Love? Compassion? And Honor?
All are hard to find nowadays. And, where there is no love or compassion, there can be no honor.
A cool summer day, 69 degrees F, a strong breeze in the air. Have business in town tomorrow. Let’s take a quick look at Spokane.
A good idea putting the well-planned transit center near the falls and park. The Amtrak and Greyhound depots are also near by.
Woman drying salmon…
At Riverfront Park, Place of Truths statues by Jeff Ferguson and Smoker Marchand were installed 2019.
Stluputqu or fast water is, I hear, the Salish term for the falls.
When the three Spokane Indian bands and other tribes gathered here to fish, chiefs were elected to keep order and keep the peace. One very important chief was the Salmon Chief who was in charge of organizing the fishing and making sure the fish were distributed fairly. This sculpture was created by Virgil “Smoker” Marchand, and installed here in 2014 when Huntington Park was redesigned.
Marchand, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, grew up on the Colville Reservation in Omak, WA. He graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 1971. His work can be found throughout the west.
Amazing. Look different at every angle.
https://www.facebook.com/RiverfrontParkPowwowSpokane/
But there’s still the Bridge From Smoke Signals.
https://pocketsights.com/tours/place/Bridge-from-Smoke-Signals-4527:485
Sherman Alexie , who wrote The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the book of short stories from which Smoke Signals is based, is a Spokane Indian. I loved the book title. Remember it from my library daze.
Sherman Alexie Poem (The Place Where Ghosts of Salmon Jump)
Spokane, Washington 99201, United States
Created By: Kauffman & Associates
Information
This poem was installed here in a spiral, overlooking the Spokane Falls, when the new downtown library was built nearby in 1995. In the poem, author Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian, wrote about the creation story for the Spokane Falls and the devastation brought to the falls by the dams. Alexie was inspired to write the poem right at this spot.
According to www.spokanehistorical.org, Alexie tried to see the river from his ancestor's point of view:
"The river was the center of our lives, the center of our religion, so that location, there overlooking the river, is just where I wanted the poem to be. I looked down at the river and its beauty and also wondered how many inches of mercury lay under the water. The river makes me think of the ghosts of us and the ghosts of the salmon." At first Alexie did not care for the spiral design, but a few years later he changed his mind. He came back to see it, and saw a couple reading the poem. "Their movement was a dance. The design forces people to dance. The true power of it is in watching people reading the poem in that way."
That Place Where Ghosts of Salmon Jump
Coyote was alone and angry because he could not find love.
Coyote was alone and angry because he demanded a wife
from the Spokane, the Couer d'Alene, the Palouse, all those tribes
camped on the edge of the Spokane River, and received only laughter.
So Coyote rose up with with powerful and senseless magic
and smashed a paw across the water, which broke the river bottom
in two. which created rain that lasted for forty days and nights,
which created the Spokane Falls, that place where salmon travelled
more suddenly than Coyote imagined, that place where salmon swam
larger than any white man dreamed. Coyote, I know you broke
the river because of love, and pretended it was all done by your design.
Coyote, you're a liar and I don't trust you. I never have
but I do trust all the stories the grandmothers told me.
They said the Falls were built because of your unrequited love,
and I can understand that rage, Coyote. We can all understand
but look at the Falls now and tell me what you see. Look
at the Falls now, if you can see beyond all of the concrete
the white man has built here. Look at all of this
and tell me that concrete equals love. Coyote,
these white men sometimes forget to love their own mother
so how could they love this river which gave birth
to a thousand lifetimes of salmon? How could they love
these Falls, which have fallen farther, which sit dry
and quiet as a graveyard now? These Falls are that place
where ghosts of salmon jump, where ghosts of women mourn
their children who will never find their way back back home,
where I stand now and search for any kind of love,
where I sing softly, under my breath, alone and angry.
(Sherman Alexie, First Fish, First People, pp.18-19.)
I stayed at a Motel 6 when I first hit town and was amazed to find a pamphlet on the Zillah Wine Trail! Link to just one of many such maps:
I have a case of vertigo something fierce. I only brave the heights for the sake of photos or videos.
………………..
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