In Native culture, our stories have multiple meanings.

Im successful if I can garner the people's imagination and give them an access into their own thinking process.

It's like when you read the horoscope in the morning and everybody thats the same sign, has the same horoscope, but they all have different interpretations that relate to themselves.

When they look at my work, I hope to bring this out.

Then it'll give them an avenue into their own story.

Omak sits at a bend in the Okanagan River, about an hour south of the Canadian border.

The town of 5000 is probably best known for its stampede and rodeo, where the neighboring Colville Confederated Tribes staged a traditional powwow each year.

I'm visiting Joe Feddersen, a Colville artist of Okanagan descent who's been making ceramics, glass, sculptures, weavings and prints for the past 45 years.

Born in Omak Feddersen has a deep connection to the rugged landscape, the bright yellow balsamroot that lights up the hillsides, and Omak Lake, which generations of Plateau Native people have considered a healing body of water.

I know you grew up here and then went away to to go to school and to teach.

So what drew you back to this area?

I'm Okanagan, and this is our traditional lands, and I feel a real tie to this place.

When you look across the valley, I think about since time began, my my relatives have lived here.

My grandmother, when she was still alive, she's told us, you know, “It's important for you to support your people and to be part of your community.” The act of making things together is really powerful, and it's multi-generational.

It has elders like me, and it has young people.

And and that kind of a dialog is extremely wonderful and enriching for our culture.

One of several projects Feddersen is currently working on is a series of prints honoring the Colville Reservations recent acquisition of 30 buffalo.

A gift from the nearby Kalispel tribe the buffalo add a keystone species to the landscape — and represent a cultural homecoming.

It's about numbers, and it's about our relationship to that, that these buffalo are part of our culture and part of our life, but we've been separated, and we have a whole ‘nother history that's gone on since they've left.

And it's kind of like our stories and you see like little icons of things.

And you can see in the background there's like a high voltage tower.

It's our about our land.

And I think of the high voltage towers as thieves, that, that take our resources away.

So there's kind of like a whole drama that's already going on behind the buffalo.

It's us living today with our contemporary life.

But its poignant because it talks about everything.

Our life and our culture is about everything.

It's about the past, but it interweaves everything with us today.

In the basement, Feddersen works with fused glass, using small kilns to create what he calls “charms” — glass line drawings that look like petroglyphs — which he amasses and hangs in curtains that make a gentle sound like wind chimes.

The thing about the pieces are they're made for the spaces that they're shown in.

So each time they're installed, it's like a new story.

And I like to think of them as stories.

- And the charms that, I've seen of yours, they do look a lot like petroglyphs.

So can you talk about the connection to petroglyphs?

- Yeah.

A lot of times people see, you know, because we live in the US, there's this kind of like an artificial, like history, like US art came from Europe.

But our art started like 20,000 years ago with the petroglyphs.

We have like a really rich history of art that deals with our place, and it ties us to the place, and the stories that we tell are our history.

It's a binding force, like in the community.

- And have you seen petroglyphs in this region?

- It was last year or the year before we went up to Canada, and we went through this person's backyard and here are these petroglyphs.

And they look just like my work.

My work looks like theirs, because that's like thousands of years old.

- And you hadn't seen them before that, huh?

- No, it was such a wonderful gift.

- Yeah.

These hooves are going to be perfect.

- And what happens is, this looks really angular right now, but when it goes through the fire and it's just transformed, and I just love the way the lines become more fluid.

And I don't know what the fire does to it, but... - Part of the mystery.

- Yeah.

Its like it breathes life into it.

By layering simple materials — like clear glass and Elmer's glue — Feddersen creates symbols that appear both ancient and contemporary.

Together these marks become a sentence.

The sentence becomes a story.

Angular iconograph appears across Feddersen's work, including in his meticulously woven waxed linen baskets.

He had previously made a suite of prints called Plateau Geometrics, inspired by the colors and design of traditional plateau baskets.

Feddersen then decided to try weaving himself, learning from mentors like renowne Colville weaver Elaine Emerson.

So this is in the plateau style of weaving?

This is what we call a “sally bag.” It's used for gathering camas.

And this one, what are you starting on here?

- This one, this is about the high voltage towers and how they span the ridges around here.

Where, when I grew up here 50 years ago, there were none.

The idea about the towers, it's about this relationship of the dams to our people and how our people paid a high price.

They're carrying our resources away.

And we're getting very little from that.

We get a little check every year, but these projects are at a big expense to our people.

Beyond the people in his immediate community, Feddersen nods to the many artists, friends, colleagues and mentors whove influenced his art and life, including Vi Hilbert, the Upper Skagit elder and University of Washingto professor who devoted her career to preserving the Lushootseed language.

The whole idea about the storytelling comes from Vi, and Vi would always say, “There's no right or wrong.

Its your interpretation of what you're looking at and how it gives you access to your own inner voice.” Omak is a Salisha word that means “good medicine” or “plenty.” That sense of regional bounty i reflected in Feddersen's work, whether ceramic canoes filled with curious figures; colorful glass traps based on Native fishing traditions; woven and blown glass baskets that speak to everythin from parking lots to lives lost.

No matter the medium Feddersen's stories are layered with the past and present of his home.

Art by Northwest was made possible in part with the support of Visit Bellingham, Whatcom County.