Idahoan Project focuses on shared experiences, hopes, dreams for our state’s future
Click here to see “The Idahoan Project: Finding Common Ground.”
It was the dozens and dozens of colorful birdhouses atop a line of fence posts that first jogged my memory.
I had been here before.
From the back seat of my best friend’s silver Toyota on our way to a wedding in Harrison, I pressed my face to the window and peered out, squinting into the sun.
“This is where the Wilsons live,” I said, more to myself than anyone else in the car.
As we made our way along Idaho Highway 6 near Harvard — what a Pocatello kid calls “up North” on the outskirts of the Saint Joe National Forest — I thought about all of the other homes Idahoans have welcomed me into during the 14 years I’ve proudly been able to call myself a reporter.
The Wilsons shared their story with me of how they first came to Idaho on their honeymoon. They’ve made their home near Gold Hill since 1999, camping, Dutch oven cooking and selling their wares at the Potlatch Farmers Market ever since.
“When I went out and fed the animals this morning ... Gold Hill was pink,” Mr. Wilson said at the time. “You just can’t capture that kind of color. If you could see that that time of day, then you could understand what we love so much about this place.”
Don’t tell my editor at the time, but Mr. Wilson, a woodworker, wouldn’t take no for an answer when I said journalists cannot accept gifts from sources. I mentioned my father was a carpenter, and he sent me home with a finely detailed bald eagle carving. He wanted to show his appreciation that I was telling their story of being everyday Idahoans building a full life here, and it was clear I was going to do more harm than good by consistently saying no to this man offering a small token of kindness.
I still have it to this day. That and so many other experiences traveling this great state have taught me that when an Idahoan offers even a small piece of their heart, you should take it and care for it as if it’s your own.
As a journalist in Idaho, I’ve learned how to lasso at Kendrick’s annual Locust Blossom Festival, been a guest judge at the Eastern Idaho State Fair’s food competition in Blackfoot, taste-tested a fresh batch of vodka from Grand Teton Distillery in Driggs, and shot a gun for the first time at a range near Shelley. (Trust me when I say my Idahoan gun-totin’ dad wishes that experience had come sooner in my life). I’ve timed City Council candidate forums in Caldwell, tracked down the grave of the first Idaho National Guardsman killed in action in Sweet, gotten lost on the way to an assignment in the hop fields of Wilder. I’ve lost the feeling in my tush sitting on the hard bleachers of the Kibbie Dome covering an indoor collegiate track meet in Moscow. I’ve spent 13-hour days covering legislative sessions in Boise.
Throughout it all, Idahoans have told me their stories, let me pester them about their policy decisions, allowed me to shine a light into the issues that face us all. More often than not, they’ve welcomed me with kindness. More often than not, they’ve demonstrated we all want the same things: freedom to explore our pristine wilderness areas, a solid education for our children, access to quality medical care for our families, a hardworking job with a livable wage to keep a roof over our heads, a path to common ground.
There’s a reason I wanted to do this work, and there’s a reason I wanted to do it in Idaho.
My grandparents on my father’s side worked East Idaho potato farms while they were growing up — that’s as Idaho as it gets. My grandfather on my mother’s side tells stories of chasing runaway cows back on to their farm near the Latter-day Saints settlement of Chesterfield. I am a child of Idaho’s public K-12 schools, and I’m a 2009 graduate of the University of Idaho.
I’m a proud fifth-generation Idahoan.
So when our Idaho Statesman photographers pitched an idea to photograph everyday Idahoans from all walks of life — showcasing just how many religions, cultures, professions and histories we really do have here — I was perhaps the most eager person in the newsroom to see what they came up with.
As we went along with the project, the photographers — longtime Statesman journalists Katherine Jones and Darin Oswald, as well as former summer intern Meiying Wu — would print off their portraits and hang them on our walls in the newsroom. Most of the time we were all so busy that they were simply there, serving as a colorful background to typing up the news of the day. But many times throughout the past two years, I have stopped to peer into the eyes of the newcomers and lifelong residents our photojournalists had captured and taped to the walls.
