Keema, a 28-year-old male grizzly bear who had lived at the Woodland Park Zoo since late 1994, was euthanized Sunday, according to the zoo.
Keema was humanely euthanized “due to a severe decline in his health,” the zoo said in a post on its blog Monday.
Keema had struggled with mobility and had been under observation for months, but “the veterinary team did not find any treatable underlying diseases,” the zoo said in its blog post.
Keema lived at the zoo with his twin brother Denali from when they were 10 months old until Denali died in late 2020. They were born at the Washington State University Bear Center on Jan. 15, 1994.
“While grizzly bears are usually solitary animals, the brothers had lived together their entire lives and were only able to get along because they had always been together and there were no female bears present,” the blog post said.
More than 500 years ago in the midwestern Guatemalan highlands, Maya people bought and sold goods with far less oversight from their rulers than many archeologists previously thought.
That’s according to a new study in Latin American Antiquity that shows the ruling K’iche’ elite took a hands-off approach when it came to managing the procurement and trade of obsidian by people outside their region of central control.
In these areas, access to nearby sources of obsidian, a glasslike rock used to make tools and weapons, was managed by local people through independent and diverse acquisition networks. Overtime, the availability of obsidian resources and the prevalence of craftsmen to shape it resulted in a system that is in many ways suggestive of contemporary market-based economies.
Horowitz
“Scholars have generally assumed that the obsidian trade was managed by Maya rulers, but our research shows that this wasn’t the case at least in this area,” said Rachel Horowitz, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of anthropology at Washington State University. “People seem to have had a good deal of economic freedom including being able to go to places similar to the supermarkets we have today to buy and sell goods from craftsmen.”
Can an instrument suit your personality? Dr. Jacqueline Wilson would say so. She believes her personality fits best with a large, low sounding, double reed woodwind instrument: the bassoon.
She serves as principal bassoonist of the Washington Idaho Symphony and assistant professor of bassoon and theory at Washington State University where she performs with the Solstice Faculty Wind Quintet. She recently released a collaborative album titled Works for the Bassoon by Native American Composers.
In this special episode of Traverse Talks, NWPB’s Hannah Snyder interviews Dr. Jacqueline Wilson (Yakama) about her album, inspiration, and unique performing experience. Listen to this podcast to learn more about Native American representation in classical music and hear samples of Dr. Wilson’s work.
When I read your question, I thought about elephants. There’s evidence that elephants have complex emotions—like grief when their relatives die or affection for humans who help them. Whales, dolphins, non-human primates and even dogs sometimes seem like they have complex emotions, too.
It makes us wonder if animals seek comfort and meaning the same ways humans do—like through religion. We truly don’t know the answer to your question. It’s something people have wondered about for a long time.
Campbell
Exploring deep questions is the work of my friend Joe Campbell. He’s a philosopher at Washington State University.
We often think of religion as beliefs and behaviors. They relate to the supernatural—something beyond us and what we see in the natural world.
Campbell told me that underneath many religious beliefs and behaviors is a feeling: awe. It’s a proto-religious attitude. Proto means first.
Sam Robinson, vice chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation, is “telling the story”
When Sam Robinson arrives at a public event in his distinctive cone-shaped Chinook hat to sing, play his drum and tell stories, what seems like a cultural, broadly spiritual moment is something else too: a political protest.
Vancouver resident Robinson, 66, is vice chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation. His frequent personal appearances aim to reunify and strengthen a tribe that’s been denied, disadvantaged and dispersed by government repression and intertribal competition for close to two centuries.
More than 100 Chinook tribal members and allies gathered outside the Marshall House on Vancouver’s Officers Row to press Congress to pass the Chinook Restoration Act, a law that would bestow federal recognition and start the process of establishing a Chinook reservation.
The Quinault Indian Nation has its own federally recognized reservation, but over the years, ongoing treaty negotiations also designated some Quinault land for several other tribes — first the Quileute, Queets and Hoh people, then later the Chehalis, Chinook and Cowlitz, according to Indian Country Today.
All of those other tribes, except the Chinook, have since succeeded in gaining federal recognition and establishing their own reservations. But Chinook land allotments and hunting and fishing rights on Quinault land remain in dispute. In 2018, Quinault officials said they still want the Chinook to waive any and all rights to their land.
Fountain
“The conflict, from the Quinault perspective, has … centered on tribal sovereignty, specifically whether non-Quinault tribal members can exert their hunting and fishing rights there,” said Steve Fountain, an assistant professor of history at Washington State University Vancouver. “In short, if the Chinook Nation is recognized, Quinaults argue that they will lose control of their own reservation lands and resources.”
The Columbian requested comment from the Quinault Indian Nation and received no reply.
“I think you will find it hard to get anyone to go on record who is directly involved in the opposition,” Fountain told The Columbian.
