This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the Bill Holm Center at the Burke Museum, a milestone for the globally accessible learning center dedicated to the study of Native arts of the Northwest.
The Center, established in 2003, honors Bill Holm (1925–2020), curator emeritus of Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum and professor emeritus of art history at the University of Washington. His work at the Burke established the groundwork for the relationships and ethical practices that still flourish today.
Learn more about the decade-long publishing partnership between the Bill Holm Center and UW Press as well as the upcoming anniversary events below.
Native Art of the Pacific Northwest: A Bill Holm Center Series
The Bill Holm Center book series aims to foster appreciation of the dynamic cultural and artistic expressions of the Indigenous peoples of the greater Pacific Northwest through the publication of important new research on Native art and culture. Guided by editors Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse and Robin K. Wright, the series features a variety of approaches to the history of art and expression along the Northwest Coast.
Books in the series investigate historical productions and contemporary manifestations of cultural expression as well as the important intersections between time, place, technique, and viewpoint. In the Spirit of the Ancestors celebrates the vitality of Pacific Northwest Coast art by showcasing a selection of objects from the Burke Museum’s vast collection. Return to the Land of the Head Hunters, the definitive guide to photographer Edward S. Curtis’s flawed but significant film, offers unique Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw perspectives, accounts of the film’s production and subsequent circulation, and evaluations of its depictions of cultural practice. The fiftieth anniversary edition of Bill Holm’s foundational Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form features reflections from contemporary Northwest Coast artists about the impact of the book, which has been credited with having drawn a number of artists into their own practice.
Series publications also consider cultural knowledge and the embodiment of that knowledge in material productions from multiple and sometimes conflicting cultural perspectives, expanding understanding of the role of art in the complicated history of the region. Megan A. Smetzer’s Painful Beauty, which recently won the Eldredge Prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, contributes to the growing literature addressing women’s artistic expressions on the Northwest Coast. Skidegate House Models, based on Robin K. Wright’s twenty-plus years of collaborative research with the Skidegate Haida community, explores the Skidegate model village carved by Haida artists for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
This free symposium will bring together leading Native American and First Nations artists and scholars to discuss trends and recent research on the distinctive art traditions of the region. Speakers include Sonny Assu (Ligwiłda’xw of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations), Shawn Brigman (Spokane), Joe Feddersen (Colville), Dan Friday (Lummi), Kadusné Ursala Hudson (Tlingit), James Johnson (Tlingit), and Tillie Jones (Tulalip), with opening songs from Joe Seymour (Squaxin Island/Acoma Pueblo).
Celebrate twenty years of the Bill Holm Center with an evening reception at the Burke Museum. Speakers include Evelyn Vanderhoop (Haida), Calvin Hunt (Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw), and David Boxley (Tsimshian).
The Critical Filipinx Studies series has from its inception aimed to not only advance key questions in the interdisciplinary field of Filipino or Filipinx Studies but also to illuminate the issues and struggles on-the-ground Filipinx communities face daily. Inspired by the praxis of author and labor organizer, scholar-activist Carlos Bulosan, this series centers those who adopt a stance of care—ethical and political commitment—toward the people whose lives animate their work.
It is perhaps most appropriate that the inaugural book of the series is penned by Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez. Francisco-Menchavez is an award-winning scholar-activist, researcher, writer, and associate professor at San Francisco State University. Her forthcoming book, Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building during Crisis, focuses on the experiences of Filipina caregivers, a demographic that Francisco-Menchavez knows intimately because many of her family members were employed as caregivers.
This aspect of her family history is ultimately what drove Francisco-Menchavez’s activism. Throughout her time in academia, Francisco-Menchavez has volunteered to support caregivers—and other care workers’—grassroots organizing efforts. This political commitment has shaped her scholarship; indeed, Francisco-Menchavez’s scholarship has served as another site for activism.
What follows are edited excerpts from a candid Q&A session between me and Valerie.
Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Can you give me a brief synopsis of your book?
