Cross Currents: Don't Forget the Water - Salish Sea
by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Salish Sea 30"x24" oil on linen 2014 Two years ago on a technicolor blue day, I stood on the deck of the Wenatchee ferry cutting through the choppy sea from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. The vessel was named for the Wenatchi people who originally lived in the shadow of the Columbia and Wenatchee Rivers in Eastern Washington State. We are riding on a ship of memory. In the Yakama language, w enatchi means "river flowing from canyon." The Wenatchee River was home to a vibrant salmon run prior to the damming of the Columbia River which impeded the salmon's journey. Like the fish, the Wenatchi tribe was also blocked from its ancestral waterways as the US government rounded up the Native Americans in Washington State and collected them in reservations far from their native lands. I often think about the rivers, lakes, towns and cities we have named after the original Americans. The absence of most of their cu...