Heads & Hearts
Seeing the landscape through Nez Perce eyes
4pm Doors - 5pm Event
Gesa Power House Theatre
111 N 6th Ave, Walla Walla Free & Open to All! Reservation Recommended
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Event Flyer (PDF)
For the nimiipuu (Nez Perce), the landscape is not simply a backdrop or collection of resources, but a living world of relationships—among people, water, salmon, animals, stones, mountains, and the forces that have shaped the land over thousands of years. Stories, place names, art, and traditional knowledge carry careful observations of that world, preserving memories of floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, ancient animals, and the changing courses of rivers.
This program brings those understandings into conversation with Western geology through the lens of ethnogeology: the study of Indigenous knowledge of landscapes, earth materials, geologic processes, and deep history. Rather than treating traditional stories as simply “myths,” ethnogeology asks what they can teach us about events witnessed and remembered across generations—and how scientific and Indigenous perspectives can illuminate one another.
Join Roger Amerman, Harry “Judge” Slickpoo Jr. and Dr. Ellen Bishop for an exploration of nimiipuu stories, art, First Foods, rivers, rocks, and geologic history. Through this practice of “Two-Eyed Seeing,” we are invited to engage both head and heart—and to come away seeing the landscapes of the Northwest with new eyes.
This event is complimented by an extensive exhibition, recently featured at OMSI in Portland, that includes in-depth information, stories, photogrpahy and art. The exhibition will be displayed throughout the theater before the event and during the intermission, and then will be moved to the Water and Environmental Center at WWCC where it will be on display for the remainder of the year.
Harry “Judge” Slickpoo Jr. is an enrolled member of the Nez Perce Tribe and a language educator, storyteller, and cultural knowledge holder dedicated to the reclamation and revitalization of nimiipuutímt, the Nez Perce language. Through language, traditional stories, place names, and cultural education, he helps carry forward Nimiipuu knowledge of the land, water, history, and relationships embedded within Nez Perce country.
Dr. Ellen Morris Bishop is a geologist, photographer, author, and educator specializing in the geology and landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. Her award-winning books, including In Search of Ancient Oregon and Living with Thunder, translate the region’s extraordinary geologic history into stories that connect deep time, ecosystems, and the landscapes we inhabit today.
