Historical cycles mutate how we interpret the written evidence of our past.

Previously, thanks to the kind help of Dr. Henry Zenk (Grand Ronde Tribes), we’ve seen a petition in Grand Ronde Chinuk Wawa for the sainthood of the Indigenous woman Kateri Tekakwitha, sent in… Continue reading →

In the Chinuk Pipa alphabet of BC, they write < hlwima > for ‘strange; other’.

Joseph M. Snow (1850-1929), an immigrant of 1869, had a good memory for fluently spoken Chinuk Wawa, from his experiences with Native people in connection with the important question of land rights.

This is some valuable thinking from a colleague of mine.

Listen to a singer 100 years ago…and tell me if this is the famous “kʰánawi sán” song…

This mid-century local colour piece managed to draw a number of surviving Chinuk Wawa speakers out of the woodwork.

Points to the Vancouver paper, for introducing its report on a Native potlatch with the culturally perceptive description that itʹs a “festival which is of a semi-religious character”.

This may have taken place in Portland, Oregon, with a Native defendant from the Umatilla area of northeast Oregon, in the late frontier period.