In this interview by previous CPJ Arts Editor, Soap Khan, sculptor Ross Matteson, alongside Rachel Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, founders of the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, revisit the creation of Rachel Corrie memorial at Evergreen, Rachel’s legacy at Evergreen and abroad, and what continued solidarity with Palestine can look like. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CPJ: What do you all think that students should know about the Rachel Corrie Memorial on campus in the CAB building?
Cindy Corrie: What pops into my mind initially is what an effort it was, particularly on the part of Ross and the Evergreen community. Faculty and students were really determined that there needed to be some kind of remembrance. We felt that we should have some distance a bit from the effort because we felt it needed to come from people involved at Evergreen, people who had, like Ross, had their Evergreen experience, and wanted to share why this was important to them. I think that’s also a really important piece to keep in mind and it’s always relevant of course, but there are times when there’s more attention and it’s so close to what Rachel believed and things that are happening in the world that are so close to what she believed in and was working for, I think that, that there’s an intensity about that relevance piece.
Craig Corrie: So, talking about the memorial and focusing on that, I don’t feel like I’m much of a expert, but I think to me it’s particularly, had we been involved in advocating for that, that’s kind of unseemly. If that community wanted to do that, that’s a real honor for Rachel. It also, you put yourself in that place, if she had lived, she couldn’t believe it. I think a whole lot of attention has been paid to Rachel and she just could not have imagined. You know, just a Greener and in in going to Gaza and then basically part of it is for me, we’ve met our friends, we’ve met a lot of other people with ISM. And what distinguished Rachel from the other people that were there that day is the bulldozer didn’t stop. You know, it’s more the bulldozer in some ways than Rachel in that way. So, you know, I didn’t need that sort of thing to remember, Rachel. I Remember her all the time. But I’m grateful that it that it’s there and that it came, I would say you [referring to Ross], and largely her professors, because it took so much time. It didn’t get installed until President Purce was kind of last year that he was there, but he was a friend of ours and he was a friend of Rachel’s, he was Rachel’s basketball coach back in fifth grade. So, they knew each other well. So that’s one of the advantages or disadvantages about her staying in this community basically all of her educational life was that at her memorial service, there were teachers from everything except preschool speaking and the preschool teachers were there, but they didn’t speak. Her whole life was around here and her friends and their teachers and and that community was broad, and it was still around.
Ross Matteson: And for good reason, they remembered who she was. I mean, she was an activist in fifth grade. I mean it wasn’t something that was inconsistent with her ability to reach out to the world with big subjects.
Craig: She was an artist and a writer, it was not a choice with her. She had to write like breathing. Rachel had to write. It was part of her being and she was an artist. And so you [Ross] met her in her first semester at Evergreen.
Ross: Actually, I met her before that, but she interviewed me when she was a student at Evergreen. And at that time, I was very involved in local land use actions because this area was going through an assessment of its urban growth boundaries and all around Evergreen and so on. I was really pissed off at Evergreen, quite frankly, for not being more engaged. The faculty not adopting these fights and issues as much as they could have because there could be a huge amount of learning. Local politics is all about real estate and land ownership and control, and you don’t have to go to South America or the Middle East to learn about power and how power is consolidated and what land has to do with it. I sense that people paint Rachel as this activist. I saw her as someone who was a good listener and who was looking for tactical ideas on how to make things happen. Very much of a pragmatist in a lot of ways. She had ideals – I have ideals, too, but some of us also have the courage to see what we’re capable of doing, and whether we can move the needle.
I was telling her about, how we were doing this grassroots organizing, going to these hearings. I got sued for $200,000 for just appealing a land use hearing examiner’s decision, just a total slap suit but those are the kind of realities that you’re faced with, even at the local level for opposing the development across the street, which is an illegal development. So, there was bigger issues and like a lot of these issues having to deal with Palestinian rights or with Indigenous rights, with greenbelts and environmental concerns, they don’t just have to do with land, they have to do with community and how people believe community should be and whether it should include wildlife and whether it should include Native peoples and how people should make decisions together and what that looks like. These are ongoing issues and a lot of my art can’t help but reflect on those things.
