Driving down Franklin Boulevard, it’s hard to miss the newly constructed building, made mostly of glass, that connects two parts of the University of Oregon’s campus with a skyway bridge. Nestled behind the new building is the millrace many students walk by on the way to Autzen Stadium.
On the second-floor terrace of the newly constructed Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact lies a hidden gem: a patio filled with dozens of plants native to Oregon, each carrying their own story.
Vine maple bushes, whose leaves turn a beautiful dusty orange in the fall, are interspersed with varieties of ferns. Douglas iris blooms purple in the spring. Year-round, it provides a stunning array of botanicals.
The sea of green not only creates a great study spot, but the plants themselves are helping to nurture the environment around them. While much of the project is concentrated on the second-floor terrace, it expands to plantings along the stream that flows behind the Knight campus.
Initially, the goal of the Knight Campus native plants project was to revitalize the mill race between Agate Street and Onyx Street and bring the water and its surroundings into a healthier state, according to Moira Kiltie who started the project and is the associate vice president and chief of staff at the Knight Campus. Part of what this meant was incorporating plants that are native to Oregon.
The project started as a way to help foster a healthier environment surrounding the newly developed addition to the UO’s campus. From revitalizing the millrace behind Knight Campus to planting natives all along the terrace and perimeter of the building, this project aims to create a space of decolonial learning and bring forward plants that help the local ecosystems in ways such as providing a habitat for pollinators.
“We’ve been thinking about this as an opportunity to do informal education, to get more people to become aware of the environment that we’re walking in as being an environment that has been occupied for centuries, and how people other than the people today might have used and lived within the space,” Kiltie says, referring to her hope that the space will serve as a place of learning.
Jason Younker, newly elected chief of the Coquille Indian tribe and the assistant vice president and advisor to the president for sovereignty and government to government relations at UO, is working with tribes around Oregon to ensure that the project centers Indigenous knowledge.
Younker’s central role in the project is connecting with Oregon’s Indigenous tribes to get placards assigned to each plant. These will display their scientific name, English common name, Indigenous name and some of their uses. Working closely with the tribes is a decolonial way of working on this project, highlighting Native voices and acknowledging the importance of different forms of knowledge.
The UO sits upon land once home to the Kalapuya people. Many of their descendants are now part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz.Joe Scott, culture bearer for the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, says colonization was not just taking away land from Native people but physically disconnecting them from the land as well. This disconnection often meant attempting to strip away thousands of years of intergenerational knowledge. “Losing our land was losing ourselves,” Scott says.
According to Scott, decolonization is an ongoing process that addresses the impacts of colonization.
“It can look like a lot of different things. You know, it can look like acknowledging first foods and plants as a part of us as people and putting those things back in the ground,” Scott says. “That’s an act of returning us to our place, our Indigenous food plants.”
For Younker, while the university still has a long way to go in its own process of decolonization, this project is an important step in the right direction. A big part of this initiative is a form of decolonization through teaching about the plants.
“When decolonizing aspects [of a project], you have to make absolutely sure the information you put down is correct,” Younker says. The history of colonialism is a history of erasure, and so in order to work towards decolonizing, it’s imperative to listen to the tribes, Younker explained.
There is no one way to decolonize — instead, it’s a process that starts with listening to Native voices, Younker says. For him, one step is by “changing the understanding of places and the landscapes.” Teaching about the history of a place is the primary goal of the native plant project, which aims to create a space of learning that acknowledges the history of the land on which the campus resides.
On campus, there are a few places where the Native presence is highlighted, according to Younker. Some of these places include the Many Nations Longhouse and the EMU amphitheater, where the flags from the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon fly. The native plants at the Knight Campus and the placards, including Indigenous names and uses, are where Younker hopes to highlight the Native presence on campus.
“I see the university’s responsibility is we want to prepare students to work in a very diverse world, with diversity of thought and acceptance,” Younker says. “And you can only do that when you have a diverse campus. And that includes decolonization of even the simplest things, like putting a camas patch on Knight Campus.”
Many plants included in the project are traditionally used by all nine of the Confederated Tribes of Oregon. Younker is assigning each plant to a specific tribe, and they will provide the name and uses of that plant, specific to their tribe, for the placards.
The leaves of the gha-gum-lak-o, or Douglas iris, help prevent thirst, according to information gathered by Younker so far on the plants he assigned to the Klamath tribes. Western Columbine roots can be mashed up and applied to help relieve aching joints. The Oregon grape is both an antidiarrheal drug and a blood-clotting agent. These are just some of the many plants and their uses specific to the Klamath tribe.
Another plant particularly important to the Klamath Tribes is willow, known as “yoss” to this tribe, according to Chocktoot. Chewing on a strip of the bark helps relieve headaches, and the branches are traditionally used to make gathering baskets and fish traps.
The names and uses come from a spreadsheet Younker is working on in collaboration with Perry Chocktoot, culture and heritage department director for Klamath Tribes.
“I don’t know if decolonization is not only possible but is going to be allowed,” Chocktoot says, describing the attitude of the U.S. government as a whole, while also reflecting on how this project may be a step towards decolonization for the university. “But it is our responsibility to try.”
While the native plants project can only do so much language restoration and decolonization, including the native names of plants is an important step in acknowledging other forms of knowledge and the history of the land this campus resides on.
While several of the plants have already been planted, one is yet to join the others. Camas, or “quamash,” according to Younker, is waiting to be gathered in the spring and brought back to campus for planting. The purple flowering plant is a major food source. While Younker thinks the starchy bulbs taste like paste, they are an excellent energy source. The bulbs are prepared in various ways — mashed into a cake or smoked — Younker explained, holding up his own jar of smoked camas bulbs.
While the native plant project signs are not up yet, Kilite is hopeful that they will be up by the end of spring.
“I look forward to once this project is completed, inviting the tribes to do a blessing,” Younker says, encouraging the university to be proud of this step in the process of decolonizing and highlighting the Native presence. “Decolonization is not easy, and it’s not always welcome. And this is one of those ways that we can.”
