I’ve had a lifelong fascination with diverse traditions of symbolism, emblemry, iconography, and heraldry, and the ways in which distinctive and carefully designed visual images can distill and capture the essence of identity, values, and relationships of significance. This, plus my lifelong love…
[Originally written as an appendix for Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, it didn’t quite seem to fit with the book, so the Press suggested we present it as a stand-alone piece that could be more easily shared with the writers to whom it was addressed. It was originally published on the Literary…
[Originally posted 13 January 2015] Among the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest, the solitary North American species of badger, Taxidea taxus, is a primordial friend and ally; indeed, as Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko observes, it was a she-badger who made possible the migration…
KENNETH GRAHAME’S OTHER BADGER [originally posted 4 January 2015] Although best known for The Wind in the Willows (1908), the writer Kenneth Grahame was also the creator of the short story, “The Reluctant Dragon” (1898). As a somewhat vexed romantic, and as a keen observer of both animal behaviour…
[Originally posted 6 October 2015] Today, 6 October 2015, is National Badger Day in the UK. It’s a day dedicated to this wondrous nocturnal mustelid, its symbolism and cultural significance, its important ecological role, and its continued struggles, especially in the anti-science/pro-agribusiness…
[Originally posted 11 August 2015] Collective nouns are a curiously eccentric feature of English, whereby evocative or pun-inspired terms are used to describe a group of animals, people, or items. Many of these are common parts of our everyday language–a pride of lions, a murder of crows,…
[Originally posted 20 April 2015] In North America and Europe alike, there are many stories–and a long history–about badgers in relationship with their canid neighbours–generally coyotes in the former, foxes in the latter. Not only have cooperative hunting and dwelling interactions been…
[Originally posted 1 February 2015] “What’s the deal with you and badgers?” It’s a fair question, and one I’m asked not infrequently by both longtime friends and new acquaintances. Admittedly, badgers are pretty far removed from my other writings and scholarship–and in some ways my badger interest…
[Originally posted 7 December 2014] In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt set off on a campaign tour by train across the western United States, stopping in various communities along the way. In the small Kansas town of Sharon Springs, he attended church service and made the acquaintance of a…
[Originally posted 28 November 2014] What is a badger? A simple question, but not such a simple answer, as the category of “badger” is actually quite a malleable and dynamic one. Historically, and across many cultures throughout the world, badgers have long been considered a smallish type of bear,…