native americans

Rough Cut: Indigenous Thanksgiving Sunrise

A Short History of the annual Native American Alcatraz Island Un-Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony This is a “rough cut”—an excerpt edited out of my novel, Fruit of the Devil, due to the fact that it was deemed too “history heavy” for a fictional read. It is important that we study history so we don’t repeat our […]

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Salmon Boy

What’s the connection between salmon and pesticides? It’s the water. Early on in my novel writing journey, an editor I met at the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference sent my manuscript back to me with the comment, “You have a tight little thriller here, if only you’d cut out the romance, the pesticide story, and that

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Standing Rock Insiders Urgently Request Help as Violence from DAPL Mercenaries Escalates

December 1, 2016 Standing Rock, North Dakota Dear Friends and Relatives, In late August I responded to an utterly compelling, impossible-to-refuse Call from Spirit to go to Standing Rock, North Dakota. Since I’ve returned home, everyone I’ve met has expressed a deep hunger to better understand the current situation at Standing Rock and to know

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Amesti history mural

Rough Cut: Prudenciana Elementary School

Rough Cut: {The True Story of “Prudenciana” Elementary School} A California History snapshot: Designed and painted by artist Guillermo Aranda, Mary Flodin, and Amesti GATE students in the late 1990’s, the mural above depicts the cultural and natural history of the land where the school was built, from the time of the native Ohlones through

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Organic and Sustainable Agriculture – Re-Designing the Food System

I’ve taken the last 6 months away from my novel to go back to classroom teaching in the Pajaro River Valley. My middle school classroom – a well-equipped computer lab in a state-of-the-art Google Classroom paperless school – is surrounded by agricultural fields. Many of my 7th and 8th grade students are children of freseros

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Don’t Frack My Salad

PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION AT http://bit.ly/1pkc8oC to urge EARTHBOUND FARM to Support Measure J! Don’t Frack My Salad! Little San Benito County, California, is engaged in a David and Goliath struggle with the Oil Industry over fracking. San Benito is a scenic and historically significant county, with priceless agricultural and ranch lands.  It supports a

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