Events and Presentations

Toward a Decolonial Future: Klamath River Temporary Dams

November 13, 2024

Watch Toward a Decolonial Future: Klamath River Temporary Dams on the California State Library YouTube Channel.

Dr. Brittani Orona, Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University, returned for a webinar titled Toward a Decolonial Future: Klamath River Temporary Dams. The lower Klamath River Basin, home to the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk people, is vitally important to the cultural and physical health of each tribe. While this point has been made in numerous publications, this talk focuses on one little-explored aspect of the relationship between the three tribes and the Klamath River and its tributaries: fish weirs. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fish weirs, or temporary dams, disappeared as settlers invaded the Klamath River region building permanent dams and irrigation infrastructure all but ended the fall and spring salmon runs on the river and its tributaries. Despite this, fish weirs, and their cultural significance, have not been forgotten. In this talk, Dr. Orona reflects on fish weirs as decolonial future for the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk people. She is interested in how the balance of a temporary dam structure, such as fish weirs, benefited the Klamath Basin and how this symbiotic relationship may be established again after the permanent dam structures are gone. As four dams are removed on the Upper Klamath River, this talk explores the relationship of the lower Klamath River and how Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk story and ceremony intertwine on the Basin to build a new, decolonial future for the river itself.

Dr. Brittani R. Orona is currently a UC President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz. In Summer of 2025, she will join the Department of Native American Studies at UC Davis as an Assistant Professor. Her research and teaching focus on Indigenous history and human rights, environmental studies, public humanities, and visual sovereignty.

Orona received her Ph.D. in Native American Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Human Rights from University of California, Davis, an M.A. in Native American Studies from UC Davis and an M.A. in Public History from Sacramento State University, and her B.A. in History from Cal Poly Humboldt. In addition to her academic work, Orona has worked for several federal, local, and state government agencies. Orona is Hupa and an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California.

Creating Community Archives in the Digital Era: Chicanx Oral History Projects in the Making

September 19, 2024

Watch Creating Community Archives on the California State Library YouTube Channel.

Dr. Lorena V. Márquez discusses her upcoming book: In their Voices: Chicana/o Movement Elders’ Reflections on the Civil Rights Era, where she highlights race and language trauma, identity formation, and resilience as a testament to forms of resistance during this time period. She also discusses the importance of creating community archives in the digital era, focusing on the “Sacramento Movimiento Chicano and Mexican American Education Oral History Project” housed at Sacramento State University Library and “Veteranos: Sacramento’s Mexican American Servicemen” housed at the Center for Sacramento History.

Dr. Lorena V. Márquez is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Chicana/o/x Studies at University of California, Davis. She is currently the Director of the Sacramento Movimiento Chicano and Mexican American Education Oral History Project, which has documented 125 oral interviews with local area movement activists and Veteranos: Sacramento’s Mexican American Servicemen. Her book, La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Determination in Sacramento (University of Arizona Press, 2020), examines how la gente, or everyday people, grappled with the ideologies, strategies, and political transformations of the Civil Rights era.

Words of Liberation: The Exploration of Blackness through Poetry

June 13, 2024

Watch Words of Liberation on the California State Library YouTube channel.

Kim McMillon, the editor of Black Fire—This Time, moderates a conversation seeking to clear the cloudy lenses and outdated images of Blackness that Black women have had to navigate. Robin Coste Lewis, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles (2017-2021), and devorah major, Poet Laureate of San Francisco (2002-2006), discuss how their poetry has used words of liberation to empower and heal, pinpointing the reality of Black women’s lives; how the power of their poetry can generate change; and how it acknowledges a history of Blackness that needs to be celebrated and told.

Dr. Kim McMillon is a producer, playwright, and contributor to the anthology Some Other Blues: New Perspectives on Amiri Baraka as well as the editor of Black Fire—This Time.  She is currently the Community Liaison for the Arts for the School of Social Sciences, Humanities, & Arts at UC Merced.

Robin Coste Lewis won the National Book Award for Voyage of the Sable Venus, her first collection of poetry, in 2015. Her most recent book is To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, won the PEN Voelker Poetry Award and the NAACP Award for Excellence in Literature. The former poet laureate of Los Angeles, Lewis is currently writer in residence at the University of Southern California.

devorah major born and raised in California, granddaughter of immigrants, documented and undocumented, major served as San Francisco’s Third Poet Laureate (2002–2006). In 2022 she received the Regina Coppola International Literary Award in Italy where her sixth book of poetry, with open arms, was released in a bilingual edition. A Willow Press Editor’s Choice her seventh book of poetry, califia’s daughter, was published in 2020.

My Mother’s Story: A Suite of Art Prints

April 4, 2024

Watch My Mother’s Story on the California State Library YouTube channel.

Royal Chicano Air Force Founding Member Juan Manuel Carrillo talks about his mother’s life and how he uses the art of screen printing to tell her story. The suite of silk screen prints, which Carrillo will share during the talk, show the life of his mother, María del Carmen Carrillo Guerrero, born in Sinaloa in 1912. Using historical photos and his mother’s own words, the prints portray the life of an immigrant woman and her determination to overcome life’s obstacles.

