreation for over 30 Years. For the past five years she oversees the daily operations at the Rotary Nature Center and the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge. As the Citywide Naturalist she creates and implements Natural Sciences and outdoor education programs during the school years and runs The Touch the Earth, Young Naturalist and Shake Rattle and Roll summer camps for ages 6 to 15 years. Has had two programs about Joaquin Miller, (one showing his monuments) on Evening Magazine and the other with Huel Howser's California's Golden Parks on PBS channels.
Has a children's book written by Patricia Pollacco "I Can Hear the
Sun", featured in numerous newspaper articles and local media programs,
Ishmael Reed's "Blues City a walk in Oakland", Sondra Clark's "Cool
Careers in Parks
& Recreation" and "Bay Nature Magazine Premier Issue. Worked
on filming segments of Reading Rainbow's "Reshenka's Egg" and Bay
Area Backroads both with Jerry Graham and Doug McConnell. Has three years
invested at Mill's College and is part of their Oral History Project about
Oakland. She inherited her love of history from her mother, Clarice Benavidez,a
Center Director for the City of Oakland and resides with her in Oakland, CA.
with two loving dogs Honi and McDuff and a cat named Zeus. Currently sits on the
Board of Dunsmuir House and Gardens, Inc, member of Business and Professional
Women (BPW) and National Interpreters Association (NAI).
Darryl’s novel The Morning the Sun Went Down received the 1999 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary award, for "outstanding literary achievement by writers living west of the Mississippi". He co-edited Surviving in Two Worlds: Contemporary Native American Voices, and is also the author of "Wilma Mankiller: Principal Chief of he Cherokee Nation."
He was born Sul’mae’ejote near Fall River Mills, CA. His mother was from the Iss people, his father from the Aw’te. Darryl says, "The arrogance of colonization invited anthropology to change the identity of the landscape and the identity of the people. Some know them as the Pit River Tribe of California but I disagree with that paradigm." He attended high school near Redding, did undergraduate work in English at UC Davis, and received his Ph.D from the University of Arizona.
Darryl writes, "I am waiting for my next book to be published – a history of some of the things Joaquin Miller recorded concerning my people and the move of empire through our homeland with a devastating effect that still lingers. I quote some of Miller's Life Amongst the Modocs.” Currently, Darryl is teaching Native History and Politics, and working with The Indigenous People Institute at Sierra Nevada College.