The story of some Native American Scouts and their complicated reasons for working with the United States government. Continue Reading Past As Prologue: The Complicated Relationship Between Indian Scouts And The U.S. Read More
As education culture wars consumed the Statehouse this spring, the running joke was that Idaho educators were scrambling to Google to figure out what “critical race theory” is. Things aren’t much different now. So, think of this as summer school. Read More
President Biden on Thursday signed a bill to recognize Juneteenth — the celebration to commemorate the end of chattel slavery in the United States — as a federal holiday. Continue Reading President Biden Signs Bill Into Law Making Read More
For generations Marcus Whitman has been widely viewed as an iconic figure from early Pacific Northwest history, a venerated Protestant missionary who was among 13 people killed by the Cayuse tribe near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington, in 1847. Read More
The company Gameloft tackled the redesign of Oregon Trail for Apple Arcade just in time for the increase in worldwide play because of the pandemic. Its target audience: the now-40-year-olds and their kids. And more Native American players. Read More
What the struggle over recognition for WSU's Gay Awareness student group shows is some of the similarities between rural and urban LGBTQ rights. Rural areas — especially college towns like Pullman or Moscow — are also queer places. People in cities who were against gay rights used the same tactic as those in Pullman—the public-referendum—to deny housing or employment Read More
Few among us have tried our luck at competitive ski jumping, and there is no shame in that considering these skiers can reach speeds around 60 mph before they take flight. But there's something riveting about the daring sport even for casual onlookers. The Northwest was once a "hotbed" for Nordic jumping as detailed in a new book and a parallel museum exhibit. Read More
Women have shaped so much of how we live in Washington. As Women’s History Month comes to an end, meet prominent figures in the state’s history who have worked in community activism, environmental preservation and more. Continue Reading Read More
The women athletes of early rodeo provide a broader understanding of women’s roles in rural history. Several top cowgirls like Fannie Sperry Steele, Mabel Strickland, and the Greenough sisters were born and raised on ranches across the Northwest. By studying these women, we have learned that women gentled and trained horses, moved cattle, and managed ranch duties. Read More
During the early decades of the 20th century, Mark Matthews became one of the most powerful religious leaders in the United States. His Seattle congregation was the largest Presbyterian church in the world with more than 10,000 members at its peak. Read More
Today we would recognize Harry Allen as trans. That term and concept did not exist in 1912, but there were many people in the past who had been assigned one sex at birth, but later in life transitioned to the sex that they more readily identified with. Read More
Leaders of seven Northwest tribes testified this week in favor of replacing a statue of Oregon Trail pioneer and missionary Marcus Whitman in the U.S. Capitol. A proposal pending in the Washington Legislature would install a statue of the late Native rights activist Billy Frank, Jr. in Whitman's place of honor. Read More
Chelsea Clinton has taken her bestselling She Persisted series of picture books, and with the help of some pretty amazing women in their own right, is turning them into chapter books. Chapter books! Clinton says chapter books were not part of the original vision for She Persisted, but when she saw that kids were getting more and more curious about the women featured in the Read More
Cassandra Tate’s recent book on the storied white missionaries sheds light on a poorly understood chapter of our state’s settler past. Continue Reading Sifting Through ‘Unsettled Ground’ Of The Whitman Read More
The strike—and the violence that occurred—became George Pullman’s legacy, rather than his attempt to create the utopian worker’s town. When he died, his family buried him in a lead-lined coffin because they were concerned workers would try to desecrate it. Read More
Amanda Gorman echoed, in dynamic and propulsive verse, the same themes that Biden has returned to again and again and that he wove throughout his inaugural address: unity, healing, grief and hope, the painful history of American experience and the redemptive power of American ideals. Read More
If you've been riding an emotional, politics-fueled rollercoaster in 2021 (not to mention 2020), believe us: Your kids have noticed. Here's a quick primer from Life Kit on how to talk with your kids about politics — and, even get them thinking about civics. Continue Read More
In this installment of the "Past as Prologue" series comes the story of a U.S. soldier, Sgt. George Yamauchi , from Pasco. He asked in 1943: 'What is an American?' Yamauchi penned the question in the local newspaper after his family was persecuted. The question defining who is an American is as relevant today as it was then. Read More
By 1950, 20% of Pasco’s approximately 10,000 residents were Black, almost all living in slum conditions. Few lived in the new atomic community of Richland and none in “lily-white” Kennewick -- a fact of which Kennewick city leaders and police at the time were proud. Not only was housing segregated, but Black residents were forced to endure broad discrimination in Read More
This year Thanksgiving comes as chronically under-resourced Native populations are contracting COVID-19 at record rates. In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that Native Americans are 3.5 times more likely to get COVID-19 than white people. Read More
Lewiston resident Lilienne Shore Kilgore-Brown actively takes part in protests now. So did her grandmother Susan Kilgore in the 1970s. On StoryCorps Northwest, Susan tells Lilienne what she was protesting and what she learned from those experiences. Read More
Bridges was the little girl depicted in that famous Norman Rockwell painting — the first Black student at her New Orleans elementary school. Now, she's written a book to tell kids her story. Continue Reading 60 Years Later, Ruby Bridges Tells Read More
Jess Walter's new novel an adventure tale based on actual events in the early days of the last century's labor movement — which was much wilder and bloodier than most people remember. Continue Reading Echoes Of Today’s Read More
Faced with the threat of forced removal or worse, in 1855 leaders of the Warm Springs and Wasco Tribes forfeited their claim to roughly ten million acres, and moved to a reservation. In exchange for land to offer white settlers, brokers for the United States government made promises. Among those: Tribal members would not be stopped from traveling off the reservation to Read More
