Braided River Campaign cares about Portlanders, our rivers, and adjacent lands. In 2021, the educators who brought us Sunnyside Environmental School and Westwind Summer Camp founded Braided River Campaign as an ongoing effort weaving a unified agenda for the future of river communities.
River Communities Need Champions
For too long, elected officials have neglected the lifeblood of Portland, and our reason for being here: we sit at the meeting of two powerful rivers. A thriving river community, made up of healthy lands along the Columbia and Willamette, is critical to Portland’s climate leadership, strong local cultures, and economic vitality. And luckily, various communities up and downstream are working to develop a cohesive vision for Portland’s future. Our vision needs champions in city leadership, and solutions woven from our vibrant city’s fabric into a cohesive whole.
River Communities Participate In Decisionmaking
Braided River Campaign is a growing movement guided by our engaged community’s vision of a thriving Portland powered by sustainable urban policy. Our staff and volunteers educate Portland decision makers on the diverse environmental and land use priorities of communities whose work touches the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. We bring river communities together with issue experts and attorneys to learn from one another, advance priorities, and combine forces to win. We hold policymakers accountable to this agenda, and welcome donations to ensure this agenda makes an electoral impact.
Visit our gallery at Lloyd Center Mall
Thursdays from 2 pm - 6pm
The Braided River Gallery captures the stories of the people who lived, worked and played along the river. These stories have been buried beneath highways, fossil fuel tanks, and displacement.
We share these stories to honor the people who lived and worked on the land and in the river. We share these stories as a first step in healing and creating a new harbor that is equitable, safe and integrated into society.
For time immemorial the lower Willamette was a magnificent system of plants, rivers, streams, lakes and forest; all braided one into another. We recognize the many tribes who lived, traveled, hunted fished and gathered in the river and on the shores.
We recognize that this is the land of the many bands of the Multnomah, Clackamas, Nez Perce, and Yakama. We honor the unique abundance of this river system and the people who sustained it. We acknowledge the harm done to the river system and her people.