The sea never signed your border

By Josiah French Feld (JESESIṈSET), PKOLS — Preserving Knowledge of Land and Sea

If you stand still on STOLȻEȽ long enough, you can hear it, that low hum under your boots. Not wind. Not imagination. The land itself. The women. The W̱SÁNEĆ women. Still holding this island together through the echo of their hands.

Most folks here don’t hear it anymore. They drive their Subarus to the farmer’s market, brag about “island roots,” and sip local coffee while talking about heritage but they never ask who made this land livable in the first place.

STOLȻEȽ, what the maps renamed San Juan, was not a wilderness waiting for discovery. It was already engineered — a masterpiece of ecological genius crafted by the women who knew how to coax life from thin soil and salt air. There are no rivers here, ju