"Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty. Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue between the miraculous and the mundane, the spiritual...

"Following the removal of the gray whale from the Endangered Species list in 1994, the Makah tribe of northwest Washington State announced that they would revive their whale hunts; their relatives, the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation of British Columbia, shortly followed suit. Neither tribe had exercised their right to whale--in the case of the Makah, a right affirmed in their 1855 treaty with the federal government--since the gray whale had been hunted nearly...

Publisher's description: Voices of a thousand people is the story of one Native community's struggle to regain control of its past and preserve their heritage for generations to come. The remote northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State is the homeland of the Makah Indian Nation, whose name in their own language translates to "the People Who Live by the Rocks and Seagulls." Rich in ceremony, art, and tradition and nationally known...