New “Olympia’s Hidden Histories” self-guided walking tours focus on Port of Olympia
The public launch of three new “Olympia’s Hidden Histories” walking tours on the Port of
Olympia will be held on during the second day of Fall Arts Walk, Saturday, October 7, 2023, (10:00-11:00 am) at the Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural (Capitol Way and State Ave.).
“Olympia’s Hidden Histories” is a collection of self-guided multimedia walking tours that make visible the stories of Olympia’s diverse communities, natural ecology, and connections to the world. One year ago, Evergreen State College students in the “American Frontiers” program published four tours on the historic displacement of Squaxin (Indigenous), Chinese, and working-class communities from downtown, and the salmon and oysters from the Deschutes Estuary.
This October 7, Evergreen students in the “Taking Back Empire” program are publishing three new tours on Port of Olympia connections to global shipping and trade, militarization, and fossil fuels. The new tours will include 19th -20th century histories and 21st -century events, such as Weyerhaeuser log export contracts, climate change and sea-level rise, the 2006-07 protests against Stryker armored vehicle shipments to the Iraq War, and the 2016-17 blockades of oil fracking supply shipments to North Dakota (during the Indigenous stand at Standing Rock).
At the October 7 public launch, students who produced the three new walking tours on the Port of Olympia will speak on their projects, together with community members who collaborated with the project, and public and college officials who wish to express support. Participants can then walk the self-guided ArcGIS StoryMaps tours, which are accessible (without an app download) on a smartphone, tablet, or laptop, using the QR Code or the link at https://artforces.org/hiddenhistories.
If on Facebook, you need to use direct URL: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/c9a26fc751dc4e8caeb1096ac66b4631
The ArcGIS StoryMaps walking tours collection is a collaboration of Evergreen State College students and faculty with the “Walls Tell Stories, Olympia” project, created by Art Forces and supported by the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice (the organizations that created the Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural).
OLYMPIA’S HIDDEN HISTORIES WALKING TOURS
Released on October 7, 2022:
1. st̓əč̓as (Steh-Chass): People of the Water
2. Tidelands: “When the Tide is Out, the Table is Set”
3. Olympia's Chinatowns: Exclusion and Endurance
4. The 5th Avenue Dam: Reflections on Capitol Lake
Released on October 7, 2023:
5. Port Shipping and Trade: Rising from the Sediment
6. Port Militarization: “Whose Port? Our Port!”
7. Port and Fossil Fuels: “Water is Life”
For more information, contact [email protected] and view the walking tours at
https://artforces.org/hiddenhistories