What does the contemplative art of bonsai have to do with World War II? Plenty, said Aarin Packard. He's the curator at the Pacific Bonsai Museum, which displays all kinds of the dwarfed trees pruned and trained into artistic shapes. Read More
The story of Captain Tom in Britain reached Bud Lewis of Portland through a chain of friends and family. The two men are virtually the same age. Lewis also served in World War II in the tropics. The U.S. Army veteran was convinced by his circle to copy his British counterpart. Read More
Aging veterans and their descendants are attempting to return memorabilia to the families of their former enemies ahead of a milestone anniversary. Next Wednesday, September 2, marks 75 years to the day since the Japanese surrender ceremony that ended World War II. Read More
It's been 75 years since the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks to Koko Kondo, who was an infant when one of those bombs was dropped on Hiroshima. Continue Reading An Atomic Bomb Survivor On Her Journey From Read More
Denin Koch's trip to the Hanford B Reactor when he was 19 stirred his musical passion. It eventually inspired a full jazz album exploring the complicated history of Hanford, 75 years after the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan ended WWII. Read More
Researchers are still digging into the question and sharing their findings decades after the Nazis sacked the homes of Jews during World War II. Continue Reading Where Are The Thousands Of Nazi-Looted Musical Instruments?Read More
In 1918 Walla Walla, the chief of police, refused to enforce a state mask mandate. He pointed out that he was going to meet heavy resistance and, anyway, that he had no authority to carry out a state directive, only city ordinances. Still, he also openly defied the instructions of the city’s health officer, J.E. Vanderpool, to follow the state health officer’s guidance. Read More
HBO Max temporarily removed the 1939 film from its streaming service in early June for its depiction of 'racial prejudices.' The film now includes an introduction addressing its controversial legacy. Continue Reading ‘Gone With The Wind’ Read More
Poet Natalie Diaz returns, interrogating the lasting effects of colonization asking: If a colonizer's influence can't be eradicated from a culture, how can you push back against violence and erasure? Continue Reading BOOK Read More
In Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga, Native artists retell the events of a brutal massacre in pre-Revolutionary Pennsylvania and bring a painful history to life on the page. Continue Reading Read More
Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the executive producer of a new documentary focusing on the lives of black Americans on both sides of the Revolutionary War, whose stories aren't often told. Continue Reading Read More
The Treaty of 1855 created the Yakama Nation reservation as we know it today. In the decades after, the Yakama, Washington state, and the United States were trying to figure out their new relationship. At the turn of the century, Louis Mann was in the middle of it all, working as an interpreter for the tribe. Now, audio recordings of Mann’s strong voice have resurfaced. Read More
NPR's Steve Inskeep, discussing his book Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Fremont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity and Helped Cause the Civil War, touches on parallels to U.S. politics in 2020. Continue Reading Read More
Our kids' books columnist, Juanita Giles, gave her daughter Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story for Christmas; she says the book's depiction of food and history mirrors her family's experiences. Continue Reading Books Read More
U.S. immigration authorities want to increase the fee for obtaining immigration files by 500%, which means some people would have to pay more than $600 for the documents. The move would affect families of the millions of people who immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Read More
In some historical Nativity scenes, the shepherds have grossly enlarged thyroid glands — also known today as goiter. It's an apparent symbol of their poverty and iodine-deficient diet. Continue Reading Why Certain Poor Shepherds In Read More
Midwinter has been a period of festivities for millenia, but Christmas as we know it today has its origins in Victorian Britain. It was in Victorian times that the idea of Christmas as a family holiday, with gift giving, a tree, and an intimate dinner became central to this celebration. Read More
Part of the difficulty in teaching Thanksgiving is that the story of the first Thanksgiving is incomplete, according to Edwin Schupman, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma who helps educators talk about Native American history and culture. Read More
Artist Dread Scott organized the 26-mile trek to New Orleans as a tribute to the men and women who protested their enslavement in the German Coast Uprising of 1811 by re-imagining a different outcome. Continue Reading Hundreds Read More
"Growing up I would hear about our peoples being 'discovered' ... " says author Brittany Luby. "I would go home and my parents would tell me: That's not actually how things happened." Continue Reading ‘Encounter’ Re-frames The Read More
Toppenish Murals The small town of Toppenish, Wash. decided it needed a revitalization program and they landed on murals. Each mural in Toppenish depicts life in and surrounding the town from 1840 to 1940 and currently the town has over 80 murals. Full Transcript – I’ll take this opportunity to welcome you to Toppenish, the… Read More
Triple Nickles thought they were destined for Japan when they stopped at Pendleton Army Airfield in the spring of 1945. But no, they were about to be converted into smokejumpers for Operation Firefly. Professional smokejumping started in 1939 in Washington's Methow Valley. Read More
An archaeological dig along the Salmon River in western Idaho has yielded evidence of one of the oldest human settlements in the Americas yet found. Newly published findings from the excavation give impetus to a scientific rethinking of when and how the first people arrived in North America. Read More
In Stacey Lee's new novel, an opinionated and talented Chinese American girl makes her way in Reconstruction-era Atlanta while preserving her secret work as an advice columnist in the local paper. Continue Reading BOOK REVIEW: Read More
Photo analysis by a forensic imaging expert from suburban Seattle is backing up a new search for the pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart. Right now, a National Geographic expedition is at an uninhabited island in the South Pacific looking for Earhart's missing airplane. Read More
Morrison was the author of Beloved, Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Continue Reading Toni Read More
