Impossible Odds in Impossible Terrain: Remembering Another Unremembered “Indian” War
June 4, 2025 – On this day in 1873, another “Indian” war most Americans have never heard of – the Modoc War – came to an end in the high desert straddling present-day California and Oregon. The 18-month war of resistance, in which 52 Modoc warriors and 98 women, children and old men held out […]
Requiem for Oaquaga: The Great Law of Peace in the Time of a White Man’s War
Until the mid-1770s, there was a thriving Native agricultural and trading town here – Oaquaga – on a bend in the upper Susquehanna River, in the southern tier of present-day New York State. It was likely established in the centuries after the last glacial age, by the ancient ancestors of the five peoples who combined […]
War Hero & Martyr on the Salish Sea: Remembering Leschi on the Anniversary of his Judicial Murder
February 19, 2025 – On this sad day in 1858, the great Nisqually leader Leschi – who forged an alliance of nine tribes to resist the seizure of their 2.5 million acre homeland and their forced removal to concentration camps set up by the US government – was hanged for crimes he did not commit […]
The Great Swamp “Fight?” Gaslighting a Massacre in Dawnland Since 1675
An eagle or hawk flying over what is called “the Great Swamp” in present-day Rhode Island would see more water than woods, a sprawling maze of creeks, brush, ponds, and murk, all melting into the 1,000-acre sweep of a windswept glacial lake. Only four miles inland from the ocean, the lake (present-day Worden’s Pond) is […]
Still Standing on the Shores of Ganondegwa: The Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794
CANANDAIGUA, NY – November 11, 2024 – In the northwestern reaches of present-day New York State, winter comes hard and early, scrubbing the long green ridges between the finger lakes with wind, rain, and snow, and today is no exception. But today, such weather will not stop the six Haudenosaunee peoples – known for centuries […]
Requiem (and Resurrection?) for Celilo Falls
March 10, 2025 — On this day in 1957, 13 miles upriver from the brand-new Dalles Dam on Big River (currently known as “The Columbia”), the ancient fishing and trading emporium of Celilo Falls was swallowed by rising waters within a few hours. The death was witnessed by an estimated 10,000 descendants of the dozens […]
The State Champs from the Beginning of the World
This post originally appeared in bioStories The girls from way out on the Makah reservation who won the 2023 Washington state 1B high school basketball championship may be, on average, half a foot shorter and two years younger than every team they beat on the way. But first year Head Coach Cherish Moss—the twenty-nine-year-old with […]
The Bones of 800 Horses
In the mid-1850s, out on the high desert plateau of what is now eastern Washington state, the highly mobile horse nations of the Yakama, Spokane, Paulouse and Coeur d’Alene successfully defended their homeland against an invading army for nearly two years. Their ability to evade capture so frustrated US Army Col. George Wright that he […]
Coming Home: A Sacred Ritual in the Shadow of Uytaahkoo [Mt Shasta]
A fictional representation of the solemn, sacred ceremony used by Native peoples in the American West to welcome home and finally lay to rest to remains of ancestors stolen during colonization and imprisoned in museums and other institutions. From my novel, That Golden Shore. As I walk down to the lake, the mountain beyond looming […]
You Cannot Surf Away Your Demons: Surfing’s Lost Boys Grow Up in Momentum Generation
“All these problems were happening in my life, and the only time I felt really good was when I was surfing,” Shane Dorian says in the somber opening solo interviews that kick off Momentum Generation. The HBO Films documentary, made by Jeff & Michael Zimbalist and released at the end of 2018, gained new life […]
