Meet our Guests: Kathleen Ackley

Kathleen Ackley

Executive Director, Wallowa Land Trust

Wallowa County, Oregon

8/20/21

Kathleen Ackley is the Executive Director of Wallowa Land Trust (WLT), a nonprofit focused on conserving land and maintaining its ecological health. In Wallowa County, where private land is tightly woven into the fabric of the valley, the land trust works to conserve parcels of land for myriad purposes, from grazing to recreating, for both people and wildlife. They rely on the voluntary participation of landowners to carry out their work in protecting lands identified as significant in terms of biological diversity, cultural connections, and educational value. Preserving the prominent glacial moraine on the east side of Wallowa Lake is a major project championed by WLT and for good reason: it is a window into our geologic past and keeps the skyline free of imposing mansions.

Through Kathleen’s eight years with WLT she has seen a shift in their responsibilities and practices. Maintaining workable land has become more of a central tenet in the land trust sphere, along with movements to return land stolen from indigenous peoples and take action against systemic racism. Kathleen knows that land trusts are not exempt from addressing these societal reckonings. In a statement released on their website, WLT lays bare the inequities they continue to hold central to their work. Kathleen engages with such issues through her efforts with the Oregon Land Justice Project, a group which works to amplify indigenous stewardship knowledge and provide a space to hear from Native American leaders and allies about making land management more equitable. Kathleen made it clear that this work is vital, saying “it is not just about taking their knowledge for our benefit, it is about facilitating reconnections…for people with their land and for people with people. This is the right way to move forward, but it is far from easy.”

By Ani Pham

Meet our Guests: Ellen Bishop

Ellen Bishop

Geologist, Writer, Photographer

Wallowa County, OR

8/20/21

Gathered atop a hill that overlooks Wallowa Lake, Ellen Bishop (with her dog Pepper at her side) introduced Semester in the West to the local geology of Wallowa County and the nearby Eagle Cap Wilderness Area. From our perch at the Old Chief Joseph grave site outside of the town of Joseph, Oregon, Ellen pointed to the southeast and directed our attention to the large hill that makes up the perimeter of nearly half the lake. Called a lateral moraine, the feature is a signature geologic landmark of the area. Ellen encouraged us to imagine the geologic structure that lies beneath the dry grass. The moraine is composed of compacted gravel that originated in the nearby Wallowa mountains. It was transported by glaciers that covered the area until the end of the Pleistocene Era. These same glaciers are responsible for many of the geomorphological features of the area, but Ellen pushes us to think even further and consider how the features might be viewed and understood by the long held indigenous understandings of this place. That consideration is at the heart of the work Ellen now does. A former geology professor turned full-time author and photographer, Ellen has recently embarked on a new project in the field of ethnogeology: the study of how geological features are understood by indigenous communities around the globe. By pairing her geology expertise with the creation stories of the Nez Perce, Ellen hopes to acknowledge the overlap of indigenous knowledge and stories with geologic history. Through her work Ellen brings a deeper understanding of the Wallowa Valley to the people who call this place home, both past and present.

By Alli Shinn