"What is this? Who are you? And what the heck's a Xepéyˀkwen?!"

Hey y’all, my name’s Xepéyˀkwen; well, one of them is, at any rate.

It’s actually one of my easier-to-say* names, given that they include Q'empˀqw’oˀngene (from my mom), Néxwˀs'yexw (from my grandma), and Ratu Niu (from local loved ones while living with the Dewala on Viti Levu), but it's definitely still a mouthful. All the same, I come from peoples where names are important, and have roles and meaning. 

Xepéy is the word in my grandmother’s tribal language (Xwlémiˀchosen) for Thuja Plicata, a tree who is our collective grandmother; she's a cypress species misnamed as a cedar, of a western and red variety (Xepaay would be a closer pronunciation, likely enough). Kwen is the state that one sisk’s oneself into, the tranquility that comes from sunning yourself on a quiet island in the Salish Sea; it’s the root of our word for strength, kwenkwem. 

To me, the combination of the two implies an understanding of strength that comes from flexing, groundedness, and absorbing the warmth of our beautiful perpetuated explosion in the sky. This is one of the ways that I see strength and resilience in our cedar women, as they sway in the gales and zephyrs to which northwestern fjords are so prone. As one of my only self-chosen names, to me it serves as both aspiration and commitment, to what I hope to embody of what I respect in myself, and what I intend to do my best to continue to cultivate in my intentions and harvest from my actions.

(*Note: You pronounce by making a noise of mild surpise – huh? - followed by a delicious dessert – pie! - followed by that same mild surprise but in french – quois? - and an N. Extra points if you get the X to gently sound like the “ch” in l’chaim, loch, or achmed, and get the uh of the Salish E and the following Y to combine to a Kiwi/Maoris mid ai-oi vowel sound on the “pie” of Pey, but ultimately… I’ve got a complicated-ass name. If you get in the neighborhood of  Huh-pie-kwuhn, it’s good enough for me.)

My grandmother’s name for me refers to my perpetual asking of questions, Néxwˀs'yexw – Always-ThatOne-Ponders – and as she aptly put it, my curiosity has always been my best and worst quality. 

My mom did her best to lob a suitable tonnage of board books into my play-pen, so as to dull the edge of my craving for contemplative input, and she fondly blames my craving for books and stories as to dragging her into the momentum she took to eventually go get her GED and child development degree. 

My parents were adolescent, but committed, and did their best, and gave me the best they had to hand; that was wasn’t always very much, but it was usually enough, and the further I pass the ages when they had and were parenting me, the more in awe I am of what they managed to pull off. 

My surviving grandparents – my mom’s Lummi mother and my dad’s Irish father – both took a pretty involved role in my upbringing, for which I’m ultimately very grateful; their disparate natures and passions fueled a well-rounded appetite for the diverse experiences available in being alive.

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Though I was born in Spokane, we moved a lot, as I came up, to a pretty unusual degree; skipping grades was something to do, in yet another new library, in yet another new town. 

Eventually, we roosted more long term in Stockton, California, a town legendary in its region – notorious, perhaps – for its violent, impoverished, polluted, dismal quality, and it... was those things. And it was also, in our open-air economic detention yard, incredibly vibrant with cultures, foods, stories, memories, perspectives, resiliences... defiances. 

It’s hard to truly hate a place that made you stronger, more culturally-focused, and more flexible, even if it did so by killing some of your friends; even if its dystrophic chaos shoves you anywhere conceivable that is outward, and far, toward the furthest-flung corners of the Earth.

 I went to college there, at a perhaps developmentally-inappropriate age, and then tried to get out of town as best I could; the church offered me my opportunity to do so, seeming an easier paycheck to explain to my mom than my other job offer – I was an avid amateur photographer – as an entry-level pornographic cinematographer. 

So, I joined the Great Rewashed, and onward Christian soldiers, indeed.

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I signed up to serve the church, first for a stint in Fiji, and then – through a tangle of smaller stops in Iceland, Turkey, and Mauritius – in Madagascar; my inclination to try and serve the people, instead, was both what kept getting me into trouble with various mission administrators for "going native," and was what I still hold hope in having been my saving grace while advancing the Colonial Project. 

While building water filters for the village school in Nagigi, I started having some of my first experiences of Indigenous elders somehow.... being perceptive enough to be confused, as to what my white-passing Native ass was doing there among all the polo-clad settlers. 

This was a confusion they then conveyed to me, and with which they eventually inoculated me. 

Despite my being hired to preach to them, they seemed to save my soul much more effectively; their words, choices, and actions served to witness to me - if you'll  as to the good news of our being Loved, and inviting me to the redemptive work of trying to actually get my shit together, and act in tune with that knowledge. 

I was supposed to tell the Turaqa (elders) my flannelgraph concepts of Infinity, Eternity, and Divinity, while they in their multi-millenial mid-Pacific home had a significantly firmer grasp than I on all three.

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Teaching Malagasy students at the seminary near Antsirabe, and spending time with the old folks of their families finished the work that the other elders had begun on the far side of the world, jostling me loose from the church at the least convenient time. 

Though I’d won an advisorial job offer from one of the royal families – the Toto Zana-ramaromanompo of Betsimisaraka, an illustrious  Indigenous lineage of former pirate lords and linguistic mouthful both, on the eastern sea-board – my delight to use agricultural and infrastructural perspectives to actually benefit local folks was short lived in being slammed by both Cyclone Enawo and the subsequent plague outbreak in the south. 

Being forcibly evacuated under Trump 1’s state department left me on my ass in San Francisco with a shared five-dollar bill. 

“Again, from the top,” was the sensei-like insistence from my etcha-sketch life.

I’m of the mind that one of our greatest goals since the deep ancestors, our naked river-ape days, is “Cozy, together.” 

It’s one I share; my sturdiest dreams are the people I care about, around a table, with enough to delight in and be alright with. 

I find that getting there takes me through forests and swamps, alleyways and urban lots, backyard gardens and cafe patios, and I presume many are taking similar roads to pursue the same goals. 

One of the realities of living with chronic pain is watching the slow departure of the athleticism necessary to continue the more physical aspects of my work as a land tender. 

This has shades of a premature aging into the next life transition, from the prior transition from the offering of my wonder to the community to the offering of my sweat, now from offering my strength to offering my thoughts and perspectives.

Someday, should I live long enough, I’ll again metamorphose into offering my insights and decision-making, among the eldership. 

For now, I’m finding a need for a creative transition from professional worker to professional thinker, from trading resultant objects and spaces to trading in support and services… and that is the source of this webpage.

I have things to offer my larger community that aren't intrinsically tied to my spinal ligaments and their dubious well-being; I am also suspended in a system - as we likely all are, if you're reading this - where the key necessities for survival and beyond that, delight, are held in reserve behind well-armed paywalls.

Things like the cost of housing, nutrition, medical care and bodywork, books and ceremonial implements with which to offer reverence, tools to make things for my loved ones, fishing supplies, canning supplies, water and telecommunications, fuel to travel and visit with elders, groves, and friends.... my dead folks insist that I should just be able to head off into the woods and wetlands to fashion and gather the things that I need; alas, their world was a bit better that way.

As such, I'm offering things I can share that have value, at least to me, and seeing what value of service, object, or imperial coin folks are in a position to share in return. But that's a different page. :)