Cascadia Magazine

Yakama Nation writer & poet Emily Washines and Portland-based photographer Intisar Abioto document native salmon fishing traditions on the Columbia River and the civil rights struggle 50 years ago to secure fishing rights. Read more

Wildlife biologists are studying hoary marmots in the high meadows of the North Cascades to determine why their populations are in decline. Researchers with the Cascades Carnivore Project suspect climate change and the shifting range of predators are the culprits. Read more

Northern British Columbia’s inland rainforest, a rare ecosystem with 1,000-year-old trees, is under threat from clear-cut logging. Activists are working to protect these relatively unknown forests, home to wildlife including endangered mountain caribou. Read more

Taryn Minthorn, a Native American woman who lives on Oregon’s Umatilla Indian Reservation, was abused by a boyfriend. The case against him was the first test of a new law empowering tribes to prosecute non-Indians for acts of domestic violence. Read more

University of British Columbia economist David Green has been commissioned by the BC government to study the pros and cons of basic income. In an era of automation and income inequality, a basic income could provide stability — but critics on the left and right question its cost and effectiveness. Read more

Residents of British Columbia’s Peace Valley — including members of the Saulteau First Nations — are fighting the controversial Site C dam project, which would flood their land and alter the region’s ecology. Alison Bate talks with families whose lives have been turned upside down by the project. Read more

First Nations chief Ernest Alfred set off a battle to ban fish farms in British Columbia by occupying a tiny island in Broughton Archipelago. Indigenous activists claim the farms spread disease to wild salmon, and in June, the BC government announced future permits must meet First Nations approval. Read more

A group of activists in Vancouver BC worked in secret in 2003 to set up the city’s first safe injection site. Journalist Travis Lupick tells the story of how this safe space for drug users to inject heroin under medical supervision came into being. Read more

Entrepreneurs like Raft Hollingsworth are creating new minority-owned cannabis businesses across Cascadia. But people of color face huge hurdles in the race to enter the Northwest’s legal weed industry–although new efforts are taking shape to increase equity in communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs. Read more

Seattle art book publisher Ed Marquand helped create a vibrant artisan incubator space called Mighty Tieton in a tiny Yakima Valley town, a place where creative businesses employ bookbinders, printers, and mosaic artists. It all began when a “goat head” thorn gave his bicycle a flat tire… Read more

Though WA Attorney General Bob Ferguson gets most of the attention, two female attorneys in the civil rights division, Colleen Melody and Marsha Chien, are leading the fight against Trump’s controversial executive orders, from the Muslim travel ban to DACA. Read more

In the Cascadia Daily e-mail newsletter, you’ll find a curated selection of links to news stories, essays, fiction, poetry, and art — spanning the diversity of cultures and people in Cascadia. We hope Cascadia Daily will make you think deeper about issues and help you better understand the region we live in. Read more