Hello Braided River Family!
We are thrilled about the upcoming release of Big River: Resilience and Renewal in the Columbia Basin, on June 1, 2024! This book contains breathtaking works by wildlife photographer and biologist David Moskowitz and narratives by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes that are sure to take you on a visual ride through the Columbia Watershed.
“A thought-provoking and visually stunning portrait of an embattled paradise.” —Kirkus Reviews
The Columbia River basin spans 1,200 miles across seven states and one Canadian province, many of which travel through the ancestral lands of various Indigenous Nations. Big River, a new book and campaign from Braided River, explores the Columbia River as one living, interdependent being that embraces wide cultural and ecological perspectives. As we come to terms with the nature of our relationship with the Big River, we are tasked with finding a balance between the demands around water, salmon, agriculture, energy, and climate with the fundamental need for a sustainable living river.
The grace of water
By Eileen Delehanty Pearkes
“I’m an old-time Indian woman,’” Charlotte Rodrique said at the start of one plenary presentation. The room, filled mostly with tribal men and the noisy clinking of cutlery, immediately went quiet. A chairperson and elder of the Burns Paiute tribe of central Oregon, Rodrique had been asked to speak about the value of water. She began slowly. ‘“t was never our people’s way for the women to speak out. That was for the men. When the men spoke, the grandmothers were always there, but they were standing behind them. They were reminding the men of who they were.”
She picked up speed, telling a story of traveling as a child with her grandmother to gather plant medicine high in the mountains above the Snake River. When her grandmother asked her to get water, she explained to Rodrique how to carefully part the lichen and moss gathered around springs that emerged from the ground. Water is precious, Rodrique’s grandmother told her. Be very careful with it. Don’t harm it.
“I am watching all of you,’”she concluded as she addressed the still-silent room. “Water is precious. Remember. This is your work.”
Join the Big River conversation at a launch event near you, by visiting the Big River website to learn more about the massive and diverse Columbia River basin, and by pre-ordering your copy from Mountaineers Books.
June 1– Nelson, BC: Nelson Museum, Archives, & Gallery, 7:00 PM
June 4– Olympia, WA: Brower’s Bookshop, 6:00 PM
June 5– Seattle, WA: Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 PM
June 17– Astoria, OR: Columbia River Maritime Museum, 2:00 PM
June 18– Portland, OR: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 6:30 PM
June 19– The Dalles, OR: Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, 6pm PM
June 20– Richland, WA: Richland Public Library, 6:00 PM
June 23– Spokane, WA: Magic Lantern Theatre on Main, 4:00 PM
All photos by David Moskowitz