Wasa’tós Institute
Basin Humanities & Constitutional Futures
At Sentinel Gap, where the Columbia carved through Wasa’tos (Spirit Mountain) as the last ice age retreated, the Wanapum sought knowledge by fasting, dreaming, and receiving instructions for their people. From that mountain, governance was practiced across rock, river, cloud, and time — long before policy, law, or infrastructure appeared.
The Basin continues to govern itself. Salmon negotiate ancestral routes. Hydropower regulates flow. Nuclear waste waits beneath the plateau. Treaty compacts adjudicate sovereignty. Machine intelligence enters the management of rivers and grids. These are not merely environmental or policy concerns; they are constitutional questions that determine what the unborn will inherit across 3, 10, and 100 year horizons.
A humanities institution now takes form from Wasa’tos to accompany these constitutional futures. The Institute develops Basin Humanities as a field, studies how rivers, species, infrastructures, and treaties co-govern one another, and prepares descendants for the settlement of nuclear, hydropower, salmon, and machine intelligence transitions.
Over time, the Institute envisions a regenerative campus on the flanks of Saddle Mountain — a place for strategic convenings, healing, and intergenerational study, where Basin polities, scholars, youth, and lineage carriers can work across constitutional time. This campus does not invent a future so much as restore a continuity already present in Wanapum inheritance: that governance is ecological, cosmological, and intergenerational.
Wasa’tos was a place where leaders sought instruction. It remains so today. The Institute builds upon what is already there — a mountain, a river, a Basin, and a civilizational question — and accompanies them toward the descendants who will inherit what the Basin resolves.
A humanities institution in formation.
FIELD
Basin Humanities
Basin Humanities treats the Columbia Basin as a civilizational formation shaped by salmon, dams, nuclear waste, treaty, and descendants. This field examines how a basin governs itself across ecological, legal, infrastructural, and cosmological domains.
CONSTITUTIONAL HUMANITIES
The humanities here are not commentary but governance. Constitutional Humanities accompanies sovereignty, jurisprudence, and constitutional time rather than policy or advocacy. Its constituency includes the unborn, who inherit infrastructures, territories, archives, and obligations.
PLACE
The Basin is constitutional.
The Basin is not a region but a constitution shaped by salmon, hydropower, nuclear waste, treaty, and descendants. Its governance is distributed across river, polity, species, infrastructure, archive, and time.
TIME HORIZON
3 years — formation → circulation
10 years — circulation → inheritance preparation
100 years — review by the unborn
FIVE BASIN EMERGENCIES
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Nuclear Waste
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Hydropower Transition
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Salmon Treaties
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Climate Destabilization
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Machine Intelligence
These emergencies produce not only policy questions but constitutional ones, requiring Basin Humanities rather than sectoral intervention.
ADJACENCY
Interior Wanapum adjacency sets the Institute’s cosmological provenance and temporal horizon. The Basin polities adjudicate salmon, dams, nuclear, and treaties. The Institute prepares descendants for what those polities adjudicate.
MECHANISMS OF CIRCULATION
Research · Convenings · Curriculum · Publications · Diplomacy
GLOSSARY
Basin Humanities
The Institute develops Basin Humanities as a field, studies how rivers, species, infrastructures, and treaties co-govern one another, and prepares descendants for the settlement of nuclear, hydropower, salmon, and machine intelligence transitions.
Wasa’tos
Wasa’tos was a place where leaders sought instruction. It remains so today. The Institute builds upon what is already there — a mountain, a river, a Basin, and a civilizational question — and accompanies them toward the descendants who will inherit what the Basin resolves.
Constitutional Humanities
Constitutional Humanities accompanies sovereignty, jurisprudence, and constitutional time rather than policy or advocacy. Its constituency includes the unborn, who inherit infrastructures, territories, archives, and obligations.
Constitutional Time
Temporal governance measured across horizons that extend beyond policy cycles—toward what the unborn will inherit.
Descendants
Those who inherit the Basin’s territories, infrastructures, archives, obligations, and unresolved constitutional questions.
Inheritance
The transfer of obligations and capacities across generations—ecological, legal, infrastructural, and cosmological.
Sovereignty
The living jurisdiction of Basin polities and treaty governance, adjudicating obligations across land, water, and time.
Adjacency
Interior Wanapum provenance shaping the Institute’s cosmological grounding and temporal horizon.
Constituency
Those to whom governance is owed—including the unborn—who inherit decisions made in the present.
CONTACT