Sylvester Olson Apr 22, 2017

it was amazing 's review

5 stars.



I've owned a paperback copy of this book for a while now, but until recently have not been able to attend to it yet. I'm glad I finally had a chance to do so. Ryan Moothart is a passionate advocate for the region. I read his online posts regularly. While I am not myself in favor of any kind of Pacific Northwestern secession from the United States and Canada, Moothart's vision for breaking away specifically rejects any kind of nationalism featuring racism, cultural superiority, prejudice, or violence. Cascadian secessionism (which does not encompass all discussion involving Cascadia) is fundamentally at odds with Southern-style Neoconfederate activity. In Towards Cascadia Moothart expresses his love for the region and outlines his feelings about how the Pacific Northwest could be formed as its own legal nation.



(Before continuing, I should mention that while this book was not "offered to me in exchange for a fair review", I have corresponded with the author before. We moderate the "Cascadia Books" forum together on Reddit.)



The blurb on the back cover purports Towards Cascadia as providing "a modern vision and compelling philosophy for the...Pacific Northwest...." I feel that the book lived up to these promises. I appreciated the author's explanations of bioregional principles, and his overwhelming enthusiasm. I also had some "A-ha!" moments that made me slap my forehead and wonder why I hadn't thought that way before. Some of these interesting points: 1) Cultural assimilation (our American "melting pot") happens on a regional level, not a national level; 2) When layered on top of each other, bioregions, First Nation cultural regions, and modern North American cultural regions correspond nicely to each other; 3) The typical Pacific Northwesterner's awe of nature is at loggerheads with the corrupted version of the American Dream that one must dominate everything else in order to be free and happy.



Even though I'm awarding five stars, I also have criticisms. Though I've rated the book the way I have based on it living up to its promises, I feel that I need to clarify that Towards Cascadia is not a scholarly work (nor does it claim itself to be so). Yes, there is a bibliography at the end, but overall, it would have a hard time standing up to academic scrutiny. While I read this for pleasure, there were two instances in which I had to stop and question the author's reasoning.



The first instance was a claim by Ryan Moothart on page 22 that "those who have studied [the Native American languages of Cascadia] hypothesize that they were part of a common family, deriving from a single root language...." I'm a bit of a language fanatic, so this claim took me by surprise. Quite to the contrary, the Northwest Coast region of North America is extremely well-known to linguists for great diversity in its indigenous language origins, filled with multiple families and isolates. Tlingit, Haida, the Salish tongues, Makah, Chinookan, are all entirely unrelated. Sure, there are those who have theorized that all human languages derive from a common caveman origin, but there is no scientific, linguist evidence to back this up. I was so startled by Ryan Moothart's claim that I even investigated his citation. Luckily, I own a copy of Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia , his source for this factoid, also. After rereading and examining the chapter from this other book, I could not find how Ryan Moothart had come to his conclusion. I believe it's likely that he overgeneralized a statement made about the Salish language family, which did indeed expand across the Northwest and evolve into separate languages. But there was nothing to back up the citation for his claim about all indigenous languages in the region. Were this a PhD dissertation rather than an enthusiastic pop-philosophy book, Moothart would be in trouble with his university department, and I caution the author to triple-check his sources.



The second instance that made me stop and backtrack was a conversation on the difference between the "regional ethos" of Cascadia with those of other North American regions as well as those of the entire United States and Canada. Moothart includes some attractive Venn diagrams on pages 130 and 133 illustrating the compelling differences that Cascadia presents. The problem is that the Venn diagrams are ALL he offers: there are no explanations of the hard data, how it was gathered, what the numbers are, etc. Just Venn diagrams. He cites a source as belonging to the Creative Commons, but does not say who or what that source is, so there is no way to find it. Because of this, his arguments utilizing the Venn diagrams lack credibility. Even though this is not an academic work, data should be clear and available in order to build such data-dependent arguments.



Overall, Towards Cascadia was an enjoyable experience for a fellow Cascadian enthusiast like me. I hope the author continues to gather his thoughtful essays that he posts to his blog for a future volume as our regional movement continues to grow.