hi, my name’s alex.
i’m a descendant of the turtle mountain band of chippewa indians and euro-american settlers.
i am an educator, astrologer, historian, artist, and writer.
i live on coast salish land in occupied cascadia.
ancestry
& place
my ojibwe ancestors were born at the eastern sea, moving westward following the seven fires prophecies, to the place where food grows on the water.
they intermarried with french fur traders and were allotted land at turtle mountain. they kept moving west.
at the western sea, they met other ancestors, descendants of english, scottish, and irish settlers, as well as finnish immigrants.
the last seven generations were farmers, loggers, preachers, public servants, hairdressers, and software engineers. they lived in the foothills and river valleys of western washington state, on the traditional homelands of the cowlitz, chehalis, squaxin island, nisqually, puyallup, muckleshoot, and snoqualmie tribes.
my paternal grandfather was the last enrolled tribal member of our family.
b.a. american studies, 2014
b.a.e. social studies education, 2016
m.a. history, 2020
m.a. theology (in progress)
my historical background and training is in environmental history, pacific northwest history, and native american history.
i have served as a K-12 educator in tribal schools, immersion schools, and public schools in villages and on reservations.
i have served as a college instructor in native american studies and history.
education
& experience
spiritual
& cultural
foundations
my paternal grandfather - the ojibwe one - was an assembly of god preacher. i was raised to believe our cultural traditions had died out in favor of western capitalism and christianity. as a young person, i was confused. as i grew up, i became angry. i felt my grandfather had given something up in leaving the reservation, in leaving the tribe. i became an atheist.
in college, i studied history to understand my grandfather. how could he have made the choices he did? through my studies, i came to see the conditions of the reservation as he was growing up, i saw the economic opportunity the military and the church provided him. i saw the death of his mother the same year as the birth of my father. eventually, i came to see the solace and certainty the faith provided him throughout his life.
through my studies, i came closer to my ancestors. i was drawn to the stories of my grandparents, to tribal history, to ojibwe culture. i was pulled in by the local community, invited to salish language classes, looped into native reading groups. i student taught on indian reservations.
through all of this, i remained an atheist. i learned traditional stories, i sewed regalia, i began to speak the language of the land i lived on, and somehow, i still did not believe in god.
astrology came into my life as a calm and clarifying eye in the middle of a typhoon. covid had just entered the united states, chani nicholas had put out her book, and chris brennan’s monthly forecasts were startlingly prescient.
it was the saturn-pluto conjunction - the one that brought covid - that converted me into a true believer. hearing chris talk about the conjunction and realizing it was transiting my seventh house of committed partnerships, i came to see how a significant romantic rupture had occurred on the day of the exact alignment. how did the sky know? the reflection of my life in the movements of the sky was uncanny, unsettling, and deeply curious.
as a scorpio, i went all in. i took chris brennan’s hellenistic astrology course, attended every virtual summit and conference i could find, and started tony howard’s four-year training program through astrology university. in the last six years, i have been lucky enough to study under kelly surtees, demetra george, jason holley, and many others.
i opened my client practice, ishpiming, in 2022. i began speaking publicly in 2023, offering courses in 2024, and launched my community hearth ishkode in late 2025.
learning the
language
of the sky