Riley Rice
MS Journalism University of Oregon 2021 | BA Anthropology Yale 2015
Hi, I’m Riley. I’m a freelance writer and videographer — check out some of my work below.
I’m Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and grew up in the Umpqua Valley in southern Oregon. In addition to media work, I’m an expedition climber and mountaineering instructor for NOLS, and work and play in mountain ranges from Alaska to Patagonia.
I’m interested in visual and written storytelling that deals with public land advocacy, rural communities and Indigenous people.
VIDEO
Honest Heat: a documentary film about one woman’s relationship to land and the wood that heats her home.
Happy Camp Childcare: a video I produced for the Ford Family Foundation about a community childcare effort after catastrophic wildfires in Happy Camp, California.
Hielo Norte: I shot, edited and produced this short film of an expedition to cross the Northern Patagonian Icefield and make the first ascent of the peak Cerro De Geer. My photo and video work appeared in the American Alpine Journal.
WRITING
Beyond acknowledgment
A little cloud of ash swirls around my feet as I come to an abrupt stop in the middle of a deserted courtyard on the University of Oregon campus. It’s 2:00 p.m. on a late summer day in 2020, and it’s dark outside. More than half a million acres of forest are burning in Oregon and a thick filter of smoke turns the world to shades of orange.
I’m stopped by the shock of recognition. While wandering the deserted campus of the graduate school I’ve just started at, I see a set of white vinyl words on the side of a glass building facade.
“Wili H’ow’tuk,” the words say. The memory of my grandmother’s voice fills my head. It’s a greeting in Takelma, the native language of my tribe. She used to say it when she answered the phone, with a kind of enthusiastic pride for the lift and tilt of the words that didn’t care if an understanding tribal member or confused stranger was on the other end of the line.
The federal government recognizes us as the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, but our name for ourselves is Nahonkuatohna. It means “people” in Takelma, a language dormant for generations that my grandmother worked until her death to revive. Seeing the white vinyl words that I thought no one else cared to know, meant something to me.
They pulled a part of my family history and present reality and put it on the side of a shiny academic institution. And that felt important.
More of my writing:
Growers in Wasco County navigate a young and dynamic hemp industry The Times-Journal
Oregon Tribal Spotlight Travel Oregon
Communities step up as wildfires devastate The Ford Family Foundation
Ancient These Fifty States
