by Rich Wandschneider | May 31, 2026 | Arab, Arab-Israeli War, Futufre is Peace, In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat, Joseph, Nation of strangers, Nez Perce, Temelkuran
I have just finished reading “The Future is Peace,” co-written by an Israeli Jew, Maoz Inon, and a Palestinian Moslem, Aziz Abu Sarah. The two came together in shared tragedy—Aziz lost a teenage brother tortured in Israeli prisons when young and too week to live when...
by Rich Wandschneider | May 26, 2026 | American Indians, horses, Nez Perce, Pueblo Revolt
Alvin Josephy said that Americans—settlers, politicians, and historians—were often guilty of “Eurocentrism,” seeing everything through old European eyes. Their understandings of the peoples of the “New World” were clouded. Naming the people “Indians” was a first...
by Rich Wandschneider | May 20, 2026 | 1855 treaty, 1863 treaty, A.B. Findley, Enterprise Oregon, H.R. Findley, Imnaha, Joseph, Joseph Band, Joseph Oregon, Nex Perce history, Nez Perce, Nez Perce treaty, Nez Perce War, Sarah Findley, Wallowa, Wallowa Country, Wallowa County, Wallowa History Center
The Wallowa History Center is an amazing place that is becoming an important institution in the county’s capture and celebration of local history and culture. It sits in the old Forest Service compound at the west edge of Wallowa, as you make your way through town...
by Rich Wandschneider | May 7, 2026 | David, David Brooks, Israel, Nez Perce, Palestine, Rotary, The Future is Peace
It’s so easy to find fault with country and world today. With courts, the administration, foreign governments, with dictators and oppressors everywhere. I’ve compared what is happening today to the awful 1930s and 1940s, the rise of Stalin and his camps and use of...
by Rich Wandschneider | May 3, 2026 | Iran, Israel
I was born in 1942, just 10 months after Pearl Harbor and our entry into what would become known as World War II. Uncles were in the war. One died in the last months of the war in the Pacific; I knew Uncle Russell only from talk and pictures, one of him in his...
by Rich Wandschneider | Apr 17, 2026 | 1855 treaty, 1863 treaty, Allotment Act, american immigrants, American Indian history, assimilation, boarding schools, immigration, Indian history, Indian massacres, Indian removal, Indian reservations, Indian treaties, Indian wars, Indians, Iran, Israel, Nex Perce history, Nez Perce, Nez Perce treaty
The stock market is setting records at every mention of a cease fire in Gaza, Iran, or Lebanon, and as each ship crosses Hormuz. Sometimes there is disappointment, and the market briefly plunges, but it is ready to leap back at the next bit of good news. And the...
by Rich Wandschneider | Apr 12, 2026 | Colville Reservation, Colville tribes, Indian religion, Indian Relocation, Indian removal, Indian survival, Indian Territory, Josephy Library, Nespelem, Nex Perce history, Nez Perce War, Treaty of 1855, walwa’ma
When we arrived at the Head Start building that is now used by the walwa ma Nez Perce for Longhouse services, an elder I have known for over thirty years came to say hello and remind me again that the distance from Joseph to Nespelem is the same as that from Nespelem...
by Rich Wandschneider | Apr 7, 2026 | Chief Joseph, Indigenous cuisine, Iran, Joseph Band, Nespelem, Nez Perce
I woke up this morning with a pit in my stomach, an ache for my friends, family, country, and indeed the world. And this after a wonderful weekend in Nespelem, Washington at a First Foods Feast with the walwa ma—sometimes called the “Joseph”—band of the Nez Perce...
by Rich Wandschneider | Mar 27, 2026 | Alice Flether, Chief Joseph, Dawes Act, lorin mooruck
In 1888, a man named George Trumam Kercheval published “Lorin Mooruck; and Other Indian Stories.” The book’s preface is written by Bishop of Minnesota H. P. Whipple, and in it he laments the treatment of Indians, says that in his own visits in Indian Country he has...