I’ll mention one other thing as we’re talking about memorials, Evergreen at the foundational idealistic stages, The idea of having a memorial was an antithesis to what they believed in. Because all the Ivy League schools, all the private schools, the big thing is legacy endowments. It was a huge, huge deal when Charles McCann, who was the founding president of Evergreen, the visionary really, had the Parkway named after him, Charles McCann Parkway. That was like, how can we do this? So when this memorial came up, it came up against that same sentiment. If We’re going to do a memorial for Rachel why not do a memorial for XYZ or everybody else? So, the issue for me, even though I had these personal connections, to Rachel was the iconic Ideas and values that were represented in her life and that also were consistent with a lot of the founding Evergreen values. So that drove it for me.
CPJ: With the worsening of the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, the invasion of Lebanon and the murder of Ayensur Eygi, how do you think that students and community members will view Rachel’s memorial differently in connection to those sorts of events?
Craig: I’m going to key off of that word view very literally. This last spring we were invited over by the encampment and often when we’re on campus when there are a lot of people, it’s hard to escape, just be on your own. But I wasn’t watched all that carefully, so I walked over to see the memorial. There was a nice group of chairs set up in a way to have a conversation around the memorial and so I said to somebody that came up, that unfortunately, one of those things made it impossible to view it the way it was supposed to be viewed. It’s “Reflecting on Peace,” and when you get up close, you can see your own reflection in that pyramid, but there’s a big sofa in the way of that, so why even understand the conversation pit, and It’s not up for me to say what Evergreen does with the memorial, I just figured somebody lost track of what’s supposed to be going on there, I don’t know who did it, you know? But those chairs, the next time I was over there, they were back out of out of the way. So, I think what you [Ross] came up with for that literal vision of that part of it is an important step that all of us, but certainly the Evergreen community should be looking at as well, as people should be looking at themselves when they look at that memorial, because to me it’s about values. Why Rachel is worth remembering to the world is about the values that she tried to live by.
Ross: It’s hard because obviously those of us intimately connected to this, I mean, and that includes me having been in the Middle East in 1987, and my brother worked there for eight years in the economic development, you know I got a connection to what life was like for Palestinians and occupied areas and so on. It is also nice to have a tribute to Rachel. Cindy referred to it as Rachel had finally come home I think that many, many of us share that personal sense of place for the memorial, and I’ll argue, regarding, the place of memorials in general, at Washington state institutions and how that matters, but the bigger driving force for why that memorial should be there is the iconic nature of those values – not just talking about stuff, but doing stuff. Rachel didn’t skip a beat, and she was decisive at making those.
Craig’s right; when you’re composing a sculpture for me I have to get the attention of the viewer from a distance, so there has to be something in the form that is compelling to make someone want to approach it. My sculptures also can be engaged within a tactile way, you can go right up to them, usually touch, they have textures that are inviting to touch. When you approach this sculpture, you see that this symbol, the dove, is the symbol of peace and it is supported by this uncomfortable, kind of modernistic pyramid stainless steel thing that reflects a picture of your own face. So, you see your responsibility in peace and justice.
One more thing about the composition: I had to defend the presentation of that sculpture in that space, once we knew that it was not going to be outside but that it was going to be inside the CAB building. I was just sort of thinking through how we make use of this opportunity like coming up the stairs and seeing this. So, the case and the Plexiglas and so on, and we were able to get Rachel’s name featured in the composition, which I thought was important and we always get the light.
Last time I was there, I talked to someone about that, but it was intended to have a lot of light coming down on that. I wanted a lot of light to be picked up on the etching of her name in the plexiglass, but there were very well-meaning people at Evergreen who said this is an elitist thing to have a sculpture behind glass because, you know, we want our art to be accessible to the public so they can touch it and like Rachel wouldn’t have put a shield up between herself and humanity and that’s an understandable idea but has nothing to do with the impact of those graphics and that light on that experience.