Valerie Franciso-Menchavez: So in my mind, Caring for Caregivers is one of the first sustained, sociological examinations of Filipino caregivers. For me, it was part memoir, part sociological research/academic writing. I was writing the book from my perspective as someone who grew up in care homes, whose family members—a majority of my family members—worked as caregivers. Doing research with caregivers for close to six years now, I felt like I was both using my sociological skills to analyze the industry while also writing down what many activists, organizers, and advocates already know about the industry. These folks don’t always have somewhere to point to academically that legitimizes what they have always known.
My book is an intimate look at what it’s like to be a caregiver, and it also serves these other purposes around advocacy, organizing, and activism. For me, this book is a really special piece of writing. To be honest, I feel like it’s the closest to myself that I’ve written. I feel like, “Oh, this is me,” as Val the scholar and organizer.
Rodriguez: Thank you. Can you maybe speak a little more to what it means that you wrote this book in a way that feels more like you, that it reflects your voice more? You mentioned that it’s also part memoir. How might have you been constrained in the past from writing in your voice?
Francisco-Menchavez: My first book, The Labor of Care, was my dissertation turned into a book, and I needed it for tenure. I really wanted to write close to the discipline and be legible to sociologists and Asian Americanists as well as women and gender studies scholars. I think what changed was, one, receiving tenure, then two, the passing of my brother-in-law, Bill. His passing gave me the courage and bravery to be more honest about what kind of writer and what kind of scholar I wanted to be. Bill’s passing was sudden and tragic. He was also a caregiver. In fact, lots of his family are Tongan caregivers. When he was alive, we would talk about what it’s like to work in that industry and how monotonous and exhausting it was. Showing up for him [through this book] is necessary work.
Real and sustainable change for domestic workers in this country requires intergenerational dialogue.
Valerie Francisco-Menchavez
I think of two particular moments in the book where I feel like I’m writing in my own voice as an author and not as an academic. First is when I reflect on what a morning looked like for my grandmother, who was a caregiver. I write from the perspective of my nine-year-old immigrant self. The second moment is the chapter on kwentuhan, which I’ve tried to develop in my scholarship, and refers to a talk-story method that is rooted in Filipino cultural practice. The kwentuhan chapter was me trying to say to fellow activists and organizers that social science methods like kwentuhan may not break down imperialist, capitalist systems, but it is a tool. It’s a tool that I know, from my experience as an activist, as an organizer, as a kasama (Filipino term for “comrade”), as a scholar, it’s a tool that can help build and bridge relationships in our community.
This kind of bravery, this courage to say, “I said what I said,” I’ve not had that in the past. I’ve not had that courage in the past. And I think my conversations with you, with [UW Press acquisitions editor] Mike Baccam, encouraging me to not have to rely on disciplinary frameworks for every argument made me courageous enough to write from a nine-year-old perspective, to write from a perspective of someone who has done the work of kwentuhan.
Rodriguez: You talk a lot about the kinds of ways that you bring your activist or scholar-activist self into this book. I wonder if you can come up with a few key takeaways that you hope community organizers or activists especially might take from your book.
Francisco-Menchavez: I love that question. I think one is that when organizers and activists want to be in solidarity and organize with migrant care workers, they must acknowledge that organizing practices have to center radical care. These care workers are providing paid care work and oftentimes underpaid, undervalued, waged care work for other people. They provide care work for their families in the Philippines. They group up in their churches, in their community centers, in their grocery stores, and provide care for one another.
Therefore, the way that we as advocates, as activists, scholars, and organizers should move with them is to center their humanity and their dignity. That might seem super basic, but I think when we’re trying, for example, to advance legislation for the health and safety of care workers, we don’t see them as people who actually need a ride to the meeting or who can also get sick. When we don’t recognize their vulnerability as human beings, then we sort of lose the essence of why we are doing organizing and activist work with them.
Number two, I really think that we (as activists, organizers, and advocates) need to put care workers at the center of decision-making. We need to really follow their lead on what leadership development looks like or what kinds of changes that they might want [for their lives].
