In 1958, I was born into the tmʷwulaxʷ, a hundred years after it was enslaved as land and water. I lived first on an orchard above the Great Northern Railroad’s Similkameen Station and […]
4. A Woman Loses Her Dowry at a Poker Game
3. How to Steal Water
At first, there was the ancestor called siwɬkʷ, who nourishes animals, plants and people. siwɬkʷ This is a spiritual force, like field mice, red osier dogwoods, golden eagles, or the peach leaf […]
2. Why This Book is Talking
This book is a grassland in written form. That is: it is a community of living beings in a geographic space created by grass, just as hemlocks and western red cedars create […]
1. How the Sukʷnaqinx Became the Okanagan and then the Sukʷnaqinx Again
Now, after all the years of this project, a story that reaches deep into American Imperial history and ends in what is now territory claimed by Canada in the north of my […]
3,000 Posts. The Past and Future of Okanagan Okanogan
This blog started in 2011 as a research tool for writing about the environment of the Intermontane Grasslands of Cascadia, especially in terms of demonstrating the power of the landscape to harvest, […]
Paul Terbasket’s Apricot Ripens Up
The project to renew the heritage apricot of the Smelqmx, the last survivor of a 1920s program to remove commercial fruitgrowing from Indigenous hands in British Columbia, continues. Every day I carry […]
Cross-Species Organic Pest Control for Apples
Apparently, the black widow spider that lives under the cupboard during the day doesn’t just spin a hopeful web under the chair in the summer kitchen at night, before retreating again at […]
Realigning Kelowna
I think it has gone on long enough. Kelowna sits on the best wine-growing land in the West. Crazy, really. Take a different look. Two wineries, and both of those (red markers […]
Climate Change in the North Okanagan
Human induced climate change is real, and its hurting humans, societies and the Earth. A lot of it is the result of atmospheric carbon. That’s the story that my city, Vernon, is […]
Kelowna is Funny
Here’s Kelowna’s explanation of their success at mitigating climate change. See that? 20% of sensitive ecosystem land is protected. Given that sensitive ecosystems make up 28% of Kelowna, and Kelowna covers 214 […]
Okanagan Okanogan 