In my childhood community, two cultures; Scandinavian and Native American lived side by side.  People often ask me about this, curious about what it must have been like to be a sky-eyed child on a reservation.

What I remember was an incredible sense of security, and comfort. We had total freedom to run on the beach […]

Today is 180 Vetrar. the last day of winter in the old Nordic calendar. The year is divided into two parts summer | winter. This division was the practice of Native Americans on the Northwest coast also - Tsetseka (winter) & Bakoos (summer).

Tomorrow is the first day of Harpa, the first month of sumar. […]

Now, as the earth begins to warm, an odd music tumbles from the forest.
Listen…along the banks of ponds and creeks, under wet leafmold, you can hear them; the frog chorus:
“Six weeks, six weeks,” they sing.
In six weeks the Salmon will run back to the Pacific.
So says the Salish story, and so it is year […]

Venus shining in my window awakens me early these mornings. Jupiter is nearby. It is breathtaking to be awake at the end of night, hours before dawn. Venus and Jupiter, the feminine and expansive benefics are in the sign of Capricorn. I make no claims to asto-wisdom though for many years I have been […]

BLACK RAVEN
~Thought~

LEGEND
On a cold, wet day in the ‘distant time’ when the earth was beginning to dry out after the great flood, Raven was flying above the shore wishing for something to relieve his boredom. He noticed a bright shiny object on the beach partially embedded in the mud. It was emitting strange squeaking […]

Gyidakhanis mask
Tsetseka the winter dance cycle, is both the going inward winter season and the presentation of many tsekas, sacred dances. NW Coast Native Americans observed a two cycle year that mirrored the Northwind people of Scandinavia (October- April & April- October). But where Scandinavians used sun and stars to measure the season against the […]