As an artist, you’re thinking through how are you best going to convey meaning in the opportunities presented. You have to look at all of these factors at play. You know we had all kinds of rationale, trying to talk people into supporting the outdoor location that we proposed and why it made sense to have stainless steel reflecting the natural environment. We adjust our meanings to the opportunity.
Craig: One of the things you said, that reflecting surface is a mirror, it disappears in the woods, it just reflects all the woods around it, and you’re left with this dove floating until you get up close enough to take a special look. So it could work either way.
Cindy: Well, going back to your question about relevance. I, too, was with Craig when we went to the encampment, full of speaking people and people from the community invited to speak. I connected with students, too. I know that through this whole thing, I met students who said that they had no idea what the memorial was all about, kind of thing where they just had not stopped to take a look at it. So, the fact that we’re dealing with this horrible situation in Gaza and the Middle East and that that same situation, a different time, claimed Rachel’s life, I think creates, you know, a lot of connection for people. To what Ross said about it being personal… I do think for Evergreen students and people connected with Evergreen who know something of Rachel’s story, it personalizes it in a different way. They’ve been touched in a way that is different probably from many other people. Now, there are students, Palestinian students, thank goodness, whose voices have really found a place. People are making space for those voices, and they’re on campuses and many of them have lost probably dozens of relatives. So I’m not saying it’s not happening in different places, but I think here and in other places, that connection to Rachel’s story and experience impacts how people look at what’s happening now.
Ross: If there’s a war going on and you lose a child in your family due to the war like in Vietnam, you know, Craig was in Vietnam, we were living in a time where there was a draft and every few days someone you knew or someone you knew of, lost a child. Those personal connections to that are very different from how people absorb news now through their personalized feeds, and things move on, and it was, it was pretty tangible. One thing I sent you also this morning was an old document that gave rationale for why we should have the memorial at Evergreen. There was a 10 year period where we were advocating for some sort of memorial. I took up that fight, I wasn’t going to let that drop so we made the sculpture. Then, for big events, we’d take the sculpture out to Red Square and just put it out there for people to see and I would remind them of the story and get their signature of endorsement and why they thought that this memorial should be on campus. I will also say there was resistance as well. Sometimes, the resistance is out of sight, there’s just a wall that comes up where there shouldn’t seem to be a wall to getting something done, and you don’t know who’s feeding the misinformation or the information that you disagree with. But there’d be these unexplainable, blocks to what we’re trying to achieve.
Craig: So, this doesn’t really have anything to do with the memorial, but why students ought to remember is one part is personalizing. You mentioned Ayensur Eygi, and we’ve met her husband, her sister, and a lot of her friends up at the University of Washington. She was killed while she was participating in the same group that Rachel was with over 2 decades ago. It’s almost shameful how much more real the understanding is of the loss, but it is a loss for the community, of somebody when it’s tangible, even though we didn’t know her and I’m very aware that we didn’t know her because I see that coming back from people that act like they know Rachel and knew Rachel and they didn’t. Even if you know somebody, you only know a little bit about them, and it’s very different depending on your relationships. The sense of personalization of that family, what they were about to go through, what they had gone through. There’s no way for me to multiply that times 40,000. I think anything you can do to personalize what’s going on and put that in some sort of realistic framework is useful to all of us in trying to think about a genocide, because you can’t grapple, and it’s a different thing to grapple with the genocide than to grapple with the killing, the murder, of one individual. That makes whatever you do to sort of personalize that memory important.
Within a few years after Rachel was killed, the play was formed out of her writing by the actor Alan Rickman and now managing editor at the Guardian, Katharine Viner. Still as far as we know, this year it’s been on 4-5 continents, and it’s still being performed. It [the play] starts with her at Evergreen, from the writing that she put together in journals throughout her life. I think what it’s really about, and one of the reasons it has resonance, is because it’s about a person trying to find what I’ll call integrity, but trying to discover their own values, and then discover how to live up to them. That’s what we should all be doing. It’s certainly the business of people in their teens and early 20s, that’s what you’re about, you should also be about it in your 70s. That’s what I’m proud of Rachel for doing and ashamed that I don’t think I recognized what hard work she was putting into that when she was a student, and when she was with us, I was a regular dad, you know, “get a job” sort of thing.
