The Okanagan Valley in which I live is sold as a place of beauty and purity in the midst of a wilderness. This project has been underway for about 125 years. The […]
Let’s Not Be Too Romantic Now
Reading Balsam Root, Writing Earth, Reading Mind
Here’s a word. Don’t let abstraction fool you. Just be with her for a moment. As you can see, she’s a living creature. Don’t let her dead stalks fool you. Because they’re […]
Shadows, Holes, Poetry and the Art of Speaking as the Earth
Last night I wrote a post and then deleted it by trying to save some notes for today, which seemed clever, but was just, well, not. Let’s have a look state of […]
Magpie’s Thoughts on Land Claims
Middle Class Country: an American pop culture project. Dude Ranch Country: an older American pop culture project. Spiritual Country: a Chinese-European folk cultural project. Artistic Country: an American cultural export installation. […]
Even If We Don’t Know This Story We Know This Story
We are being written. And we are being read. You can do it in any order. The order is what we bring to this environmental bonding. This: It can be followed […]
How to Make a City Indigenous, Even if You’re Lazy, Eh
Let’s go downtown as if we lived here. Let’s look at Canada through the lens of the story it tells in the Syilx illahie (illahie is Pacific Slope trade jargon for “story” […]
A Home In the Earth and the Sun: The Beginnings of an Urban Blueprint
I’ve been staring at this beaver lodge for years. Big Bar Creek I thought at first, well, yes, it’s a good model for a house. And sure enough, the Secwepemc who are this land […]
Towards an Indigenous Agriculture: Land Reform for British Columbia (and beyond)
Yesterday, I showed how an aspen copse … … could be used as both a living and an agricultural space by farming both its edges and its shade. Here’s that post. Today, I’d […]
Indigenous Culture, Settler Culture and Canada: Agriculture’s Highways and Byways
Harold Innis argued long ago … Societies that depend solely on time-biased media are oral and tribal. Although leadership tends to be hierarchical, time-bound societies may also operate by consensus. Since, in […]
Nitrogen Dispersal Protocols for Environmentally Friendly Farming
The farm below solves the problem of nitrogen run-off cleverly. It grows plants that are so nitrogen hungry that they deplete the soil, while any remaining nitrogen is trucked away, to be […]
Okanagan Okanogan 