Levina Kussamwhy Wilkins 1936-2024 I still shake my head in disbelief that my Kala, Levina Kussamwhy Wilkins, from the Wenatchapam band of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakama Nation, was laid to rest only one month ago after losing her life in a head-on collision in the Lower Yakima Valley over the Labor Day weekend of 2024. In a painful synchronicity, she walked off into the mist exactly one year after my own mother, and I’ve felt her loss nearly as acutely. I will continue to pray for this amazing spirit, who proudly proclaimed herself the great-great granddaughter of Wí’awick’t, “who ruled[...]

We live in very difficult times. If your perspective takes in all of humanity, and your mind hasn't been polluted by the idea that being awake to human suffering is somehow "bad," you already feel the daily assaults of war, hatred, racism, obscene wealth and power, and an increasingly slippery slope of our demise as a species on this planet. As in nature, sometimes things must fall apart in order for new things to grow. We all have agency in how destructive the massive evolutionary change underway has to be. We can either be part of lifting or sinking. How things turn out as a[...]