Ross: I think that your last 20 years have proven a willingness to do some work.
Craig: Well, right after she was killed, like two days later, some interviewer asked “Did you give Rachel her values? And I said no, she gave us hers.
Cindy: I think one thing I want to mention is the parallels between who Rachel was and the environment she was coming out of when she went to Gaza. It was opposition to the Iraq War and the direction that our government, the US government was taking us. This community really responded to that. Craig and I were in North Carolina at the time, and I remember looking at pictures of Seattle and seeing “No War” signs in all the windows. It wasn’t the same way in Charlotte, North Carolina. So, I was so envious because I was looking for ways to respond as well, and did finally found a small group of people in Charlotte that I could relate to and could do work with. Here people were really, and Rachel poured her heart into it, opposing the Iraq war. Now it’s similar for students. I think the parallels are really strong, because here again, we’ve spent this last year watching our government respond to this horrible situation in ways that seem really destructive and not a path forward.
Ross: I wouldn’t minimize the role that Evergreen has played in building a community of people that could support that. Our lieutenant governor is a graduate of Evergreen State College. You know, there’s been a sort of building of community around Evergreen, that can’t be dismissed when it comes to why there’s an alertness to these international challenges… someone’s got to be willing to talk about it.
During that period of not having support for the memorial and trying to find those who were supportive and figure out where the opposition was coming from, one of the places where I got particularly frustrated was when Evergreen would have its 25th or 30th or 40th-anniversary celebration to bring graduates together. They would feature, famous Evergreen graduates. Rachel’s name was not on that list, and I was pissed. There are people who knew better. You know there were people on faculty or on the administration, they were just gutless. As famous as the originator of The Simpsons is, and as wonderful of a donor to the college, he is not as important as Rachel in the history of Evergreen. I crashed those meetings to petition and to make my case. What I do recall was in a very low emotional state, I was having a conversation with Maxine Mims, who just passed on recently. She was an African American founder of the Tacoma campus, and she was known as a very strong individual in her activism and human rights issues. I was quite grateful that she was my sounding board during this festival of celebrating Evergreen. I was drawing this comparison between Rachel and the commitment she made to humanity compared to the founder of Simpsons, and she said, “That girl gave her life for what she believed in,” and she said, “What are you going to about it ?” That was exactly the support that I needed.
The decision to move the recommended site for the sculpture… was probably a good idea because of the security issues. Even the Olympia-Rafah Mural Project was vandalized, with the leaf that had to do with the parallels between the dispossession of Palestinian land and the dispossession of Indigenous land in North America. That leaf was vandalized in a very public place that wasn’t in the corner of the woods. Having a place where a lot of people were traveling through it and it was architecturally well placed, and it’s a nice site, and to get the light that I talked about. So I’m grateful for how that’s unfolded and appreciative of the need for patience sometimes and letting something reach its full supply of community support.
Cindy: One thing, going back to your first question about one thing people should know about it is that this guy [Ross] was the inspiration for it. He had the talent and the gift of his artistry and just did that, just didn’t let go, did the work, and it wasn’t easy. I mean the little bits, the time when we connected, like going into the woods that day, that was a journey that took time to get it loaded to another person to help move it, to do all of that, taking it on to campus… but that had to be an effort, a major effort – the persistence and commitment on Ross’s part that if it hadn’t been there, I don’t think it would have happened.
Craig: There certainly were professors that wanted and were supporting that. They were blessed to have you around with something that you could say “This is what we’re proposing, this is how it works, you can look at it and so.”
