Below is a powerful map of Southern Okanagan Lake and the Okanogan River, on its route to the Columbia at Brewster. It shows clearly how settlers navigate from one colonial strong point […]
Winter Light Reveals The Map of sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitkʷ
Getting Our Land Back 3: Rivers of Place
In this series of posts I am exploring what might be required to set colonialism behind us and create a country for our future children’s children’s children, all of us, human, loon, […]
Welcome to the Land of the Big Heads
It’s called the Okanagan Valley now, north of the 1846 border that divided this land into two. South of that line, it’s known as Okanogan County, Washington, USA — hardly a valley. Early […]
Real Plants Don’t Do Drugs
In a petro-state, these are called dead leaves. In a petro-state, the image below is called life. Look closer. Those are the green leaves of petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizer, those are. Life, however, looks like […]
Chopaka: the Holy Mountain
At the height of the Cascade Mountains, at the lip of the North Pacific Rainforest, two rivers rise: the Skagit, which flows on through a dam system to provide water for Seattle and seeps on through […]
Alien Architecture in the Okanagan
Here’s a trail in the grasslands. Note the old house to the right of the trail. Ya, the round brown hillock. You got it!Here’s who lives there. Weaver ants! Thatch, in the earth, […]
Heart of the Monster
This is the heart of the monster. This is ?Ilcwé.wcixnim timíne. This is where the nimi.pu began. This is where the people got started. The real people, as they call themselves. This […]
This Beautiful World (And how not to lose it)
Look what this lavender bush has done. She has sieved leaves out of the wind. Or is it … … she has stopped them from blowing away? Everywhere the earth is trying […]
Coyote My Brother
It is a commonplace myth in contemporary critical thinking that there is no such thing as place. Anyone who says this has not watched the coyotes return from a night hunting in […]
A Joyful Day for the Spirit of the Land
Choke cherries, beloved of the sky. And in my kitchen! Lots of choke cherries! What a lovely meditation they are for the fingers. And the eye, too… And the mind. As […]
