About

Welcome!

This tree in front of my house is featured in “Tree Huggers in the City“

I have been blessed to share stories with native American elders and pioneer family members throughout Oregon, Washington and Northern California. I also joined an international faculty team to teach philosophy in a Palestinian university (BirZeit) half an hour from Jerusalem.

My mother’s Czech ancestors kept alive vital oral traditions including that of my grandfather’s grandmother, a healer who obtained her power from “speaking with the earth”. I thus had the grace to be nurtured within an eco-spiritual tradition. It was from my grandfather that I first learned how the map of a man’s mind reflects the map of a particular landscape. It was through my parents that I met Lower Chehalis elder Henry Cultee, whose words appear in a number of blogs and pages on this site.

I was honored indeed when over three decades ago a Chehalis great grandmother referred to collecting stories as my “work”.

My hobbies include working with the yard I have naturalized over the years, which is currently certified wildlife habitat.  I never use pesticides and encourage as much diversity as possible, including a large  number of native plants.  I never take anything from this yard that is produced here:  so if a tree dies, I use it to form a border for  a path; fallen or pruned branches form what a friend of mine has called my “wicker path”. They are thus broken up by being walked on until they go back to the soil.  I took out the lawn by mulching over it, bit by bit– though I had to pull out the English ivy I inherited!  I leave leaves where they fall (as in leaves from the trees after I rake them from the street and sidewalks).  I emphasize perennials and get an enormous crop of fruit to dry and share from my tiny yard:   apples, plums, pears, persimmons, figs, and cherries, as well as huckleberries, elderberries, Oregon grape, salal and numerous herbs and greens in season. I dried two gallons of figs in 2009!

Of course my garden looks very different in winter, but it is still filled with life- large numbers of overwintering birds who come to feed here, for instance.

I don’t consider this “my” yard, but something I have the immense good fortune to share for a time. The photos here indicate the extent of that good fortune in being surrounded by the grace of natural life.  This year I have added a hive of honeybees to my yard.  And just for fun, I have added a link here to a local beekeeping co-op that I have joined–and my observations of my bees.

In a different framework, there is my scholarly background. I earned my doctorate at the New School for Social Research and currently teach at Oregon State University.

On this website, I combine scholarly care and scientific perspective with the ancient wisdoms of oral tradition as I share traditional stories and personal thoughts that highlight our ancient belonging to the land–and the environmental challenges currently facing us.  I post all original writing of myself and my students here– rather than collecting materials from other sites. On the other hand, I have created an extensive list of links to related sites. There is so much good work being done to recognize and join!

I ask that you treat the ancient words here with respect, for the knowledge of their elders reflects the enduring heart of a people. You can easily separate such knowledge from my own opinions and speculations.

My best to each of you in following your path on this earth we share. Thank you for your presence. I hope something here will be of use to you.

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A few of my publications…

Folklore is one of my first loves– I have been a professional storyteller for many years–  and I have joined the creative cross-cultural dialogue on mythology in PARABOLA with these articles:

“Light who Loves her Sister Darkness” (on the Descent of Inanna, modeling the necessity of facing what we have buried or rejected, in our societies and ourselves), “Fierce Music” (on recognizing our real enemy), “Help beyond the Walls” (allies, expected and unexpected), Godfather Death (the old tale that guides us through the transition), “Tracking the Trackless” (finding our way on the path of mystery), and “Wild Justice” (the natural model of reciprocity from a mythic perspective.)

In a bit more academic frame, my most cited articles include “‘Making all the Crooked Ways Straight’: the Satirical Portrait of Whites in Coast Salish Folklore”; published in The Journal of American Folklore. “The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon” (published in Comparative Literature : though this is only a review, it has for some reason been making the rounds in the US and abroad).  “The Realization of the Self in Chehalis Society” is a long article published in Dialectical Anthropology , written in honor of Stanley Diamond, my mentor at the New School.  It looks at “primitive” (as Diamond did) as a positive term and contrasts the sense of self in modern society which struggles for its ground as an “individual” with the sense of self in a society in which social maturity is defined as moving out of oneself.

My article, “Re-storying the World, Reviving the Language of Life” is closely related to the material on this site and is published in the Australian Humanities Review November, 2009 (a special issue on writing in the “anthropocene”– the world in which the human species has apparent dominance, with all the attendant problems we are facing in this).

I authored two essays entitled “Indigenous Peoples” and “Social Ecology” which appear along with other essays that may interest readers of this site in Green Politics, An A to Z Guide.

Some of you have met me at conferences where I gave papers and presentations and requested these.  I have placed some of these here as pages” and will add more in the future. Feel free to email me about research or information you don’t see here.

Reproducing material from this site:

Thank you again for visiting this site.

All text and photos on this site (except for comments of course!) are copyright in my name–and sometimes that copyright is shared with journals where it h as been published. You are welcome to link to this material freely and/or to cite portions of it with standard attribution of its source.

However, no photo or text on this site may be reproduced without permission.  Feel free to contact me at the link below if you wish to reproduce it.

Non-working links:

I am making every effort to keep all material on this site updated.  Please report non-working links to me.

Madronna Holden (holdenma@comcast.net)

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Just a note:  This site is not affiliated with the book Our Earth,Ourselves, The Action-oriented Guide to Help you Protect and Preserve our Planet, by Ruth Caplan, chair of the Alliance for Democracy. But the alliance does great work if you want to check it out.