MIDDLETOWN, Calif. — The Middletown Art Center invites the public to co-create a sculpture honoring the Hitch, or “Chi,” for the EcoArts Sculpture Walk.

In a rare opportunity to blend wisdom from the past with current issues, we will incorporate traditional bundling, stick bending and cordage making taught by culture bearers and artists Corine Pearce, Joe Weber and Luya Rivera to create sculptural work and raise public awareness to the plight of the hitch.

Pearce, Weber and Rivera will share native stories and wisdom, and traditional approaches to caring for the trees and the land.

They will discuss dwindling hitch populations, their importance to local Indigenous people, ecosystems and current efforts to preserve and strengthen their populations.

Known by the region’s Indigenous people as "chi,” the hitch’s spawning was a time of celebration when tribal members would gather to collect food for the year and visit each other.

The chi has been a staple food and cultural mainstay of the original Pomo inhabitants of the region since time immemorial.

Tribal elders recall the hitch being plentiful and filling creeks. Expanding development and agriculture, declining water quality, gravel mining, invasive species, removal of cultural fire from the land, habitat loss and drought took their toll.

The decline of the chi is the result of a legacy of environmental injustice and land dispossession in the Clear Lake watershed.

Last spring, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife convened a multi-agency state, federal and tribal summit to highlight the needs of the hitch and its risk of extinction.

The summit led to commitments by multiple agencies and tribes to take decisive actions to collect data, preserve streamflows, and enforce on illegal diversions and stream modifications as well as allocating funds for migration barrier removal projects and finalizing a grant to the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians to conduct stream flow and groundwater monitoring in Clear Lake hitch spawning areas.

The public is warmly invited to attend one or both days of this weekend’s free event on Saturday, Oct. 7, and Sunday, Oct. 8.

Saturday's activities begin at Trailside Park at 10 a.m. and move to the MAC studio ending at 3:30 p.m. Sunday’s activities will take place at MAC from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

No experience is required and people of all abilities, ages and backgrounds are welcome (children under 15 with parents or guardians). Please bring clippers, loppers and gloves if you have them, plenty of water and a lunch. Snacks will be provided.

This event is part of the “Reciprocity” project aimed at revitalizing the EcoArts Sculpture Walk through community-engaged artmaking. It’s funded primarily by an Upstate California Creative Corps grant.

Please sign up in advance at www.middletownartcenter.org/reciprocity.