History

A meeting of rivers, ideas, cultures and history

In 2000, a group of Pacific Northwest Native American tribes and civic groups from Washington and Oregon asked Maya Lin to participate in a project commemorating the bicentennial of the journey of the Corps of Discovery—the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–06. These disparate groups were brought together by the hope that Maya Lin would rethink what the commemoration of the bicentennial could be. Out of this collaboration came the Confluence Project: a series of seven art installations along the Columbia River Basin created to evoke the history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the tremendous changes it brought to the Pacific Northwest.

Maya Lin has often employed text and history in her artwork, but the Confluence Project is her largest use to date of language and historical perspective. She decided to extract passages from the journals of Lewis and Clark and inscribe them at sites along the 450-mile course of the Confluence Project—in effect, to pull apart the journals and incorporate them into the real time and space of the Columbia River. In this way, the words of Lewis and Clark serve as a lens, giving insight into the physical and cultural histories of the sites of the Confluence Project—sites where habitats on federal and state lands are now being restored as an integral part of the artwork. Maya Lin sees these seven sites as parts of a single work, encompassing the entire Columbia River system. She asks the viewer to rethink the nature of place—to envision the river and its tributaries not as a collection of isolated points but as a fluid, ever-changing environment.

The nature of a confluence is to bring together—to meet. The Confluence Project manifests its name by combining many elements. It questions our environmental legacy. It intends to raise awareness of Native Americans' cultural contributions to our country. It commemorates an important event in history with a hopeful look to the future. The project's path—its common connection for all who wish to come together—is a river.

The Columbia River, which Lewis and Clark beheld in 1805, has endured two centuries of change. Its shores are inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people, and its ports harbor vessels from around the world. What was once a flowing, vital life force is now an ecologically threatened river system.

In the past 200 years, two dozen species of salmon have nearly disappeared from the Columbia, and the California condor and the Snake River coho salmon Lewis and Clark spotted along their journey no longer make their homes there. Wetlands—vital to the reproduction of native bird, fish and other wildlife populations—are also fast disappearing.

Looking to the future, the Confluence Project can raise questions, heighten awareness and offer hope. What has happened to the abundance of life that teemed within, above and around the Columbia 200 years ago? Despite the environmental damage the river has sustained, the sites of the Confluence Project can mark important turnabouts in the health of the river and in the life of the land's native people. The Confluence Project—like Lewis and Clark's journey—is an exploration of our potential to make the future better than the past.