Lastly, I believe that real and sustainable change for domestic workers in this country requires intergenerational dialogue. If we don’t include young people in the conversation about elder care or childcare or care work in general, we’re missing a generation or potentially many generations that will inevitably have care work as part of their lives in the future.
Valerie Francisco-Menchavez is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University and author of The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age.
Robyn Magalit Rodriguez is professor and chair of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis and coeditor of Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation.
Visitors to Discovery Park in Seattle will soon encounter a significant but overlooked piece of civil rights history, thanks in part to a book that brought the incident to the nation’s attention years before.
New signage installed at Fort Lawton, the former US Army post that was given to the City of Seattle and later dedicated as Discovery Park, will honor twenty-eight exonerated Black soldiers who were wrongly convicted after a series of tragic events that took place there during World War II.
On the night of August 14, 1944, an Italian prisoner of war was lynched at Fort Lawton—a murder that shocked the nation and the international community. It was a time of deep segregation in the army, and the War Department was quick to charge three Black soldiers with first-degree murder, although there was no evidence linking them to the crime. Forty other Black soldiers faced lesser charges over the incident, launching one of the largest and longest army trials of World War II. The defendants shared just two army lawyers between them who were given just ten days to prepare their case, even as some faced the death penalty.
Despite the eventual conviction of twenty-eight soldiers, it was later revealed through the research of journalists Jack Hamann and his wife, Leslie, that the prosecution, led by Leon Jaworski, was aware of flaws in the case but proceeded anyway. The Hamann’s findings, published in the book On American Soil, led to a congressional inquiry in 2006.
As a result, the army’s highest court of appeals overturned all the convictions, issued honorable discharges, and offered reparations to the defendants and their families. However, only two defendants lived long enough to receive apologies, with one dying shortly after his exoneration. Some families of the defendants have not yet been located.
The Friends of Discovery Park will unveil new signage commemorating these soldiers on Saturday, October 19, from 10:00 a.m. to noon at the Discovery Park Visitor Center. The event will feature guest speakers, including author Jack Hamann.
What was the driving force behind the writing of On American Soil?
A mysterious headstone stands sentry in a forgotten graveyard in the Fort Lawton Cemetery at Discovery Park. Thirty-seven years ago, my first attempt to unlock the story of the man buried beneath the strange column revealed a shocking set of circumstances connected to his death: A lynching of a prisoner of war in Seattle—allegedly by a mob of African Americans—that resulted in the largest and longest army court-martial of World War II, led by prosecutor Leon Jaworski. It was as unlikely an event as I could imagine, and one that almost no one in our community knew anything about.
A new sign commemorating the events of 1944, to be installed at the Discovery Park Visitor Center, references On American Soil by Jack Hamann.
In the 1980s, my first attempt to explore and explain the story of the 1944 murder of Private Guglielmo Olivotto was hobbled by a lack of time, money, and experience. At the time, my reports were primarily a rehash of the stories filed by journalists during the long, emotionally charged trial, aided by face-to-face conversations with several of the forty-three Black soldiers who stood trial for murder and/or rioting. For years afterward, I was haunted by their assertions of innocence, despite what appeared to be the US Army’s best efforts to sort out justice.
When the youngest of our two children left for college, my wife, Leslie, and I decided to revisit the story, driven by the nagging suspicion that neither we—nor the reporters in 1944—had gotten the story right. As it turned out, our suspicions were well-founded.
The book closely examines an incident of racial injustice in Seattle’s history. In your research and writing, how do you see these attitudes evolving?
I grew up believing that lynchings were primarily a scourge of the Deep South. Like many northwesterners, I assumed that our region had a relatively benign racial history. My research helped me understand just how wrong I could be.
The very first European settlements on Elliott Bay eventually adopted the hostile relations with Native peoples that plagued most of the Western Hemisphere. Soon after, migrant laborers from China suffered brutal attacks and discrimination once the backbreaking task of building rail lines was complete. For decades, Seattle’s African Americans were denied housing in all but a few neighborhoods and suffered exclusion and indignities throughout the region. Against this backdrop, thousands of Black Americans came to the Northwest during World War II, either as soldiers or seeking employment in the defense supply industry.
