In thickness, there is a way through. Plum thicket. In the darkness, there is light. Plum thicket. Even the darkness is light. Plum thicket. Even the light is darkness. Russian olive. Even […]
Dancing the New Year Home
Mallard Ducks Flowing Downstream
What a spirited pair! Vernon Creek I think I will never see a duck in the same way again. Here’s the happy pair a second later, old style. Quack! Quack! Quack!
39. The Beginnings and Ends of History
Euroamerican histories do not tell the story of the Pacific Northwest. Not really. A story of colonial cultures set in native space. This is the story of the Canadian province called British […]
38. Raven’s Prophecies, The War of 1812 and the Old Northwest
The War of 1812 saw Britain, Indigenous peoples and the United States fight on both sides of the Great Lakes over independence and expansion: US independence to trade with Napoleonic France, recognition […]
34. War by Other Means, Part 1
In my last post https://okanaganokanogan.com/2022/11/22/39-you-say-skaha-i-say-sqexeʔ/, number 33 in this series, I pointe out that even the simple concepts that determine human relationships to land today, things universally dispersed or at least fought […]
33. You Say Skaha, I say Sqexeʔ
The Okanagan Valley, a European space since 1859, hasn’t shed its colonial roots. Becoming a part of Canada in 1871 didn’t do a whole lot about that, partly because when you colonize […]
Two Views of the Heart
Well, you can take an old ranch and make a state park. That’s one thing you can wear your heart on your sleeve. Columbia Hills, Washington That’s Oregon in the distance. Or […]
Don’t Young People Deserve More Than This?
Fishing on the Q’awsitkw in Okanogan, Washington They sure do,
32. The Land Talks
Technology that works with the land is not one of force. This is not always immediately obvious in a culture built around action. This action includes the obvious, such as the active […]
31. Humans and Bears and History
As I hope my post yesterday made clear, traditional Indigenous cultures are as dynamic as European ones and European ones are as constant as traditional Indigenous ones. We can have a sentence […]
Okanagan Okanogan 