You have probably noticed that I live in what is usually called “Canada”, a country claiming the northern half of North America. You’ve probably guessed that I travel on a Canadian passport. […]
11. Why I Do Not Call This a Canadian Story
10. A Black Market in the Similkameen
Let’s backtrack a bit, to see what might have brought a man to try to change orcharding culture in the Similkameen Valley, and in the process anger half the people and become […]
9. The Healing Land?
After a meditation on what the benchlands of the mid-Similkameen produces on its own at The Place of Yellow Flowers… it’s time to return to the orchards that are there now. In […]
8. Calling Things By Their Right Names
Blind Creek, “the place of yellow flowers”, might indicate “rabbit brush…” …the bright, feathered sage that catches the sun in October and draws in jewelled bee flies, with their dense, brightly-coloured fur […]
7. Frustrations All Around
In 1923, Paul Terbasket went to jail for contempt of court for using siwiɬk, his ancestor, to irrigate the fruit trees at his inheritance, the story called Blind Creek. siwiɬk, a spirit […]
6. Converting tmxʷulaxʷ into “Land” & “Person” and then Property
After watching the dowries of two women, Lucy Simla and Florence Louden, become transformed into ownership over the last 2 posts, today we’ll take a bit of time to track the continued […]
5. A Second Woman and Her Dowry
It looks like some deal was struck. In 1894 Frances Xavier Richter left his syilx wife Lucy in a log cabin on her land, which was now in his name… …assigned his […]
4. A Woman Loses Her Dowry at a Poker Game
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 […]
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 […]
Okanagan Okanogan 