Join us at 7:00 p.m. on May 22 at Pendleton Center for the Arts for a conversation with Bobby Fossek, Erica Berry, and Wendy Bingham about living in community with animals and plants. Some animals and plants are welcomed by people, and others we reject or try to eradicate. How do we decide which living things belong, and what do these decisions show about our place on the land?

This live, onstage conversation is part of Oregon Humanities’ 2023–24 Consider This series, Fear and Belonging. To participate, please register here.

Bobby Fossek is a leader of Naknuwithlama Tíichamna (Caretakers of the Land) in Cove, Oregon. Caretakers of the Land aims to steward and strengthen the symbiotic life ways of the Columbia River Basin and the Blue Mountain bioregion through seasonal round immersion camps, cultural revitalization projects, ecosystem restoration, and regenerative life skills education.

Erica Berry is a writer from Portland. Her nonfiction debut, Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear, was published in spring 2023 by Flatiron/Macmillan, and is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and a semifinalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. Her essays, which are often about the intersection of emotion and the natural environment, appear in the New York Times, Orion, Outside Magazine, the Guardian, and the Atlantic, among other publications.

Wendy Bingham is a cattle rancher from North Powder, Oregon. She discovered her passion for horses and cattle as a child while helping out with her family’s herd. In 2002, Wendy and her husband, Jake, started Bingham Beef, a family owned and operated cattle ranch. Wendy believes that food is an important part of life and takes pleasure in providing beef that has been pasture raised with care.

This series is made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture initiative, as well as support from the Oregon Cultural Trust, the Susan Hammer Fund of Oregon Community Foundation, The Standard, Tonkon Torp LLP, and the City of Portland’s We Are Better Together program.