Story Circles, 2010
Sacajawea State Park, Pasco, Washington

Photography: Meagan Moore, courtesy Confluence Project

At the Confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers I created a series of raised and embedded basalt story circles. Though barely reflected in Lewis and Clark’s accounts, this place has marked for thousands of years a critically important trading place for many of the tribes of the area, who would make seasonal rounds through the area— hunting, fishing, and gathering plants and trading goods with each other.

Seven cut basalt circles are laid out in the park and etched with texts taken from tribal stories, Lewis and Clark’s journals, and Yakama elders that explore the native cultures, language, flora, fauna, geology, and natural history of the site. Each of the circles graphically describes a different aspect of this place: the types of fish, native plants gathered, traded goods, the geology of the place, the mythic creation story of the place and at the southern-most tip, a listing of all the tribes who came through the area placed within the only form, not of a circle but of the imprint of a traditional long house that was the architectural form used for their lodge-style meetinghouses.