Ridgefield Multicultural Festival fetes rich history, growing diversity

How will quaint, cute Ridgefield — a quiet, old-fashioned, mostly homogenous place that’s sometimes called Clark County’s “Mayberry” — handle an invasion of Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Hawaiians, Indians, Filipinos, Russians, Nigerians and Mexicans, all bearing cultural gifts?

With a day of celebration and education about homegrown diversity, naturally. Downtown Ridgefield’s monthly First Saturday celebration for Sept. 1 will be the first-ever Ridgefield Multicultural Festival — an occasion for international music and dance, drumming and parading, cooking and, of course, eating.

“What I really love about Ridgefield is, every first Saturday of the month, volunteers and the city have been putting together programs for the last couple years. It’s really impressive what they can pull off,” said festival founder Dr. Megan Dudley, a pediatrician who moved to Ridgefield with her husband and children a few years ago.

“My family and I always walk downtown and participate. It is really fun for our kids,” said Dudley, a fourth-generation Japanese-American who works for Kaiser Permanente in Longview. But those events never seemed to draw her Kaiser colleagues who are immigrants to the U.S. and to Ridgefield; Dudley wondered how she could get them engaged with their new hometown.

It also got her thinking about her own cultural background in the context of small-town America.

“My grandparents were Japanese-Americans and they were interned in Arkansas” during World War II, Dudley said. “And in the postwar period, being Japanese was difficult. There was a feeling you didn’t want to express your culture and your language. My mom didn’t cook Japanese food and we never attended any cultural events.

“A lot got lost. I wanted to give my kids an opportunity” to learn and rebuild, Dudley said.

So, about 18 months ago, she walked into Ridgefield’s City Hall with an idea about a modern multicultural festival in little old Mayberry — and city officials loved it. “Maybe the best thing of all is that an average citizen can go down to City Hall and say, ‘I have this idea, what do you think?’ I don’t know if any other town would have said yes,” she said.

Lee Knotterus, the deputy city manager of Ridgefield, said embracing Dudley’s idea was a no-brainer.

“From a city perspective, it seemed like a really good idea to celebrate three things,” she said. One is the earliest history of the Ridgefield area, and the inhabitants who predated white settlers. “There is a real rich history here and it involves multiple nationalities,” said Knotterus. “The Chinook Indian tribe — they were here long before any of us. How do we educate people about that history?”

The second is Ridgefield right now. “How do we recognize the culture of Ridgefield?” Knotterus said. “The merchants, the downtown — how do we keep that history and that culture alive?”

Finally, she added, there’s recent growth and change. “Clark County doesn’t have a lot of diversity, but as this city grows we are becoming a little more diverse. Let’s celebrate our … new residents, our new businesses. The timing is good, with so many new residents becoming a part of our community. Let’s learn about each other and celebrate what makes us all different, and what makes us all the same. Let’s all become one community.”

Busy day

Here’s the busy Sept. 1 that Megan Dudley and Ridgefield have built. It begins at 10 a.m. with an eye-popping parade of Chinese lions, inhabited by the dancers of the Portland Lee’s Association Lion Dance Team. That’s a group whose coaches have traveled to China to study this traditional form of celebratory dance, which aims to bring good fortune on special occasions like weddings, welcomes — and town festivals. These lions will be blessing downtown businesses.

After that, things split in two. Overlook Park will be the site of outdoor festivities and live performances, including:

• 11 a.m., Takohachi Japanese drum and dance.

• 12:30 p.m., Master Oh’s tae kwan do.

• 2 p.m., Hawaiian/Polynesian hula and dance with the Ke Kukui Foundation.

• 3:15 p.m., Maharaja Bhangra Indian Dance Group.

• 4 p.m., Scarlet Sails Russian Theater Group.

• 5 p.m., Chinook closing ceremony.

Meanwhile, cooking classes and music/dance workshops will be held at Ridgefield Community Center. Please note, activities begin at 9 a.m., before the opening parade — and you are strongly advised to pre-register before all slots are gone. There’s a price for each of these activities, as listed:

• 9 a.m., Filipino cooking ($10): make lumpia (fried egg rolls) with Lea Villavicencio, another Kaiser-Longview pediatrician who lives in Ridgefield; she’s a native of the Philippines.

• 10 a.m., Ora Nui Tahitian Dance workshop ($25): presenting fundamentals of this challenging cultural dance style. “We will not only teach students the fundamental movements of ora tahiti, we will immerse them in the music, art, language and culture of the Society Islands,” a statement from the group says. “Join us on a journey to the South Pacific as we show you how to shake it, Polynesian style.”

• 10:30 a.m., Scandinavian cooking with Patricia Thompson ($10).

• 1 p.m., Five French “master sauces” (Béchamel, Velouté, Espagnole, Hollandaise and tomato) class with Kathryn Bode ($10).

• 3 p.m., Nigerian spicy meat and Jollof rice with Olubukola Okafor, yet another Kaiser-Longview pediatrician who lives in Ridgefield; she’s a native of Nigeria ($10).

• 3 p.m., Gerardo Calderon’s Grupo Condor instrument workshop ($15). “His mission is preserving Mexican culture through music,” Dudley said. “He’ll do a workshop in the afternoon, then an evening performance that’s an expansion of the workshop. He has a huge collection of instruments that people can play.”

The evening Gerardo Calderon concert is set for 7:30 p.m. at the Old Liberty Theater. Tickets are $15.

In addition to the above, local groups including the Vancouver NAACP, the Japanese American Citizens League and the Sikh gurdwara (temple) of Southwest Washington will be on hand. The Sikhs will distribute water and do turban-tying demonstrations. In the morning only, the Ridgefield Community Library will host a family history zone where you can explore your heritage, and a history walking tour hosted by the Clark County Historical Museum leaves Overlook Park at 9 a.m.

Through the day, flags of many nations will be set up along Pioneer Street and Main Avenue.