by Rich Wandschneider | Mar 24, 2026 | Elif Shafak, Yazadi
Most of us—Muslims, Jews, Christians, Agnostics; Natives and immigrants; Black and White—believe in progress: our lives are easier than were those of our grandparents; our children’s will be better than ours. At least that is our hope. There is another way of looking...
by Rich Wandschneider | Mar 20, 2026 | assassinations, Haaretz, Iran, Israel
I am not an historian, but have read considerably in American, Native American, and Middle Eastern history. And I think the use of and dependence on assassination in war is a folly. Common sense and history tell us that when a leader is assassinated from the outside,...
by Rich Wandschneider | Mar 17, 2026 | Uncategorized
The Draft. This is not a history of the American Selective Service system, known as “the draft” in my day, but it is a reflection on what I know about it. And an argument that the draft can be a tool to stop war and promote democracy. I note that I was not drafted,...
by Rich Wandschneider | Mar 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
In my blog post on Iran a week ago, I tried to be even-handed, not completely condemning the War that had just begun with the assassination of the Ayatollah, but raising its complexities and expressing caution for the future: “I think that it is all up in the air,...
by Rich Wandschneider | Mar 3, 2026 | Uncategorized
On Saturday, we and our Israeli allies made war on Iran with bombs and missiles. Later that day, our time, President Trump declared that Israeli strikes had killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some 40 of his close associates. On Sunday, Iran’s remaining...
by Rich Wandschneider | Feb 17, 2026 | Ellen Bishop, Imnaha, Indian history, Indian treaties, Lewis and Clark, Minam, Nex Perce history, Nez Perce, Nez Perce Homeland, Nez Perce treaty, Nez Perce Tribe, Wallowa Country, Wallowa County, Wallowa History Center, wallowa homeland, Wallowa Lake, Wallowas
Wondering what it must have been like has been a growing yearning as I’ve lived in this Wallowa Country for 54 years and met old-timers, history keepers, and Natives from the three reservations in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon that have stories and questions about...
by Rich Wandschneider | Jan 17, 2026 | African Americans, Alvin Josephy, American Indian history, assimilation, bureau of Indian Affairs, Civil Rights Movement, Civil War, Depression, Donald Trump, Eisenhower, expulsions, German immigrants, ICE, immigration, Indian assimilation, Indian boarding schools, Indian Relocation, Indian reservations, Indians and fire, Nixon on Indians, Termination, Termination act, termination policy
I thought about this as the president rampaged against the “garbage” people and country of Somalia. When he asked why we couldn’t get more people from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark. And a year ago, when he and the Veep went on about Haitian immigrants eating pets in...
by Rich Wandschneider | Dec 31, 2025 | Manifest Destiny, Marcus Whitman, Native Americans, Nespelem, Nex Perce history, Nez Perce
President Trump’s recent outbursts about Somali-Americans and their homeland being “garbage” have been the most xenophobic rants since those a year ago about Haitians eating pets in Illinois. There have been milder explosions about Venezuelans and South Africans and...
by Rich Wandschneider | Dec 22, 2025 | birthright citizneship, Bobbie Conner, Dawes Act, Doctrine of Discovery, John Marshall
As we close out another year and try to keep up with the activist flurries of the executive branch, the sluggishness of the legislative branch, and the fitful actions—and inactions—of the judicial branch, looking to Native America can provide comfort. After all, for...
by Rich Wandschneider | Nov 28, 2025 | Bret Stephens, Ken Burns, Revolutionary War, Sara Hale, Thanksgiving
At least we are beyond construction paper pilgrim hats and goose feathers! There is now real discussion of the relationships among the first Europeans in North America and the Wampanoags and other tribes in “New” England. We don’t stop to think when we say “New...
by Rich Wandschneider | Nov 24, 2025 | Burns, Declaration of independence, George Washington, Indian history, Indian Summers: Washington State College
I have been watching the Ken Burns production on the American Revolution, and am struck immediately by the many things in that formative history of the nation that are not registered by the current political advocates of all stripes, and especially by those espousing...