CPJ: In a site of remembrance like a memorial, oftentimes people will develop traditions of visiting the site and engaging in what some in the field of memory studies call a ‘rehearsal of memory.’ For example, Remembrance Day celebrations in relation to monuments of the First World War are a ‘rehearsal of memory.’ How do you think students and community members could engage in this sort of a ‘rehearsal’ in a way that honors what Rachael would’ve liked to see carried out in the world?
Ross: There’s a lot of ideas in that question. The idea of ritual comes to thought, or ceremony even, and I think about indigenous culture and their use of rituals and ceremonies. I was surprised when I came to Evergreen to see rocks on top of the plexiglass, these offerings, tributes. I personally have not been a part of that cultural way of engaging a place of honor, but I didn’t take them off, I left them up there. It’s hard to build authenticity into a reoccurring event. There’s a lot of stealing of symbols of authenticity. In sort of a Tik Tok culture people get good at finding symbols of something that has meaning and claiming them and amplifying them. But what lasts for more than 2 weeks or decades or longer? How well does it keep its connection to its original idea?
Those are very spiritual, authentic powers that allow for that to happen. I would say in looking at Evergreen’s reoccurring community of every four-year students. There’s a lot of patterns of students thinking they’re doing something new when they’re doing something that’s been done before. I remember a big protest at the Evergreen campus where people were in arms about the administration when Charles McCann was still the president of the college. They were having this big conference essentially where people were yelling out there, taking turns at the microphone. Finally, Charles McCann shows up, and they give him the same 2 minutes they gave everyone else. To bring legacy and continuity to the things that are important really requires having Evergreen graduates move into the same community and staying connected—to build into the community some depth when there are rotating students.
Cindy: I think that how people relate to the sculpture is very individual. When I come to the sculpture, it’s people sitting in a very meditative space, and I feel like that’s really important. The dialogue that individuals have with that sculpture and space is maybe the most important thing. I can envision that if there were or ever are opportunities where people can share what their reflections on it have meant to them, that could be valuable to people. It’s very much about looking into that piece and seeing yourself and saying where do I go from here? What do I do today? I am asking that question this week. Four more years, what’s he [Donald Trump] going to do? What am I going to do at this time? And we can ask that about a lot of situations—not just our elections.
Ross: It’s a wonderful idea of there being enough love of an idea, whether it has a symbol to rally around or not as a regrouping or commitment to that idea. The challenge is that with most art, most people walk by it and are thinking about their next appointment, childcare, or the class that they need to get ready for. It’s really an honor for someone to spend time with a piece of art… It was an incredible gift to me to see how an idea can resonate. These ideas can resonate, but they don’t resonate with everybody. The ritual or the reoccurring idea is something that I don’t feel a need for but having enough of a collective memory to invite people to look at it is good.
Ross: In the case of the tribute to Rachel “Reflecting on Peace and Justice,” I did not want my name to be featured because so many people were engaged with that. I felt so much support in making that. I’m proud of those contributions. My inclination is towards trying to see beauty.
Cindy: Hearing Ross talk about the process and the length of time, I think that’s an important message for students. It’s so easy if you don’t see immediate response and success to whatever you’re working on, particularly when you’re young. I mean a lot of us wish a lot bad things would stop quickly but that’s not really the way it works. I’m always trying to send the message that people really need to value the steps that we take. Looking at the situation with Gaza—Rachel brought us to it all. There was a lot of stuff we couldn’t even talk about then—I had a hard time talking about Zionism, and you couldn’t mention apartheid. Now it’s part of the main discourse—not with everybody—but still, it is. Rachel was a bit of an older student, and she was thinking about how to be strategic—she thought about that, that was important to her. She talked with her older sister who came from a more conservative place and was working in state government and so Rachel wanting Evergreen to engage win those places and Evergreen students to engage in those places, it’s not typical. We run into people all the time who don’t want to engage in those places at all. Having some patience with themselves and recognizing that what they are doing makes a difference—it really does—in the long term, but you do have to measure over the long term.
