On Dec. 17, Washoe County Commissioner Mariluz Garcia and artist Autumn Harry spoke at a brief dedication ceremony for Harry’s new mural at Riverbend Park in Verdi, a new Washoe County regional park and Truckee River access point that opened in June.
Garcia granted $6,000 to the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism for the creation of the mural, according to a Washoe County notice.
Harry is a member of the member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, a river guide, a muralist and a leader, along with her mother, Beverly Harry, of the grassroots environmental protection group River Justice.
“I want people from the community in Tahoe, Reno and Sparks to think of the people who live down river from here,” Harry said during the ceremony.
The mural features three separate views of the river. One is set against forested Tahoe mountains with a mother black bear and her cub in the foreground. In another, a mother coyote and her pup walk in a section of the river framed against the brown hills closer to Pyramid Lake. The third depicts a close-up view of Lahontan cutthroat trout swimming upstream against the Truckee’s rapids.
“We have to be respectful of wildlife,” Harry said.