The tragic murder at Fort Lawton was inexorably linked to the segregation and racism of the day. As it turned out, influential people within the Truman White House understood the connection and cited the Fort Lawton incident in the successful efforts to desegregate the armed forces and to revise the military’s code of justice.
As an investigative journalist and documentary producer, what was the most exciting part of your work on this book?
During our years of research, my wife and I identified the names of more than three hundred people who were in some way connected to the Fort Lawton lynching and court-martial. The tedious process of trying to determine the whereabouts of these people—or their survivors—always carried the promise of another “Eureka!” moment, when we actually reached someone by telephone or met them face to face. Many of these sources provided crucial details or helped us understand otherwise confusing inconsistencies. It was always exciting to hear the voice of someone whose long-ago words we had been reading on yellowed paper.
A real highlight was our visits to presidential libraries and to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. It was there, after weeks of dead ends, that Leslie located the smoking gun: an amazing, lengthy report prepared by a larger-than-life army general named Elliot Cooke. The Cooke Report, as it was known, had been buried in the archives for decades, but it contained the real secrets of the Fort Lawton incident, and made the entire book possible. We knew almost immediately that a much richer and more accurate picture would emerge from that report.
Your history-making investigation shared in On American Soil was widely covered in the media and yet this notable civil rights event has remained hidden to many, particularly for new generations of Seattleites. What do you hope visitors to Discovery Park will gain from the commemorative signage that was inspired by your book?
From the moment of their earliest forced arrival as enslaved chattel, Black Americans have been treated as the “other,” subjected to relentless discrimination by our Constitution, our laws and our culture. Although the arc of history has bent ever so slowly toward justice, Black soldiers during World War II were still treated in most respects as second-class citizens. When a murder was committed on August 14, 1944, certain army officials felt entitled to “round up the usual suspects,” and to treat the defendants less as individuals and more as an interchangeable group. As much as anything, that explains how this injustice went unnoticed and uncorrected for more than forty years.
I hope the new Discovery Park signs will encourage visitors to learn more about this crucial piece of our shared history—the largest and longest US Army court-martial of World War II and the only time in American history that Black men have stood trial charged with a mob lynching—and consider whether its lessons still resonate today. In some settings, are Black Americans still treated as the “other,” and thus subjected to different, unjust standards? Do other non-majority populations face similar wrongs and indignities because of their race, religion or heritage? Learning the lessons of the Fort Lawton court-martial may help a new generation remain vigilant and understand the unrecoverable costs of discrimination, racism, and injustice.
We are pleased to share that Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee’s Bend Quiltby Lisa Gail Collins has been awarded the 2023 Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Book Prize from the Bard Graduate Center. The prize rewards scholarly excellence and commitment to cross-disciplinary conversation in books about decorative arts, design history, or material culture of the Americas.
Lisa Gail Collins
With sincerity and empathy, Collins has crafted a book [that] will help readers appreciate local Black vernacular culture in rich and nuanced ways.
Horowitz Book Prize selection committee members
A moving meditation on a singular quilt, Stitching Love and Loss illuminates the perseverance and creativity of the African American women quilters in a rural Black Belt community.
“The quilts of Gee’s Bend are rightly renowned, subject of wildly popular exhibits in the early 2000s and more recently the distribution of quilts of Gee’s Bend into major museum collections,” wrote the members of the selection committee for the Horowitz Book Prize. “Collins is intentional in locating the story not in the value put on Gee’s Bend quilts by those outside the community . . . Rather she embeds the quilts in the community life in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. With sincerity and empathy, Collins has crafted a book [that] will help readers appreciate local Black vernacular culture in rich and nuanced ways.”
Lisa Gail Collins is Professor of Art and Director of American Studies on the Sarah Gibson Blanding Chair at Vassar College. Her books include The Art of History: African American Women Artists Engage the Past and New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement (coedited with Margo Natalie Crawford).
In recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field, Bard Graduate Center will host an event with Collins on the subject of the book in the fall of 2025.
University of Washington Press Blog 