CPJ: Initially, there was a sort of unofficial version of the Rachel Corrie Memorial that existed for many years that was made up of articles placed by students and community members, flowers and art made by school children, and people from around the world, and it became a site of community. I was wondering if there were any notable experiences that any of you had with that stage of the memorial at Evergreen?
Cindy: I remember it from the day we walked onto campus, less than a week after Rachel was killed, for the memorial that was held. People here had planned this memorial and students were about to leave for break. I remember walking past this incredible thing that in a week, school children from [Lincoln Elementary] Options – where Rachel had gone as a child and before she went to Gaza because she was interested in connections with classrooms there and thinking about how she might make connections – there pictures they had drawn and statements they had shared.
Craig: I think it had been over in the library first and then it was transferred into a classroom where the offices were for a while. I think there was a space for quite a while. Therese Saliba would be good to get in touch about this because her daughter digitized all of what was there and made it available in perpetuity.
Ross: I think there was a hope that there would be a QR code at the memorial; that way people could tap into a fuller story. Evergreen students forget that Evergreen is a state institution, they’re there at the support of the entire population of the state of Washington. The ideal of being able to do whatever they want and have someone else pay for it does not always connect with the reality of who is sponsoring the opportunity. If we’re going to build community that conversation of what you want needs to reach every person in the state of Washington, ideally. That’s the reality that I feel happy to take on. I like the theme of patience, but that does not mean not expecting to make progress.
Cindy: I would just like to add that none of us are patient with genocide happening, but not to devalue the work that we’re able to do temporarily or that students are able to do temporarily that does send a strong message, that does have value. Even though you don’t see those results as quickly as we all wish we would. There are images of campus after Rachel was killed that I have. It’s hard to emphasize and capture how strongly students felt and what happened to her. One image I have is walking on the campus and seeing a big group of students that were like 40 students that came out to learn about going to be with ISM—the International Solidarity Movement—and I remember my heart sort of stopping at the time. Through the years, there have been quite a number of students who have gone to the West Bank, Israel, or Gaza, even that came out of that period. They made thoughtful decisions about how they were going to do that but there was a huge impact. And I remember on Rachel’s birthday, April 10th, so it was about a month after she was killed, there was another gathering of people in the library building. There was a birthday cake and things that they put together. And then at graduation—Amy Goodman was the keynote speaker that students had suggested. And I was ultimately a speaker at graduation too. I remember Amy Goodman calling me and seeing what I would be speaking about, not wanting to step on my toes… but by that time we had met once, you know? I said, I think I’ve got about nine or ten minutes and Amy said “You speak as long as you want to!” But at graduation there were all these students who were engaged now with this issue – they were handing out, wearing keffiyehs, handing out information to people that came in. There was a lot of activism around it. I’m sure not appreciated by some.
Ross: It’s worth noting in the tone of this conversation that Craig and Cindy and the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice have partnered with many Jewish activists and there has been an incredible willingness to talk across differences.
Craig: The one memory about Evergreen and the campus that leaps out of my mind, is about, I guess a year or so after Rachel was killed. That part of the family that was in the house that she stood in front of—the younger brother, his wife, and the baby that was born after Rachel was killed came to the United States and traveled with us – the house by that time had been destroyed, and they were trying to raise funds to build another one. Anyway, they came to Olympia, and we went out to Evergreen and just stood in Red Square. It was a beautiful June day. And he slowly turns around –and I’m trying to understand in some ways what is so special about this blonde girl who’s killed, like so many dark-haired Palestinian girls are killed. You could feel very differently about that depending on how you approached it. You know, why were so many Palestinians ignored? Anyway, he stands out there in the middle of Red Square and slowly turns around and looks to me with tears in his eyes and says, “Rachel left paradise to come be with us.” And yeah, you could sort of see that idea that “somebody remembered us—anybody.”
