Sherman Alexie likes to remind people that attending Washington State University presented him with a real challenge. As a Spokane Indian, a liberal, and a writer, he did not fit the prevalent mold of students attending WSU in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Regardless, on October 10, 2003, WSU president V. Lane Rawlins presented Alexie with the University’s highest alumni honor, the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Since leaving WSU in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in American studies, Alexie has published nine books of fiction and poetry and has written and directed two award-winning movies. Widely popular, his short stories appear in the nation’s … » More …
For the past two years historian Jeanne Eder has been traveling in Sacagawea’s footsteps. Donning a traditional dress as well as another woman’s persona, Eder has toured the West performing her interpretation of an older and wiser Sacagawea who, years after the Journey of Discovery expedition, has time to reflect.
Eder (’00 Ph.D. Hist.) teaches at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. A Dakota Sioux who grew up on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeast Montana, she researches the lives of historic Native American women and portrays them in Chautauqua-style performances.
Playing the most famous woman of the 1800s has its challenges, says Eder. “People … » More …
For the first time in maybe a century, ceremonial songs of the Coeur d’Alene tribe floated across Cottonwood Bay on Lake Coeur d’Alene last spring. The Coeur d’Alenes were reclaiming a portion of their ancestral lands, a place where they can connect with their past and create a future of education and counseling programs for their children and families.
The site, Camp Larson, was an educational venture started by a group of Washington State University instructors nearly 50 years ago, when Roger Larson and several colleagues found the picturesque property for sale at the south end of the Idaho lake. Through the University they created … » More …
Last April marked the 30th anniversary of the Pah-Loots-Pu Celebration Powwow at Washington State University. One of the largest student-run campus events, the powwow is held at the Beasely Performing Arts Coliseum and includes tribal representatives from around the country, with a large concentration from the Northwest. Pah-Loots-Pu, a Nez Perce word, means “people of the rolling hills,” referring to the area around Pullman. Over the years, the two-day celebration with singing, dancing, and crafts has attracted as many as 2,500 visitors. The event has value for the community as well as for the Native Americans who study and work at WSU, says Justin Guillory, … » More …
To get here, most elders at Washington State University’s conference honoring the Plateau Tribes had to pass by places defined now only by what they used to be.
From Oregon and Washington, they drove along the Columbia, past dams where once abundant fish runs sustained them as “salmon people.”
From Idaho and Montana, they passed land that belonged to no one, by root-digging prairies and camas fields now gated and signed, “no trespassing.”
“As I traveled up here, I pointed out things along the river to my son,” said Wilfred Jim, a 67-year-old enrolled Yakama who lives in Warm Springs, Oregon . . . this … » More …
A new biography of Kamiakin from Washington State University Press finally pulls together the history, legend, and cultural memory of a great chief, a powerful leader of both tolerance and will.
Many questions remain concerning the contents of the longhouses excavated at Ozette. One of the most intriguing is the nature of its art, which was pervasive. More than 400 artifacts stored at the Makah Cultural Center might be considered art. Although a few pieces, such as the well-known carved whale saddle, are (presumably) ritualistic, most are everyday objects, combs, bowls, clubs, embellished with designs.
Jeff Mauger (PhD ’78), an archaeologist at Peninsula Community College in Port Angeles, earned his doctorate from WSU, analyzing the shed-roof style of the houses at Ozette and their relation to the style throughout the Northwest coast. Since then he … » More …
On a bluff above the Snake River, a few miles upstream from the Tri-Cities, people are gathering on a July morning to bury their dead. Or rebury, actually. The bones that fill the ordinary cardboard boxes sitting next to a deep open grave have spent decades in a laboratory storeroom. On one box is printed in neat letters, “woman and child.”
A warm breeze rustles the sage and wild rye, as people approach the grave in small groups, people of the Yakama, Colville, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Wannapum. Although the identities of the remains are uncertain, they are certainly ancestors of many of those gathered … » More …
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ozette is the cultural continuity. Makahs had lived in Ozette for 2,000 years and probably much longer. The village had been abandoned for only 60 years, and many Makahs still went there to fish and hunt. One elder called the exposure of the longhouses by the storm "a gift from the past." » More ...
Last May, Rebecca Miles became the first woman and, at age 32, the youngest person to be elected chairman of the Nez Perce tribe. In her one-year post representing the 3,000 members of the tribe, Miles has traveled the country speaking on issues like salmon recovery and the 150th anniversary of the Nez Perce treaty. She has also worked hard at home to address local issues, raise her two sons, and serve her community. A 1997 criminal justice graduate of Washington State University, Miles went on to earn a graduate degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University. She spoke with Hannelore Sudermann November 15, 2005, … » More …
