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Five commentaries on the 2017 publication "Carry Forth the Stories: An Ethnographer's Journey into Native Oral Tradition" are presented. The book, by University of Idaho Professor Emeritus of Ethnography Rodney Frey, focuses on one important aspect of traditional and contemporary American Indian life-storytelling. Drawing upon four decades of ethnographic practice with indigenous groups, Frey offers personal and professional insights into the power and value of oral narratives and related topics such as research protocols and ethics, Indigenous knowing/doing, and the interface of the personal and the professional. The five commentaries were prepared by six professionals from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, all of whom have worked professionally with Frey in the past. Following the commentaries, Frey responds to the critiques, questions, and additional insights provided by his colleagues. Collectively, the six contributions provide the reader with both a synopsis of "Carry Forth the Stories" and an overview of the anthropological and indigenous ethnographic contexts within which it was written. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we summarize and provide an analysis and interpretation of selected published sources of information pertaining to pinnipeds (marine mammals that have front and rear flippers). Particular attention is given to traditional tribal relationships with and uses of seals and sea lions. In addition to tribal interviews conducted between 1964 and 2015, we rely on existing literature and research to demonstrate traditional Columbia River tribal hunting of pinnipeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The greater Northern Shoshone, Northern Paiute, and Bannock homeland of the northern Great Basin contains many traditional fisheries. Although destroyed by hydroelectric development, irrigation, and related developments, the traditional fisheries of this region have not been well documented ethnographically. This progress report on our continuing research among the Duck Valley people documents various aspects of these fisheries and provides an improved ethnographic account of reliance on the rich aquatic resources of the upper Snake River and its tributaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tentative estimates for traditional Nez Perce village sizes in different subareas of the traditional Nez Perce homeland are provided, as is a general estimate of village size. Estimates of the total Nez Perce population for various time periods in the protohistoric and early historic are also developed. Average village size is calculated by combining estimates made in 1840 by missionary Asa Bowen Smith with a total count of Nez Perce villages from separate research by Deward E. Walker, Jr., and Madge Schwede. Several important questions for future research are raised concerning village locations, village site density, and other characteristics as well as questions concerning village subsistence resources, and areas. The protohistoric and the early historic reduction in the total Nez Perce population from disease and warfare also remain to be fully explored as part of the transformation of Nez Perce society that followed adoption of the horse in the early 1700s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An early twentieth-century letter from Fr. Etienne de Rouge, Jesuit Missionary, illustrates the very critical view of American Indian affairs that was widely shared by Jesuit missionaries during this period in western northwestern North America. De Rouge spent most of his life as a Jesuit missionary among the Interior Salish and especially groups making up the present Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation. This aspect of Jesuit missionary history in the region calls for further research because of the realistic and timely nature of the Jesuit missionaries' often extensive observations of the tribes where the Jesuits customarily lived for long periods of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]