Ross: That reminds me of what someone with a pro-Israeli viewpoint might say. They might bring out the point that there’s been this terrible history against Jewish people. And yet, the issue of truth and of a perspective and of comprehensive views of a conflict or of an opportunity, are what’s needed. When I work on a sculpture and have a really smooth surface, I’m really exploring the quality of purity. I’m trying to define within a thousandth of an inch of a polished surface, some meaning, some pose of a bird, or an idea that is a distilled essence of what is accurate or what reveals my sense of what is accurate. So in a way, these artistic explorations are explorations of truth. People don’t always like making a stand for what they think the truth is or staying open to the fact that the truth might be something slightly different. I am totally not satisfied with any of my sculptures after they’re finished because I know they can be better. Matter is inherently incapable of communicating or revealing a spiritual ideal. But it’s what we have to work with, and you got to give it a start and then you do another one.
CPJ: There’s also a lot of talk about struggling to get the memorial placed on campus in the first place and then there being the eventual result of it being placed in the CAB building. I was wondering though, overall, especially with it being an institution that tends to focus on undergraduates, do you think that Evergreen does a good job of valuing that institutional memory?
Cindy: I don’t really know. I know it’s always a struggle because there’s so much else that can take priority for people. It’s interesting because we get a lot of requests from the Center for Community-Based Learning and the Master in Teaching program do go downtown and talk about the Olympia-Rafah mural. I don’t know if that happens with other things around campus.
Ross: I think where a lot of that institutional memory comes from are internships. I think keeping those connections. I think that institutional memory in general in any institution is political often times. I know that one of the documents that a founding professor committed to – I don’t know if he published those – Charles Teske. He wrote of how he didn’t want that initial experiment on Evergreen to be lost in the process of history. He came out of an Ivy League background and felt the need to document history, but undoubtedly from his perspective of it being this wonderful experiment, I just think that in a lot of institutions in history in general, people who want to be remembered write the history, and that’s why these institutions that have Daniel J. Evans, tend to, be the ones who make sure that they get remembered. When I did this, my little history over the last two days on the Longhouse, I had the privilege to talk to Colleen Rolly, I think is her last name now, and she was a student at the time that this was all happening, and she became hired as the liaison. She got written out of the history essentially and was pivotal to the development of the indigenous arts campus. So I’d say, my experience is that we did a terrible job but I don’t know that anyone does a good job of recording history. Now that the United States has a pretty bad record, you know, but what’s lovely is that the truth or a better truth has a way of percolating back up and that’s particularly true with the Indigenous peoples of North America.
CPJ: I was really curious as to what the symbol of a dove might’ve meant to Rachel, because it’s a lot of iconography that you use.
Cindy: Yeah, we use it with the foundation as well. Good question I wish she was here to answer myself.
Ross: She was a dove at the Procession of the Species, she adopted that.
Craig: Yeah, well, it’s this iconic symbol of peace, and she convinced 40 people to dress as doves. That was her trying to get the community to have a voice for peace in that particular thing. And she made the batik with the word “peace,” which is against the rules of the parade, so then she had to do another batik with just the symbol. She did use that and then we came back after she was killed and there were 100 doves and other people made our costumes. And then Sarah, Rachel’s older sister, convinced us to do what is really supposed to happen and go into the community and make the art together. When we were walking back to the car, someone asked us “What were you, ducks?”
Cindy: There are her words about that, she said it was really important for the procession to have a peace message in it.
Ross: That’s a good example of life informing art because her art was so much her writing.
Cindy: The last thing I’ll say about it is looking at the photos of her that day, there are different ones of her in the dove costume, but the one that I really kind of treasure is a forward-facing one where I can just see the satisfaction and the and the pleasure that it all worked – pleasure’s the wrong word but –
Ross: Authenticity is a good word.
Cindy: Yeah.
Ross: Just it was. It was the right art at the right time, you know, that met her needs and that she felt was relevant and bringing people together in a way that. They could, you know, just partake of that. You know, good communication, in my mind isn’t one person pushing ideas on another person; it’s people becoming aware of the same ideas at the same time, and the idea is already there.
Interview by Soap Khan, transcription by Meg Reed and Claire Ryan, editing by Henry Bedford-King and Nathan Tippmann.
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