(upbeat music) - [Ken] You could dance.

You could sing.

You could make up stories.

They could be themselves.

You could have groups that would perform plays.

You could do all that kind of stuff without being, you know, official.

(bright upbeat music) - It's year number eight for the Oregon Country Fair.

The organization's a little bit better, but many of the same people are here doing many of the same things they've done in the past.

It'll all be in full swing until Sunday night.

David Jackson, Eyewitness News, at the Oregon Country Fair.

(upbeat music) - In The Register-Guard, the newspaper, they had a story that there were like maybe 2,000 hippies that had come to town.

And by the '70s, they said that at least 20,000 freaks, as they called themselves, had moved to Eugene in early '71, '72.

- You drove a van.

You had long hair, smoked dope, and was against the Vietnam War.

(crowd shouting) By being against the Vietnam War, now you're a counterculture.

You better watch out because the main system of America, you're against that.

(upbeat music continues) - We had people coming from all over coming here to the universities, wanting to groove and do things, and that whole movement was coming on at that time when the place was exploding with LSD, and pot, and everything, and parties, and music, and all that, it was all happening.

(pleasant music) - [Suzi] People were wearing fedoras and women were wearing gloves and matching shoes.

- Yeah, uptight.

(laughs) Squaresville.

You know, everybody wanted to be, you know, suits and ties and get the right job.

- [Suzi] The '60s exploded that.

(upbeat music) - It took a while to realize that, yeah, this is a big movement.

You know, this is a positive movement.

We'd been such a war culture, you know, from World War Two and Vietnam, but there's another way to live and still be strong.

(upbeat music continues) - [Suzi] The other thing going on was the natural foods movement.

- Eugene was a little food haven.

(laughs) The whole natural food movement was just burgeoning.

People were questioning things and questioning their food sources.

- We were kind of inventing the concept of a health food store.

- I think that number of people coming together.

You had protests going on at the university, but also that sense of play and creativity and the feeling that there is a way we could live differently and take care of each other better.

(crowd shouting and chattering) I think all this really helped create the culture that helped give rise to the fair.

(pleasant music) (people chattering) The first fair was November 1st and 2nd, 1969.

There's a school called Children's House, and the parents and the teachers from Children's House put on the fair to raise money to keep the school going.

(pleasant music continues) (birds chirping) It was kind of small.

People would sell bread or crafts that they had made and they had a "Punch and Judy" show for the kids.

(children shouting) It was a success.

They made enough money to keep the school going for a little longer, and you can imagine it was a joyous gathering.

(people laughing and chattering) The crafters that came together for the first few fairs were excited to see each other.

- Morning, gentlemen.

- They bartered.

They shared ideas.

They were all trying this new way of living, of trying to make a living with crafts.

(pleasant music continues) (people chattering) One of the original goals was to help people be able to make a living away from mainstream society.

I think that was a big part of the energy that kept the early fairs going.

In 1981, the fair, they started thinking how they could buy the land.

They came up with a plan.

Ron Chase asked the Keseys if they could get the Grateful Dead to play for a benefit concert on the fair site.

- Garcia and Ken were friends.

I would step in the middle of it and ask the question and they would say yes.

But it was mostly because of the relationship with Ken.

(upbeat music) - Concert was great.

It was that classic family thing.

Uncle Ken backstage, he had a booth called the Underdogs Booth.

My brother-in-law was selling watermelons.

My mom was counting money backstage thinking, of course, that it was gonna be big enough for everybody to make a load of money.

(crowd cheering) - [Suzi] When the music started, the people at the entrances all came in to listen to the music and quit taking tickets.

(crowd cheering) (upbeat music continues) - At the end, it kind of broke even-ish.

- We didn't make any money.

(Chuck laughs) - No.

- But the Grateful Dead donated to the fair $10,000 anyway to help them with the down payment on the land.

- That was really the crossroads for the fair, whether they were gonna continue or not.

(crowd cheering) The legacy of that show was the fact that the country fair was able to purchase a property.

(birds chirping) (gentle music) - [Suzi] The reason the fair could buy it so inexpensively was because it was flooded every year.

You couldn't build a house there.

You couldn't do other things with it.

(gentle music continues) (birds chirping) (footsteps crunching) - Settlers coming into the country here saw this as land without value, like wasteland.

(gentle music continues) Native people looked at these places as gardens, as paradise, as overflowing with materials for, you know, our material culture and foods that sustained, you know, families and people.

(gentle music continues) So we're at the Oregon Country Fair site in a part of the Long Tom Watershed.

That's kind of how I think of the landscapes around me.

You know, much as our ancestors did by watershed.

(footsteps crunching) From springtime, (birds chirping) this particular ground is full of camas.

(pleasant music) The plants bloom.

All the nutrients and all the vitamins and minerals are drawn back down into the bulbs.

They sort of rest for summer and then into fall.

- And then the bulb would be harvested, dug from the ground with things called digging sticks.

They would collect a lot of the bulbs, you know, clean them up, pull the outer layers off, and then cook them in these camas ovens for about three or four days, probably at more of a low heat, around 200 to 250 degrees.

The starches in them turn more sugary, so it becomes a little bit sweet.

(pleasant music continues) - It's very nutritious, of course.

It's also very delicious.

And I think sometimes there's this notion that First Foods are sort of, you know, well, bland or not necessarily interesting, but I mean, like, people add spices and make things delicious these days.

You think our ancestors didn't?

I was born in a time where the Siletz Tribe was officially terminated as a recognized entity by the federal government.

(country music) There was this simultaneous, like, privilege among the non-Native community, this feeling of privilege, you know, to play Indian.

(upbeat country music) - There's a part of hippie culture that thinks that they can take any culture from any part of the world and sort of make whatever they want of it.

And they've been doing that since the 1960s.

- Time was different.

I think it was in the beginning.

Yeah, let's spread love.

Let's spread acceptance.

Let's have fun together.

- [David] They just thought they were honoring people.

- We get a lot of stereotypes, the romantic notion of what Natives are.

People wanna know how they can become Indian.

It's, we get it all.

(laughs) - For a Native person to see that is, like, it's a little, it's not a little anything, but, you know, it's hurtful.

It's harmful.

It's real harm.

- The idea of taking from Native people, taking land, taking resources, taking culture is all really the same thing.

This Native philosophy of, you know, responsibility to Native peoples needs to be taught because otherwise it's very colonial.

- These are sacred things.

They're not just something you can go do for an afternoon and then step away from.

It's like you don't just get to, like, always light the fire, you know.

Sometimes you gotta put the fire out.

This is everyone's sacred place.

(people chattering) (machine whirring) (tools clattering) (upbeat music) (people laughing and chattering) - We do have a place, but we wanna make sure that place is a respectful place.

- [Vendor] Those ones are, like, my favorite with the bugle beads all sideways and stuff.

- Yeah, I like that.

Do you buy these, the hoops?

- I see a new generation coming up, well-educated, well-versed on understanding, but being able to have open ears and open understanding.

(bright upbeat music) They might be uncomfortable, but they wanna listen and not just say it's my way or the highway.

It's being able to honor the group and knowing how to work within those groups that, you know, I can see change happening.

(people cheering) (bright upbeat music) (people chattering) (bright upbeat music continues)