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 […]
32. The Land Talks
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 […]
30. Weaponizing the West: Part 2
The Americans who arrived on the Columbia in the 1830s and 1840s said that their power came from their God. The power was certainly there, and the zeal. From 1790 through 1840, […]
28. The Spiritual Power of Horses in Old Oregon
To recap: the extensive Indigenous slave trade with the Spanish in the Southwest, and a fight for new technology (the horse), drove Indigenous cultural change on the western edges of New France […]
27. Manipulating the French in the Northwest
The last time we were together, I spoke as a land of grass and rocks, enslaved to inter-human relations west of the Rocky Mountains. There’s a story out this way, that people […]
23. Pandosy and the People of the Grass
The last few days, I have been trying to demonstrate what colonial history might have looked like when Indigenous law still ruled the Pacific Northwest. People have been here for something like […]
22. Keeping the Catholics at Arms Length
Here’s a question we can ask: If Chief Peopeomoxmox of Waillatpu, “The Village of Wild Rye Grass,” had installed the new Catholic arrivals of November 6, 1847 on his side of the […]
20. What is a River?
Wikipedia is basic about this: A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground […]
17. How to Enslave the Land and the Water if You Are British: a Guide for Colonists
This is the fourth in a series of notes on the practice of transferring human slavery to land slavery. This one is a compound method that includes a fair bit of human […]
Technology Isn’t Always the Answer
Here’s a plow rigged up with a three point hitch at Nespelem on the Colville Indian Administration lands. It’s a good lesson to contemplate, while I continue on my own walkabout.
Okanagan Okanogan 