Category: Nespelem

Martin Luther King Day and Indigenous America

Tomorrow, Monday, is Martin Luther King Day, and I’ve just begun reading Pekka Hamalainen’s new book, Indigenous Continent. It strikes me already that King’s dreams and the Indigenous philosophy as described by Hamalainen share underlying themes: unity, harmony, responsibility, and reciprocity.

The New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote yesterday, not of the famous 1963 “I have a dream” speech, but of “A Christmas Sermon on Peace,” delivered on Christmas Eve, 1967, at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King served as co-pastor. Read The Article

December 2022

How could my 80th year have been so good when the world went reeling with craziness and self-destruction? Do I need to list the events? The famines, droughts, floods, fires– volcanoes! And then, in the words of that old Kingston Trio song from the 50s, the human-caused tragedies.

“They’re rioting in Africa, there’s strife in Iran/ What nature doesn’t do to us/ Will be done by our fellow man.”  Read The Article

A Celebration

I’m old enough to start measuring time in decades—Tamkaliks, the annual powwow and celebration on the Nez Perce Homeland grounds out of the town of Wallowa, just completed its third.

It was, in a word, stunning. There were over 150 dancers, and their regalia seemed bolder and sometimes more extravagant this year. There were 15 drums! My recollections are 10 drums, maybe 12. Even the number of drummers on a given drum seemed larger—six and seven drummers young and old reaching to get their sticks on the drum. The dance floor at the arbor was thick with old and young; it took long songs to get everyone onto and off the floor. Read The Article

Fourth of July-Nespelem

I’ve written before about how Indians, and especially the Nez Perce exiles on the Colville Reservation, used the holiday as a day to bring out drums, regalia, and songs that had been suppressed in the 1880s rush to assimilation. In an exhibit two years ago on “Nez Perce Music,” we used images from a 1903 Fourth of July Celebration on the Coville Reservation in Washington. There were photos of drummers and dancers, but when I asked elder Albert Andrews Redstar to comment on the event, he focused on the photo of a horse procession. It seems to me that this photo and his words are an appropriate way to remember that “Independence Day” does not celebrate or remember “independence” for all of us. Read The Article

Doug Hyde—Artist

Like many Natives, Doug Hyde was born off-reservation, is of mixed tribal descent, and is a veteran of the Vietnam War. Unlike most, but still a significant number of talented Native artists, Doug was sent from his reservation to the Indian Art School at Santa Fe as a young man. It was there, between growing up on the Nez Perce Reservation at Lapwai, Idaho and serving in Vietnam, that his training as an artist began, and there that he later returned to teach.

Doug is in his 70s now, a mature artist with a large body of work in galleries, museums, and on reservations across the country. But he has no intention of leaving the work and world of a Native artist.

Nez Perce Tribal exec Ferris Paisano III and artist Doug Hyde

A recent sculpture project brought Doug and his work,  ‘etweyé·wise—“The Return,” to the Josephy Center this June. The project began with a grant to the Oregon Community Read The Article

Lessons from the Redstars

Veronica “Ronnie” and Albert Redstar (w me)

Sometime this summer, Kathleen Ackley, director of the Wallowa Land Trust, asked me to put together a class about Nez Perce history for local agency and non-profit workers who work with tribes. She wanted me to recruit speakers from the Tribes to be part of the presentations. Her thought was that a better understanding of Tribal history and culture would lead to better working relationships.

So in good white-man fashion, I put together a series of five Thursday programs that would trace, roughly, the history and activities of the Nez Perce Indians in the Wallowas from ancient times to the present. It’s been good, and as always in these things, when you are asked to teach—or to organize teaching—you end up learning. In this case learning to rethink my own linear notions of time and space.

Last week was week four, and I had asked Albert Andrews Redstar and his sister, Veronica “Ronnie” Read The Article

Friendship and freedom; Indian and White

Young Joseph’s Monument, Nespelem

This weekend a Nez Perce friend handed me a copy of a letter, written in 1940, by Walter Copping, a white man who had been a storekeeper at Nespelem, Washington. The letter writer says that Chief Joseph died in the fall of 1904 while most of the Nez Perce were gone picking hops, and that the funeral was on June 20, 1905, when there were again few Nez Perce around and he and some Indians of “other tribes” were made pallbearers. He was sure of the date, because he wrote it in his “Masonic Monitor.” He explains that when the Indians came back from hop picking that year they had another ceremony, and adds that there was a third ceremony, which Professor Meany and railroader Sam Hill attended, and at which a monument was placed at the grave site. He gives no date for this third memorial.

The man talks easily of languages—English, Nez Perce, Chinook, Read The Article