What is Southwest Wawa?

Southwest Wawa is a space where I bring my community into my thoughts around Indigenous knowledge, art, nature, language and everything I enjoy. This newsletter will be a mix bag of sharing stories, highlighting the work I’m doing, and helping people increase their awareness and strengthen their toolkits around working with Indigenous people at large.

More recently, I’ve been trying to exit social media while simultaneously grow my own audience. Those two often juxtapose each other but I lean on this as a email newsletter to break that barrier and continue to highlight great work without being in the stream of the overwhelming algorithms.

Why subscribe?

By subscribing you’ll have Southwest Wawa delivered to your email box once or twice a month. Here I’ll share some great work that’s being done in Indian Country, recommend lesser known Indigenous literature, share some of my reflections as I grow with the land, and continue to share Indigenous languages as often as I can.

If you like the content I’m producing and want to support me, you are able to be a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to exclusive discussions, an invitation to bi yearly meet and greet, and some other great perks!

Who am I?

My name is Owen L. Oliver, I come from the people of the Lower Columbia River, Salish Sea, and Southwest Pueblos of Isleta. My interests to write more have stemmed from my identity and my acute attention to the natural landscape. Recently, I published the Indigenous Walking Tour of UW which reflected my experiences on campus as a kid and then student. I currently work for Headwater People Consulting as the Director of Arts & Culture where I am focusing on the continued Indigenization of Seattle and beyond.

Southwest Wawa is a phrase I’ve used to describe how I talk through being a Southwest Pueblo person and Wawa as how we say ‘talk’ in Chinook Jargon.