Yesterday morning I got sucked into a vortex of reader comments on several articles about Native American issues. One story by NPR echoed our January feature story by Andrea Appleton, “Blood Quantum,” describing the controversy over what percentage of Indian blood is required to enroll in a tribe. The second, from the Great Falls Tribune, described the Little Shell […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
Call me a local and forget about my grandpappy
I live in Lemhi County, Idaho, but nobody else in my family ever did, and recently, that’s become a problem. I love the boiled-down democracy of city council meetings, the frank discussions of local school boards, the drama of planning and zoning hearings – and no, I’m not kidding. I find local politics fascinating, and […]
Posted inGoat
Western Imagery
When we look out our windows, do we always see the real West out there, or do we often perceive what photographers have taught us to to see? The question comes up with an exhibit of 120 photographs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Called “Into the Sunset, Photography’s […]
Posted inWotr
Following your passion
The bones of the young artist Everett Ruess, identified last month through DNA analysis, have at last been found in Utah. They were 100 miles from where he was last seen 75 years ago, and from where his mules were found bya search party in early 1935. So ends the legends surrounding Ruess’s disappearance and […]
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
From grass to grains
An Oregon local foods movement finds opportunity in the economic crisis
Posted inHeard Around the West
Yes, you might
The honchos at Arizona State University sure know how to get people fired up. First, they invited President Barack Obama to be the commencement speaker May 13, and then they decided not to award him an honorary degree, as is customary at these ceremonies. The rationale? “His body of work is yet to come,” reports […]
Posted inGoat
The cost of progress
The Environmental Working Group just released a two-year study focusing on the toxins found in five minority women at the forefront of environmental justice battles. Within each community, these women work tirelessly to protect citizens from various forms of pollution. And within each of these women, scientists found significantly higher amounts of toxins than other […]
Posted inRay
Some Mormons baptized Obama’s dead mother
This is an amazing intrusion by one religion into a White House family. Or add your own description of its significance. The Salt Lake Tribune reports: President Barack Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who died in 1995, was baptized posthumously into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last year during her son’s campaign, […]
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
The West dissected
Oil and gas companies — despite the efforts of “obstructionist” environmentalists — managed to drill at least 117,339 new wells in 12 Western states (including South Dakota) in the last eight years alone. That drilling rush often skirted regulations and caused significant air and water pollution. That’s according to the Environmental Working Group, which recently […]
Posted inGoat
Desert disappearances
In mid-April, writer Laura Paskus told us of a dozen murdered women whose remains were found in the New Mexico desert. This week, the desert has given up additional bodies — one an explorer who disappeared 75 years ago, the other a hiker missing only since November. Everett Ruess, artist, poet and aesthete, was 20 […]
Posted inArticles
Wind River revelations
To listen to the audio interview you need to have the Adobe Flash Player installed and Javascript enabled. Lisa Jones talks about Northern Arapaho horse whisperer and healer Stanford Addison, the subject of her book, Broken.
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
Got warriors?
A quadriplegic horse gentler helps reservation boys through their dangerous teens
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
The collected Sierra Nevada
Meteorologist Hal Klieforth has spent his life exploring and documenting California’s ‘Range of Light’
Posted inWotr
Suffering and solace
“He died just like that. He didn’t suffer,” the woman said, speaking of a deceased pet. “Not like your cat.” I was stunned by her words: cruel, thoughtless and dead wrong. But she wasn’t the only one to make such a pronouncement. In the months my husband and I provided hospice for our tabby cat […]
Posted inRay
Idaho-style reality TV
Just a quick grin here. Rocky Barker, a veteran Idaho Statesman writer and friend of mine, plays with this news: … The Idaho Department of Commerce is planning on picking a Seattle family for an all-expense-paid trip to Idaho for fishing, rafting, hiking, horseback riding and the like — in exchange for (the family) starring […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
A Paonia love story
In March, we hired a new senior advertising representative, David Anderson. With 20 years of experience in marketing and sales and an upbeat personality, he helps fill our advertising pages, which contribute an essential chunk to our annual budget. David enjoys golf, live music, and spending time with wife Stevi and young son Skylar. The […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
The vitality of language
My husband and I have volunteered at a raptor rehabilitation center for years, and when we decided to adopt a toddler, the center’s staff threw us a baby shower on the lawn outside the kestrel’s cage. They presented our new daughter, Maia, with bird-embossed T-shirts and a stuffed toy turkey vulture. We ourselves received a […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
Renewing a battered land
Rewilding the West: Restoration in a Prairie LandscapeRichard Manning 238 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of California Press, 2009. In 1874, when most of the West was still held in common, a simple invention — barbed wire — pushed the region toward a long-held national ideal: privatization. With amazing swiftness, ranchers began to enclose their lands and […]
Posted inArticles
When good times go bad
A video journey through Phoenix’s unusually busy food banks