Downtown Mall
The eight-block stretch of a pedestrian-only street doesn’t just serve as the epi-center of Charlottesville’s urban life. But it has become a place of sanity for me, especially during the pandemic. For those three years, I felt trapped in the confines of my zoom square. In meetings, I was seen as no more than a participant. I didn’t feel seen, not even in public spaces where the thrills of human interaction were reduced to seeing moving masks in conversation. My way of escaping this overwhelming feeling of loneliness was going to the Downtown Mall, whether that be a late-night run to the Soul Food Joint with my friends or a long stroll with my family on a Saturday afternoon. I could go to a lively concert at the Pavilion or disappear into the book stacks of my favorite bookshop.Included is the sound of what made me feel connected to a community at a time when I felt like I was going through the motions in life—the soulful lived-in voice of a street musician, faint chatter of couples hand in hand, the boisterous laughter of college kids, the determined voice of someone haggling with a street vendor, the pitter-patter of tiny feet outside the ice cream shop. The mall has long been a gem of quaint, small-town life, but it is also a site of the community’s fears and dark past. We can all think back to 2017 when violence erupted between white nationalists and counter-protestors who were gathered for a rally over plans to remove the Robert E. Lee statue. The news of this happening in the neighborhood hit even closer to home when I saw my friend lying on a stretcher on the cover of a news site. She was one of the ones who was injured when a car rammed into a crowd of peaceful protestors downtown. I will never forget the fear on her face as she desperately looked around for help. At the time, she was 15 years old. I never saw her after again after the traumatic incident. This was not the first time racial upheaval occurred from exclusion in Charlottesville. As part of an urban renewal initiative in the early 1960s, the city demolished over 150 black-owned businesses and homes in the historically black neighborhood, Vinegar Hall (falling in between the downtown shopping district and UVA campus), in the name of “progress.” Those who were displaced were left to cope with the trauma of losing their communities and homes, resulting in huge financial burdens that followed them for the rest of their lives. Today, it’s so easy to be fascinated by the string lights connecting buildings downtown or the swanky jazz music playing from a high-end restaurant on the strip, while forgetting the community’s original inhabitants who now are mostly pushed into the city’s housing projects. Although torches held by “Unite the Right” protestors haven’t come back and Vinegar Hill seems to be of the past now, the effects of racial violence and residential segregation are still felt by Charlottesville’s black community. This reminded me of the historical trauma experienced by Indigenous people, who have also been displaced since European contact. Charlottesville’s black community can take a lesson from Nathaniel Vincent Mohatt, who proposes historical trauma as a public narrative. He reframes the discussion of historical trauma from a search for historical explanation toward recognition of contemporary experiences of historical trauma.
Mellow Mushroom
My family has lived in Charlottesville for seven years. Before that, we lived in Richmond. Since I was small, my family would take annual trips to Charlottesville to go apple picking at Carter’s Mountain, and then we always went to Mellow Mushroom after. It was a family tradition. The first half of the day was spent on the mountain; My brother’s friends and I raced each other down the orchard’s hills, I took pride in finding the perfect apple that was always on the highest branch of a picked-over tree, we all stood in a circle in the parking lot sinking our teeth into apple cider donuts fresh out of the fryer, and we all chatted about the day’s events in the car on the way to Mellow Mushroom. Walking up to the restaurant, I would always pass a statue but barely paid attention to it. If anything, I stood there to admire the brave-looking man on the horse, with the other figures seeming as its opposite, in a subservient role. That is the feeling that the builder intended when looking at the George Rogers Clark statue. Even if observers were across the street like I was sitting outside at the restaurant, the statue communicated in its presentation that it was a monument of pride, along with the description “Conqueror of the Northwest.” At the Lewis and Clark unveiling ceremony, there was rhetoric that this was a singular achievement by the two men working for Jefferson, along with the notion that everything to the west was free for taking. Local historian Armistead Gordon concluded the ceremony with the words, “The immortal names of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark whose indomitable courage and endurance, defying life and death, carved an empire out of the wilderness, and gave to succeeding generations of Americans the inheritance which they conquered.” Monuments such as this were myth-building projects to label Indigenous people as a “vanishing race.” Indigenous people had to be everything white people were not; if Lewis and Clark carved out a future for the succeeding generation of Americans, then Indigenous people had to be objects of the past. To reinforce this, the General Assembly passed the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, which redefined racial classification in Virginia so that there would only be two races: white and black. Being indigenous wasn’t an option. After its passing, Indigenous people began to disappear from Virginia's public records, like the consensus. We see something similar with the pandemic, where Indigenous people are not included in the demographic data on the impact of the coronavirus across the U.S. They don’t exist in the public health data, which means they don’t exist for the allocation of resources.
Woolen Mills
I have called Woolen Mills my home for almost two years. Being one of the oldest neighborhoods in Charlottesville, it was developed with the mill as the center of activity, operating from the mid-1850s to the 1960s. During the Civil War, the Confederacy took ownership of the factory and made soldier uniforms and clothes for enslaved people. Interestingly, the building I live in previously functioned as the Confederacy office. When I hear the floorboards creak or run my fingers along with a nick in the brick wall, I can’t help but imagine someone who hates people of my race being in the same building. Aside from its dark history, I love this spot because it’s a good mix of nature and industrialization. The Rivanna River is right across the street in front of my house, and the railroad tracks run through my backyard. It’s not rare for me to go on walks along the river and the ground-shaking rumble of an incoming train pulls me back to reality. It’s a perfect balance between peaceful seclusion and urban life. Of course, there are the occasional walkers who are attracted to the area, which is expected. But this balance has been threatened by the city’s proposal to make a pedestrian bridge crossing the section of Rivanna River that penetrates the Historic Woolen Mill area. For one, it will attract a lot more visitors and congestion in a place originally considered a gem for having a tranquil tucked away energy. The bridge would also give the river a look that is obviously touched by man. It’s frustrating to know that my opinion on a matter concerning my home won’t necessarily be heard. And it seems that the building of this bridge will certainly not be the last development in this neighborhood, which is sad too because it will start looking less like a habitat for the animals and more like a business park. The opening poem in Joy Harko’s book “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings,” reminds me of the importance of the non-human life and how humans often forget that:"Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand. Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane. Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill. The land is a being who remembers everything. You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs— The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding."It’s so easy to forget that life doesn’t revolve around humans. Opening my window and listening to bird songs, the wind, and the faint sound of an owl helped me remember that. And when it comes to relationality, we are the ones who cannot exist without our relatives. While nature can live without humans, humans can’t live without nature.