The suite of eight silk screen prints was created between 2012 and 2014 at TANA Art Center, Woodland. The donated suite adds to the collection of Royal Chicano Air Force prints in the State Library’s collection.

Juan Manuel Carrillo is a retired Deputy Director of the California Arts Council and former faculty member of Cosumnes River College. He is a founding member of the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), an artist collective. He is a historian, writer, poet, and visual artist. He was born in Mexico, raised in San Francisco, and has lived in Sacramento for over 50 years. His drawings, prints and paintings have been exhibited in various galleries and exhibition spaces in solo and group shows with the RCAF.

California’s Environmental Heritage: Indigenous Wisdom, Historical Impact, and Future Sustainability

December 6, 2023

Watch California’s Environmental Heritage on the California State Library YouTube channel.

Explore California’s past, free from concrete and dams, and envision a greener future. In this talk, Dr. Brittani Orona, Dr. Melinda Adams and Rose Ramirez discuss the environmental legacy of settler colonialism in California, including its impact on current land and water management policy, through the lens of Indigenous practices and perspectives.

Dr. Brittani R. Orona is currently a UC President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz. Her research and teaching focus on Indigenous history and human rights, environmental studies, public humanities, and visual sovereignty.

Dr. Melinda Adams belongs to the San Carlos Apache Tribe, is a researcher at UC Davis and is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on the revitalization of cultural fire with Tribes at the intersection of ecology, environmental science, and Native American Studies.

Artist, photographer, filmmaker, and writer Rose Ramirez is the co-director and co-producer of Saging the World, an award-winning film about white sage’s popularity and its impact on the Native community and the environment. She is also a co-author of the Ethnobotany Project: Contemporary Uses of Native Plants of Southern California and Northern Baja California Indians.

The West End: How Urban Reform Destroyed a Sacramento Neighborhood

November 16, 2023

Watch The West End: How Urban Reform Destroyed a Sacramento Neighborhood on the California State Library YouTube channel.

Sacramento’s West End, located between the State Capitol and the Sacramento River. Its early 20th century reputation as a haven for liquor, sex work, and gambling made it a popular destination for many Sacramentans and a target of Progressive Era civic reformers. Sacramento’s business class considered a multiracial neighborhood at the gateway to the Capital City an undesirable liability, hindering the city’s ambitions for growth and development. Using land use policy based on institutional racism, combined with federal redevelopment incentives and highway programs, Sacramento’s leaders erased the city’s most vibrant neighborhood. Sacramento’s story was far from unique; in downtowns across the country, highways and mid-century development projects mark the graves of demolished neighborhoods of color. Today, how do we commemorate the history and legacy of a place that no longer exists?

William Burg has written seven books, and approximately one hundred articles, about Sacramento history. One such book called Wicked Sacramento is about Sacramento’s long-gone West End neighborhood. He holds a Master of Arts in Public History from Sacramento State University, serves as President of Preservation Sacramento’s Board of Directors, and works as a historian for the State of California.

Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party

June 9, 2023

Watch Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party on the California State Library YouTube channel.

Many of us have heard these three words: Black Panther Party. Some know the Party’s history as a movement for the social, political, economic, and spiritual justice of Black and Indigenous people of color – but to this day, few know the story of the backbone of the Party: the women. While these remarkable women of all ages and diverse backgrounds were regularly making headlines agitating, protesting, and organizing, they were also building communities and enacting social justice. Comrade Sisters is their story.

Join the California History Section in a discussion featuring co-authors Stephen Shames and Ericka Huggins of the newly released book, Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party. This panel is joined by former Black Panther Party member M. Gayle Asali Dickson and moderated by Susan D. Anderson, History Curator and Program Manager at the California African American Museum.

Stephen Shames uses photography to raise awareness of social issues, with a particular focus on child poverty and race. His award-winning photographs are in the permanent collections of 40 major museums.

Ericka Huggins is an educator, Black Panther Party member, former political prisoner, human rights advocate, and poet. For 50 years, Ericka has used her life experiences in service to community.

Gayle Asali Dickson is not only an artist, but also an ordained minister and a former member of the Black Panther Party from 1970-1976. Her art today is for healing, self-awareness, memory and understanding.

Susan D. Anderson is History Curator and Program Manager at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Los Angeles. She is completing volume one of African Americans and the California Dream for Heyday Books.

Threads of the HMong Diaspora

May 17, 2023

Watch Threads of the Hmong Diaspora on the California State Library YouTube channel.

Indigenous to the lands of China and living throughout Southeast Asia, there are over 100,000 HMong people in California. This talk explored the history of HMong Californians through the threads of their global diaspora. Tapping into oral history and folklore, designer and curator Pachia Lucy Vang shared research rooted in HMong knowledge to look at the importance of paj ntaub or HMong clothing and textiles throughout the world.

Pachia Lucy Vang is a curator and designer creating paj ntaub textile arts in her studio Culture through Cloth. She holds a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and is a current MFA Candidate of Design at UC Davis, where she is merging textile and exhibition design to curate, create, and re-imagine through HMong knowledge.

We Are the Land: A History of Native California

November 16, 2022

Watch We are the Land on the California State Library YouTube channel.

Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. Professors Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer Jr. discussed their latest book, We Are the Land: A History of Native California and recounted the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood and into the present.

We Are the Land: A History of Native California is the winner of the Western History Association’s 2022 John C. Ewers Award for the best published book on North American (including Mexico) Indian Ethnohistory. Find We are the Land in our library catalog.

Damon B. Akins is Professor of History at Guilford College, in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he teaches Native American / American West / Environmental history.

William J. Bauer is an enrolled citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and a professor of American Indian history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Viva La Lucha: A Conversation with RCAF Artists, part 2

November 2, 2022

Watch Viva La Lucha, part 2 on the California State Library YouTube channel.

Initially formed in 1970 as the Rebel Chicano Art Front by art professors José Montoya and Esteban Villa with students attending Sacramento State University, the group expanded to become the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), a collective of artists and activists in support of artistic expression and cultural affirmation as well as Chicano civil rights and labor organizing. Over five decades, its artists, writers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, and scholars have created works that garnered international acclaim and influenced generations, while its community organizers and civic leaders have been at the forefront of social justice movements.

The RCAF posters are well-known for their aesthetic innovations and powerful messages. Part 2 of this conversation was with founding members Juan Carrillo and Juanishi Orosco, who shared the history, context, and purpose of their prints from our Chicano Poster Collection.

Juan Manuel Carrillo is a retired Deputy Director of the California Arts Council and faculty member of Cosumnes River College.

Juanishi Orosco is known for his vivid prints and murals depicting his Mexican, Chicano and indigenous cultural roots which can be found across California as well as nationally in repositories like the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California

October 27, 2022

Since the late nineteenth century, Syrian and Lebanese migration, in particular, to Southern California has been intimately connected to and through Latin America. Professor Sarah M. A. Gualtieri explored the history of Los Angeles’s Syrian American community and drew out its deep connections to Southern California’s Mexican American and Latinx communities to reveal important cross-border and multiethnic solidarities in Syrian California.

Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California (Stanford University Press, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award and the Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies. Find this book is in our library catalog.

Sarah M. A. Gualtieri is an award-winning historian, teacher, and author. She is professor in the departments of American Studies and Ethnicity, History, and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California.

Viva La Lucha: A Conversation with RCAF Artists, part 1

October 19, 2022

Watch Viva La Lucha, part 1 on the California State Library YouTube channel

Initially formed in 1970 as the Rebel Chicano Art Front by art professors José Montoya and Esteban Villa with students attending Sacramento State University, the group expanded to become the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), a collective of artists and activists in support of artistic expression and cultural affirmation as well as Chicano civil rights and labor organizing. Over five decades, its artists, writers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, and scholars have created works that garnered international acclaim and influenced generations, while its community organizers and civic leaders have been at the forefront of social justice movements.

The RCAF posters are well-known for their aesthetic innovations and powerful messages. Part 1 of this conversation with founding members Rudy Cuellar and Louie “the Foot” González, who shared the history, context, and purpose of their prints from our Chicano Poster Collection. This talk was moderated by RCAF member and art historian, Terezita Romo.

Rodolfo “Rudy” Ojeda Cuellar is a founding member of the RCAF, and who also taught and assisted other RCAF members with the silk-screening process, creating prints for them along with producing signs and posters for myriad community events.

Luis González, aka “Louie the Foot” is a Chicano poet and silkscreen artist who grew up in Sacramento, CA and was educated in local schools and neighborhoods. He served his community as a member of the Jr. Brown Berets, MEChA, La Raza Bookstore, and the Royal Chicano Air Force, among others.

Terezita “Tere” Romo is a Lecturer and Affiliate Faculty in the Chicana/o Studies Department at UC, Davis. An art historian, she has published extensively on Chicana/o art, most recently as a contributor to the Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibition catalog, ¡Printing the Revolution: The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now.

Preserving Perseverance (Virtual Sacramento Archives Crawl)

October 3 -9, 2021

The Archives Crawl is an Archives Month event held every October. For 2021, the Crawl was virtual for the second year in a row. Crawlers were able to attend talks, see exhibit tables, and watch live tours all from the comfort of their homes. The California History Section offered the following virtual show-and-tells on the San Francisco Earthquake & Fire and the Jeremiah Burke Sanderson collection.

The recordings can be watched on the Sacramento Archives Crawl YouTube channel:

• Watch San Francisco Earthquake and Fire: Resilience and Recovery
• Watch Resisting Racism: The Jeremiah Burke Sanderson Collection

Celebrating 10 years! (Virtual Sacramento Archives Crawl)

October 2020

The Archives Crawl is an Archives Month event held every October. For the first time in 10 years, the Crawl went virtual. Every day in October videos and posts were published via social media taking attendees on tours and highlighting materials in participating institutions’ collections. The California History Section offered the virtual show-and-tells on celebrations throughout California history; the Gladding McBean collection; and treasures in the collection.

The recordings can be watched on the Sacramento Archives Crawl YouTube channel:

• Watch Celebrations throughout California History
• Watch The Gladding McBean collection
• Watch Treasures from the California State Library’s California History Section