Activists,
Back-to-the-landers
and Hippie Innovators

Do you have materials to share with our archive? 

Attention Funders!

Help save these histories, celebrate Humboldt’s counterculture and
join the struggle for community organizing, the arts and the environment!

Spectrum of Dissent July 12
Wrangletown Cider, Arcata

Join Humboldt Area Peoples Archive in a celebration of Humboldt’s counterculture and back-to-the-land movement

Humboldt Area Peoples Archive preserves the story of innovative people risking it all to make changes with national impacts. What happened here was bold.  Here in Humboldt County, groundbreaking actions seeded economic development, environmental protection and cultural inclusiveness.

Panel discussion followed by performances and music.

Free to all. Beverages and food available.

Questions? Email us!

Focus on Independent Media

Origins of the Redwoods Rural Health Center in Humboldt's counterculture history

In 1974 a group of poor hippie women organized to establish a clinic that would serve their health needs after several episodes of poor treatment at the Garberville hospital. Soon they rented the back room of the Redway laundromat and by the mid 1980s they built the modern clinic residents of the region know well. To spread word of their clinic, Star Root gave the clinic space for the following article in April 1977.

Read the full feature on Kym Kemp’s Redheaded Blackbelt

Focus on Art

The Joan Schirle Collection

HAPA is thrilled to present a curated selection of its Joan Schirle collection. Joan Schirle was the founding artistic director of Dell’Arte International. She was an actor, playwright, director, deviser, teacher, and arts activist, whose acting work was recognized with a 2006 Fox Foundation/TCG Resident Actor Fellowship for professional development. In 2004 she was honored at the 16th Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival as a leader in the field of experimental theatre. She served as director of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre from 2003 – 2011.

Joan Schirle passed away on February 1, 2022 at her home in Blue Lake, Humboldt County, California. 

Women & Masks
Study Abroad Bali

Focus on Community Resiliency

Go back to 2010 in Northern California. The “What’s After Pot” (WAP) collection reflects a community working to develop a collective vision in the face of profound transformations.  

A large binder with 225 pages of “What’s After Pot” archives was donated by Anna Hamilton to HAPA in 2022.

HAPA has digitized the binder for public access. 

The HAPA minute

Focus on Strengthening our Democracy

Civil Liberties Monitoring Project

HAPA is giving access to its Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP, pronouned climp) collection. CLMP is a non-profit organization, founded in southern Humboldt County in 1983, relying on community support to continue its efforts.  CLMP monitors, documents, advocates for & educates about civil liberties issues in Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties. Its goal is to encourage public awareness of constitutional rights and involvement of the whole community in preserving and protecting them.

Archived websites

HAPA OG

ARCHIVED HAPA WEBSITE - Original by Scott Holmquist launched 2017...

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More video evidence here.

Freeman House, author and activist on Mattole salmon restoration in “Les Diggers de SF” (1998) by Céline Deransart and Alice Gaillard
Douglas Fir, Southern Humboldt new-settler community leader and cofounder of HAPA, speaking in 1988 on trees and moving to the land in an outtake from Expedition Alerce: Lost Forest of the Andes documentary.
1983 Larabee Valley (Southern Humboldt) CAMP bust and onsite community huddle to respond.