About Us
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"To the Skies"
Morgan Belden
Portland Community College of Portland, Oregon hosts over 60,000 students across four campuses and numerous satellite centers. PCC provides a wide array of certificates, degrees, and programs for its diverse population of full-time and part-time students. Our President, Mark Mitsui, values the educational opportunities PCC, and community colleges in general, can provide to individuals, the community, and society as a whole.
Each PCC campus has its own unique literary magazine, and Rock Creek proudly produces The Bellwether Review once a year every Spring term. What was previously called the Rock Creek Review was taken up by Rock Creek’s Editing & Publishing class in 2011. At this time, the students adopted the name Bellwether in honor of Rock Creek’s notable sheep population on our campus’s farm. A bellwether is a reference to the bell worn by the alpha sheep of a flock, though by today’s understanding, it refers to one who leads the way. Our editorial team embraces this ideal as we publish The Bellwether Review: we want to initiate artistic expression and foster creativity at our campus and beyond.
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PCC Rock Creek campus represents just over a quarter of PCC’s student population. Our campus is green, both physically, as it spans across 260 acres, and sustainably, boasting a Tree Campus USA certification since 2016. With a farm, a beautiful interactive learning garden, and serene walking trails on campus, we appreciate the opportune landscape of Northwest Oregon and work to leave as small of a footprint as we can. ​
Our Mission
The Bellwether Review is one of Portland Community College’s literary magazines. Our mission is to promote original art and writing through various mediums of expression cultivated by authors and artists attending PCC. We value showcasing work that expresses a wide variety of voices and perspectives - in doing so, we hope to encourage and inspire a passion for meaningful creation. All submissions undergo careful consideration in order to select high quality work for publication. We are thankful for all of the enthusiastic and dedicated students involved in its creation from the writers, artists and editorial team. In this issue, our goal is to provide a platform for students to appreciate art as a tool for individuality, solidarity, accomplishment and community.
Land Acknowledgement
We would like to acknowledge that the campus that this magazine was written through sits on the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, bands of the Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other Tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River. Multnomah is a band of Chinooks that lived in this area.
We thank the descendants of these Tribes for being the original stewards and protectors of these lands since time immemorial. We also acknowledge that Portland, OR has the 9th largest Urban Native American population in the U.S. with over 380 federally recognized Tribes represented in the Urban Portland Metropolitan area. We also acknowledge the systemic policies of genocide, relocation, and assimilation that still impact many Indigenous/Native American families today.
We are honored by the collective work of many Native Nations, leaders, and families who are demonstrating resilience, resistance, revitalization, healing, and creativity. We are honored to be guests upon these lands. Thank you, and thanks also to our colleagues at the Portland State University Indigenous Nations Studies Program for crafting this acknowledgment.