Rivanna River
The Rivanna River is the most meaningful spot on the tour for me. Ever since my family moved to the area, we’ve had the privilege of living right across the street from the river. No matter if the water is frozen over, turned to a murky brown after a rainstorm, or looks like a stagnant pool of nothingness in the summer heat, I feel like I can take a deep breath and relax when I walk down to the riverside. It’s very close to my heart because it brings back memories of Woodlake, the reservoir I grew up next to back in Midlothian, VA. When I was younger, I had really bad anxiety and I didn’t know how to control it. It was so crippling that I stayed in my room all of the time and stayed in my own head. I felt bad for my parents because they saw how much the anxiety affected me, so they tried everything but nothing helped. That is, until my dad came into my room very early one morning, wrapped me in a blanket, and carried me to the car, all while I was still asleep. Then, as soon as I felt a breeze on my face I woke up and found myself leaning against my dad, facing the reservoir. I swear time stopped when we watched the sun peek from the horizon. I was transfixed by the slightest movement of the reservoir that I felt should’ve been sleeping too. I admired how even the gentlest instance of a tadpole swimming to the surface caused a ripple that extended ten times bigger than the tiny amphibian, yet each wavelet was controlled and perfectly in tune with the one that came before it. From that day forward, I chose to have my anxiety imitate the ripple; something small can aggravate it and cause stress, but that stress can be controlled and eventually die down. All my senses were heightened, yet I still felt like I was in a hazy dream. The wave of memories comes flooding back whenever I stand watching the Rivanna River. In Mishuana Goeman’s piece “Land as Life: Unsettling the Logics of Containment,” she states “any location can potentially be a sacred spot.” In that same passage, she speaks about the effects of an Indigenous person moving to an urban area, where they feel like they have left the games and spending time with family. The land is only meaningful to us if we make it meaningful or frame it as a storied site of interaction. This is why the Rivanna River is special to me, even though the place itself is tied to my personal experiences. I use memory as a tool to connect myself with my current place. The native history of the Rivanna is a little bit more ambiguous and murky than my personal history with the land. Located on both sides of the river, called Monacan Indian Village of Monsasukapanough. Its remains are buried under the ground near the reservoir. It was Thomas Jefferson himself who conducted a scientific archaeological study of the mound, estimating that it contained the bones of at least a thousand people. His finding that the Monacans at the time had to make a deliberate attempt to go directly to the mound countered the "Lost Race" theory, which argued that Indigenous people weren't civilized enough to build their own burial mounds. Other than human remains, the few pottery shards, and wooden tools found in the burial site, the only other thing that was treasured when found was the map of Virginia in 1608 made by Captain John Smith. Smith never visited the village but relied on the Powhatans, who were powerful enough to assert the creation of historical documents. We don't know exactly where the mound was found; the only thing that indicates the location's past is a place marker. It's not surprising that it centers John Smith as the authority, while the Monacan people were described as a discovery.
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia
When I was younger, my dad went back to school to get his bachelor’s and one of the classes he took was in native studies. I was homeschooled so my brother and I would always tag along with him to his classes and do our own school work in the hallways while we waited for him to get out of class. For one of his projects, I remember he had to do extensive research on Aboriginal art, so we took multiple trips to the Aboriginal art museum on Pantops. It was one of the smallest museums I’ve ever visited, and it was completely tucked away out of sight. But it had a cozy welcoming atmosphere and we even got to meet a few of the Indigenous Australian artists who explained some of their work. While I don’t remember what was said, the bright, expressive artwork sticks out in my mind. It was difficult to place when these pieces were made. This creative expression wasn’t bound by the ‘traditional/modern’ binary and its imaginative quality went beyond the territorial boundaries of colonialism. It evoked the fugitive aesthetic, rejecting the struggle for inclusions or recognition and fighting for refusal and flights as modes of freedom. Rather than relying on a written language, this artwork served as visual language and was used as a way of preserving their culture through visual storytelling, passed down generations. One thing I found fascinating was the hallmark style of dot painting, which began when the Aboriginal people were concerned that the white man would be able to understand their sacred and private knowledge. Often, the technique of over-dotting was used to obscure the iconography underneath. This is a way in which Indigenous art is a form of protest. It embodies the quote found in our reading “Fugitive Indigeneity: Reclaiming the terrain of Decolonial Struggle Through Indigenous Art”: “[decolonial] art arms silence with voices that, even when the bodies that carry them are crushed and ground to powder, will rise again, and multiply, and sing out their presence… art in this sense is silence that screams.” I also appreciate that their site goes into extensive detail on the importance of acknowledging Indigenous custodians, not simply just to go through the motions but it provides information on how we ourselves can do land acknowledgment the right way. Its tips on doing a land acknowledgment weren’t one-sided but it suggested a “Welcome to Country '' where an Indigenous member of a group who is custodians of the local land would give a short speech in English or their Indigenous language acknowledging the audience and welcoming them to their land.
