http://www.ancestralways.net N'sayka Wawa Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:08:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en For me, there has always been one way in which I have wanted to reclaim a part of Portland which has always been only scenery to me, and that is kayaking the Willamette. Portland's river is, for many of us, something beautiful to stare at on the way across ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/70 Willamette Week - Best Lifeboat Some kids have farewell dances or pizza parties, but the eighth-grade class at Portland Waldorf School built an Inuit whaling boat to celebrate their graduation. With the help of local wilderness organization TrackersNW and the Ancestral Lifeways Community , the 30-student class spent four days on ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/69 On Saturday, June 2nd my teacher Francine Adams, myself and 29 other eighth graders from the Portland Waldorf School (PWS) as well as seven staff from Trackers NW arrived at Cedar Grove Farm, a permaculture farm outside of Port Orford, Oregon. One of our tasks was to build an ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/61 Six of us arrived on Shaw Island last Thursday evening after just barely making it on the 6:30 ferry from Anacortes, Washington. We still needed to pick up tide charts and so drove around for about a half hour in search of a store but soon realized that the only ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/48 The song of Red-Winged Blackbirds trills the morning air as we walk along the shores of the marsh. Suddenly, a flock of thousands explodes off the water, honking and darkening the sky. The geese are heading north again! We had ventured to Eugene ostensibly to harvest cattails, though we spent ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/33 There's a quiet little hum in the other room right now, a satisfying hum. The hum of twenty pounds of stinging nettles lying in a box, rapidly drying. But wait. Nettles don't hum, nor do boxes. What kind of etymological mischief is this? Well, my friends, I am introducing to you ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/39 In our continuing series of adventures-until-we-drop-dead, the Ancestral Lifeways group arrived at the old volcano in Central Oregon, Glass Buttes, to collect obsidian and dacite stone for making stone tools (also known as flintknapping). Here elder Goode Jones works on one of the enormous boulders we dug out of the ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/31 Spring is in full sting here, and apparently, it is in Olympia too. A few of us took a trip up to Olympia, Washington to collect baskets of the wonderful Stinging Nettle, a blessing of the spring foods. Nettles are amazing. I once asked a group what they would eat if ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/26 Jon Young gave a great lecture on Friday, speaking to the group about the importance of cultural mentoring, the system that he has evolved over time side by side with native elders from the Akamba of Kenya, San of the Kalahari, Haudenosaunee of the Northeast and Polynesians of Hawa'i'i. So what ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/24 We are at winter's end, and the willows wave at us from the shore of Reed Island, a boat-only accessible island on the Columbia River. So with only days to go until spring, we hurriedly packed our willow clippers into kayaks and canoes, and set off for the great Reed Island. ... http://www.ancestralways.net/archives/20