Those photos — and a 15-minute mini-documentary — became The Idahoan Project, something we hope we can continue in various forms for years to come. Right now, it’s the photo and video project you see here, complete with a soundtrack composed from Idaho musician Steve Fulton. Tomorrow, it could be a traveling exhibit that might be useful for Gem State teachers or Idaho’s museums to emulate. It could also be a launch pad for community discussions on how to find common ground in the most divided days of my lifetime.
Join us for a watch-live event of our 15-minute mini-documentary “Idahoan Project: Finding Common Ground” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 22, at Facebook.com/IdahoStatesman. You can ask questions of our photojournalists who put this project together and me, editor Christina Lords.
It’s our hope to show that even though we are different, we are all Idahoans who choose to call this place home. Through photography, we wanted to show there’s more to this land that gives more than it takes, that there are more people willing to lend a hand than those who would let others suffer.
Two years ago, when we first started this project, the world around us had become politically and culturally divisive. Polarization was a term thrown around a lot then. Little did we know where we would be now, seemingly stuck in the longest year that has become its own punchline to many sad jokes: 2020.
We wanted to tell a different story than that.
We asked three simple questions of each subject, 55 in all:
- What does it mean for you to be an Idahoan?
- What words do you use to describe yourself as an Idahoan?
- What do all Idahoans share in common?
Because while it’s our job to record and report the happenings of the day — and many times those happenings touch on discord, tension and disagreement — we also have a responsibility to show that there’s more commonalities among us than there are divisions. You can read all of their heartwarming responses on our website.
We can start by admitting that as Idahoans, we do have work to do.
Idaho consistently ranks at the very bottom of per-pupil spending for education, and we have failed a state goal to ensure that 60 percent of our young people go on to college by 2020. We are experiencing explosive growth, especially here in the Treasure Valley, and agencies all over are trying to grapple with newcomers: where to affordably house them, how to transport them from point A to point B, and where to educate children in our already packed classrooms. We have an ugly history of white supremacy that so many like the late Bill Wassmuth and others worked to eradicate, history that reared its disgusting head this year when some racists and Nazis visibly mingled at a recent Black Lives Matter Defund the Police rally in Downtown Boise.
We must do more to respect, acknowledge and tell the stories of those who came far before us, and those who still raise their families in, and contribute to, our present-day communities here: the Shoshone-Bannock, the Coeur d’Alene, the Nimiipuu, or Nez Perce. We must pass laws that keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. We must do more to protect the health and safety of those who work so hard to put food on our tables, largely Latino workers in our abundant fields. We must assure that Idahoans cannot be fired from their jobs or removed from their homes because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
We can end these issues by coming to the table with open minds, ready to compromise and employ a work ethic that has been a staple of Idaho since its beginning.
Even after the past few years, even with these issues and more facing the Gem State, I believe there are more things to bring us together than there are to tear us apart: our love of our land, our willingness to lend a hand to our neighbors, our dedication to telling the stories of our rich past, and our determination to provide bright futures to the next generation of Idahoans.
Our subjects said the same, over and over again, through words of their own.
“Whether we are on any side of a political aisle or from various communities, the thing we all want is the best future for the generations to come,” social activist Tai Simpson said.
“What I see is — I see people gather. I see all kinds of friends. We all come together ... and it’s this amazing thing where people laugh and we have music,” said Ellie Shandro Outen, a young Idahoan who spends time helping with Boise’s Treefort Music Festival.
”We have an interesting cultural blend of grit and a sense of privacy,” said Norm Gissel, a lawyer who helped bankrupt the Aryan Nations in North Idaho through a historic lawsuit. “And with that sense of privacy goes the idea that we’ll help our neighbor any way we can, when it’s needed, and when they ask for help.”
“To be an Idahoan is to live your life in pursuit of substance and quality while having a strong sense of community and taking care of one another,” said Hannah Carlsen, an Ada County paramedic.
These ideas aren’t unique to the 55 people we interviewed. They’re sentiments we all share.
It’s my hope this project can continue as a reminder that despite all that faces us now and beyond, we won’t let the deep affection we have for this place — and the love we have for each other — ever change.
Let that be perpetual.
This story was originally published July 19, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
