An Essay in Quotes Privilege in Practice “only within anthropological study has it been able to convey the richness and diversity of Native societies” (Bea Medicine 2001, 28).…
Histories from Chemawa Indian School Volume 1 is a fully reedited set of 3 histories from the Quartux Journal blog. The essays are, William John Harris, Political Cartoonist…
Ikanum is a Chinuk wawa word referring to Oral histories. It has become an operative word from the Grand Ronde tribe, the basis of their Indigenous theory of…
In Salem, the state capitol is a number of camas fields, perhaps the most native of them is the two fields at the state fairgrounds. The Fairgrounds encompasses…
Records of the Mountain Molalla are very limited. Besides a few records of the tribe living around Pleasant Hill, at Lost Valley, there is nearly nothing known of…
Questions about the recent Supreme Court case Trump v. Barbara, and how a decision will affect American Indians’ rights are completely valid. There is a danger that all…
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs’ record The Nestucca native peoples lived on the central Oregon coast at the Nestucca River. They were a tribe of Salish-speaking people, one…
The Clatskanie are a tribe that are not well known to many scholars in the region. There are rare documents about them and many people, I feel, have…
Reading early descriptions of the Tualatin Valley, they are all focused on the valley’s potential in agriculture. This theme is similar throughout the Willamette Valley, settlers and farmers…
Dairy Creek sign In the past 2 years, I have worked on signage projects in the Portland area for agencies of the city or state. In 2025, I…
America-the United States, is a multicultural, multi-ethnic country composed of Indigenous peoples and peoples who have emigrated here from every other country and land in the world. For…
A set of news clippings from the 1870s is helping to hone in on where the Indian encampment was in Albany, OR. Previously, it was said to be…
The upper McKenzie River, in Oregon, is a vast wilderness and a tourist fishing location for the past 100 years. Some 30% of the clean water in the…
Essays written in preparation for my Comprehensive exams, nearly 20 years ago. Anthropology and Government Policy Part of the government’s role regarding Indian people was to figure out…
Sylvester Woodbridge, a Presbyterian pastor, may have been one of the first to suggest a plan for the initial California Reserves. This certainly helped the effort for writing…
In April and May 1856 Joel Palmer hired 60 men to be the Grand Ronde Guards, to build a fence and control access and egress to the Grand…
Recently, I came upon a number of postcards of soldiers at the Grand Ronde Reservation. It was a common practice to turn photos into postcards. On Ebay these…
Folks who were around Portland in 2020 recall that there were a good number of protests in the area. Statues in several communities were being pulled down. Teddy…
I was looking through the NARA electronic records and found references to a man, Henry Petit, at Umatilla. The Petit name is well known at Grand Ronde. My…
Nowadays, I get requests all the time for relevant tribal curriculum for public schools. This has been an issue for decades in Oregon. There was tribal curriculum units…
Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley Book events (upcoming and past) 2025 (upcoming) Dec 12/6 Wild Arts Festival Author Table Hillsboro Aug 8/4 Shared Stewardship 101, Benton…
Too often these days our world, or community, is horribly divided and divisive. And not just by the actions of the present administration, but it seems everything and…
The year is 2025, we are now 195 from the malaria pandemic which hit the Oregon Territory, 161 years from Oregon Statehood, and 249 years from US Independence.…
Polly Katherine Lewis passed on March 8, 2025 from COPD complications after a two decade long struggle. Polly was born May 22, 1947 in Vallejo, CA. Her father…