Nez Perce Legends

Nez Perce Legends Sharing stories form the past that continue to guide us into the future.

Maiden Voyage of American Encore. Snake and Columbia River cruise. She is beautiful!
05/13/2026

Maiden Voyage of American Encore. Snake and Columbia River cruise. She is beautiful!

11/08/2025

For Pacific Northwest Tribes, salmon are not just fish. They are kin, ceremony, and protected by treaties.

This month, and every month, we honor Tribal sovereignty and leadership in the fight for salmon, Orca, rivers, and treaty rights. We invite you to stay connected to Tribal-led stories, actions, and ways to help by signing up for our email action alerts. Comment “salmon” and check your DM’s to get signed up.

Photo courtesy of offering the only tours created to connect you to Nimiipuu culture through interactive experiences spanning everything from storytelling, song, drum, and dance to land and water journeys. Follow them to learn more!

Sign up to receive timely updates, urgent action opportunities, and ways to stand up for salmon, orcas, and the communities that depend on these waters! ➡️ https://mailchi.mp/columbiasnakeriver.com/action-alert-sign-up

November is pretty much booked solid. The 17,18 are available if you’re near North Easton, MANov. 24,25 are available Th...
11/04/2025

November is pretty much booked solid. The 17,18 are available if you’re near North Easton, MA
Nov. 24,25 are available
The week of Dec 15-19 is available.
January, February are wide open.

For the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce people), the sáplis—sometimes mistaken for a symbol more recently associated with harm—is a ...
11/03/2025

For the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce people), the sáplis—sometimes mistaken for a symbol more recently associated with harm—is a sacred emblem of the whirlwind: the eternal rotation of the Big Dipper around the North Star.

This movement, this symbol, has been with our people since time immemorial. It is carved into stone, woven into baskets, and beaded into the regalia of our ancestors. It is a guide, a prayer, a celestial map. It is an ancient marker of our relationship to the land, the stars, and the continuity of our existence.

Though this symbol was appropriated and distorted in modern history, there has been little recognition or education about its much older origins—not only among the Nimiipuu, but across many world cultures. For us, its sacred meaning has never changed.

When we are discouraged from honoring this relationship—even with good intentions—it continues the long, painful legacy of erasing Nimiipuu identity and silencing Indigenous knowledge.

We share this today in the spirit of education and understanding. We welcome those who come with open hearts and minds, ready to listen and learn. We also acknowledge that some will choose to hold fast to narrow, colonial interpretations—unable or unwilling to accept that knowledge and meaning existed long before 1920.

We empathize with those who have been harmed by what this symbol came to represent elsewhere. But for us, surrendering it would be a tragic act of assimilation—another form of cultural erasure.

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P. O. Box 567
Lapwai, ID
83540

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